This past Wednesday, 26 of us embarked on our first 2009 Eco-Maniacs volunteer event.
If you don’t know, in order to encourage volunteerism in our local community, we’re given 3 days per year that we can use volunteering at one of the company-sponsored volunteer events or for an organization of our personal choice.
For this event, we partnered up with Save the Bay for a wetlands restoration project at Bair Island down in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay. Save The Bay is the oldest and largest organization working exclusively to protect, restore and celebrate San Francisco Bay.
Here are some of the highlights from our trip:
- We learned about the ecosystem of our SF Bay and the importance of the wetlands.
- We canoed out to Bair Island.
- We planted 1,000 seedlings of native alkali heath.
- We removed the non-native and highly invasive “pepper weed” plant.
- We removed trash.
- We tested the water’s phosphate levels.
- Unearthed a dead jackrabbit.
- Made a communal lunch of sandwiches, organic fruit, and cheez-its….yum! Then composted the food remains.
All in all the day was a great combination of San Francisco Bay education, outdoor recreation, teamwork, and wetlands restoration.
For pictures of the day check out our Flickr and Facebook pages. Feel free to comment!
If you are interested in learning more about Save the Bay and the advocacy work they do to protect our local treasure you can click here.
