Posts by Ilana DeBare

GGAS joins lawsuit to protect swallows May 20, 2013

Posted by Ilana DeBare in Conservation, Golden Gate Audubon Protestor at bridge site / Photo courtesy of Native Songbird Care & Conservation
By Ilana DeBare

Last month we wrote about the Caltrans netting on a Petaluma bridge construction site that was trapping and killing dozens of Cliff Swallows.

Many Golden Gate Audubon members — as well as other conservation groups — wrote to Caltrans asking it  to adopt less lethal methods of keeping birds from nesting on the bridge during construction. But Caltrans hasn’t list…

Read more »

Beach Chalet goes to the Coastal Commission May 1, 2013

Posted by Ilana DeBare in Conservation, Golden Gate Audubon Dark-eyed Junco, one of 70 bird species that rely on Beach Chalet as habitat / Photo by Bob Lewis

 By Ilana DeBare

For the past two years, we’ve been fighting plans by the city of San Francisco to create artificial-turf soccer fields with stadium-style lighting in western Golden Gate Park, an area that was intended in city plans to remain more natural and less developed.

We lost a round in this battle last summer before the city’s planning and parks commissions.

But next week, the issue …

Read more »

Two goslings gone – in the jaws of unleashed dogs April 18, 2013

Posted by Ilana DeBare in Conservation Canada Goose family before dog attack / Photo by Mikiye Nakanishi

By Ilana DeBare

There has been so much deeply horrific news this week — the Boston bombings, the spineless Senate, the Texas fertilizer fire. It might seem hard to care about two dead goslings.

But these goslings were in our backyard, so to speak, swimming in the bay a few feet offshore of San Francisco’s Crissy Field on Wednesday.

And they died a completely gratuitous death in the jaws of sever…

Read more »

Caltrans versus Cliff Swallows April 17, 2013

Posted by Ilana DeBare in Conservation Cliff Swallow nest in New Jersey / Photo by Magnus Manske, Wikimedia Commons

By Ilana DeBare

Dozens of Cliff Swallows are being killed each week by a Caltrans contractor in Petaluma — even though alternative technologies are available that would keep the swallows safe.

Sonoma County bird lovers are up in arms over the killings, in which swallows are being trapped in netting installed on a Highway 101 bridge by contractor C.C. Myers.

They’re asking other wildlife lo…

Read more »

Midway through Birdathon madness April 14, 2013

Posted by Ilana DeBare in Birding, Golden Gate Audubon Cinnamon Teal at Coyote Hills, Fremont / Photo by Jerry Ting

By Ilana DeBare

If this blog has been a little quiet for the past couple of weeks, it’s because we’ve been spending a lot of time on the (annoying, frustrating, necessary) administrative details of our annual Birdathon, which runs throughout the month of April.

But here’s the payoff for all that administrative scutwork — time in the field for Birdathon participants!

Jerry Tin…

Read more »
Page 1 of 712345...Last »