About Ruth

Ruth Malone is an Oakland resident since 1983, a founding member and co-chair of Friends of Knowland Park and a longtime Oakland neighborhood activist. Since 2007, she has been working to educate and organize environmentalists, park users, and community members to protect the park. In her day job, she is a professor of nursing and health policy at University of California, San Francisco, where she helps students study the links between health and political, social and natural environments, and conducts research on the tobacco industry and its efforts to thwart public health efforts worldwide. Ruth Malone’s Reflections Blog offers a combination of reflective essays and updates from the Protect Knowland Park Campaign, linking the fight to protect Knowland Park to broader environmental and ethical issues.
Author Archive | Ruth

Public cost for grandiose Zoo expansion rising – Now Alameda Supervisors want to add to your parcel tax

By on July 27, 2012 in Uncategorized

It turns out the Oakland Zoo wants even more of your money to fence off your public park land.

In a move managed by the Alameda County Board of Supervisors, the zoo is placing a parcel tax on the ballot for this fall that would, if passed, provide funds for the expansion development. See http://www.ebcitizen.com/2012/07/bos-roundup-special-tax-for-oakland-zoo.html You may recall that at meeting after meeting and hearing after hearing, zoo and city officials assured everyone that this was “a done deal,” all paid for, private funds, etc. Well, it turns out they’ve deceived us again. Continue Reading →

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The Knowland Park dumps, and the Alice in Wonderland world of zoo assurances: Where is the ‘stewardship’?

By on July 9, 2012 in Oakland Politics, Personal Journals, Uncategorized

Zoo debris dumped in Knowland Park

During hearings on the zoo’s expansion development project, Friends of Knowland Park and other environmental groups repeatedly raised the issue of lack of proper stewardship of Knowland Park, and lack of city oversight of the zoo’s management of Park resources. Despite the fact that the zoo is paid by the city to be stewards over the entirety of Knowland Park, it has never really even acknowledged the Park as a Park.

In addition to raising the issue of inadequate monitoring and control of invasive plant species in the Park, the Friends submitted color photos and Google Earth images showing multiple dump sites in the Park, including manure dumping near the site identified for the proposed interpretive center building and restaurant. In its response, the zoo denied dumping manure at all and did not even address the manure dumping at the interpretive center site, focusing instead on a composting area near the veterinary hospital site. However, the manure pile at the former site was mysteriously removed sometime during the weeks immediately following this meeting. Continue Reading →

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The tomb of the unknown bobcat: How named captive animals displace unnamed wild ones

By on June 14, 2012 in Nature & Wildlife, Uncategorized

California Bobcat. Photo by U.S.FishandWildlifeService

The zoo’s planned development onto Knowland Park habitat currently used by multiple wild animals will include exhibits featuring captive animals that no longer are native to the area–due to loss of habitat and other human activities. It will also include exhibits displaying captive specimens of animals that are still around here in the wild and currently using Knowland Park for hunting, raising their young, and migration between habitat zones. The irony of this seems so obvious that it is sometimes hard for environmentally active folks to understand how zoo patrons can possibly support such a destructive project. One explanation may lie in the fact that zoo animals become personal to people, particularly those who visit often: they are given names like Molly, Milou, Ginger and Grace, the tigers rescued last year from a private zoo in Texas, and people begin the process of identifying with them.

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Extra! Extra! Stop the Presses! After over four years of pressure, City lists Knowland Park on its Parks Website

By on May 4, 2012 in Oakland Politics, Personal Journals

After over four years of pressuring City elected officials and staff to allow the public to know that Knowland Park exists, Friends of Knowland Park today celebrate a small victory: the Park is FINALLY listed on the City’s website: (http://www2.oaklandnet.com/Government/o/opr/s/Parks/index.htm).

Part of the list of Oakland's 128 Parks. Only four are linked to web pages containing further information.

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Oakland’s “Disappeared” Park: Why Oaklanders Don’t Know Knowland –And Why They Should Get There Before it’s Gone

By on April 30, 2012 in Oakland Politics, Opinions & Editorials

Some of the crowd at the guided hike in Knowland park on April 15.

Some people, touring Knowland Park for the first time, express astonishment at the idea that the City of Oakland has purposely NOT listed this wonderful park on its Parks and Recreation website list of city parks. We felt the same way when we discovered that the largest remaining open space owned by the city wasn’t listed anywhere, and that there was no signage to help people find the Park and enjoy it. Thinking it surely must be an oversight, we asked our city councilman about it, and he said he would look into it. However, despite repeated queries, we never got an answer. This was about four years ago.

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