Save Knowland Park

The Fight Goes On, and the News is Good!

By admin on September 26, 2013 in Campaign Updates, Featured on Homepage, Nature & Wildlife, Oakland Politics

Delivering the petition to the Director of the Department of Fish and Game

Petition Delivered: Thanks to all of you who helped us get more than 2100 signatures on our petition urging the US Fish & Wildlife Service to deny regulatory permits for the expansion project. The petitions were delivered to their offices in Sacramento (with copies to the state Fish and Wildlife agency as well) last week (photos of our dedicated volunteers delivering them are on our website HERE). Now we have to wait and see. But the best thing was hearing so many messages of support. The petition is still open for additional signatures, so if you missed signing it, please do so at https://www.change.org/petitions/save-knowland-park-protect-oakland-s-largest-wildland-park-from-a-destructive-development

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Alert – Sign the Online Petition on Change.org!

By admin on June 13, 2013 in Campaign Updates, Featured on Homepage, Nature & Wildlife, Oakland Politics

Knowland Park from above
© 2013 Steve Whittaker

ACTION ALERT!

As you know, the zoo can’t start the bulldozers until they obtain special “incidental take” permits from state and federal wildlife regulatory agencies to allow them to “accidentally” kill threatened Alameda Whipsnakes during construction.

Through our public records act requests, we have learned that the zoo continues to deny the existence of the special maritime chaparral community that provides habitat for the whipsnake – and that they are claiming the removal of parts of the chaparral will actually BENEFIT the snake. But a new report by Dr Shawn Smallwood, a wildlife biologist with a PhD in ecology who is a researcher at UC Davis, suggests this claim is based on no scientific evidence whatsoever – and concludes that: “given the extremely limited distribution of Alameda whipsnake and the permanent constraints imposed on the whipsnake’s capacity to expand (i.e., recover) via habitat restoration or habitat enhancement due to human encroachment, the loss of any additional habitat could appreciably diminish the whipsnake’s chance of survival and recovery.” The clock is running – a decision must be made by early September. Continue Reading →

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City finally commits to enforcing zoo’s management contract after years of questions, admits it never has done so

By admin on April 7, 2013 in Featured on Homepage, Uncategorized

The reporting clauses of the management contract between the CIty of Oakland and the East Bay Zoological Society

As you know, for years we have been asking the city for copies of the documents the zoo is required to submit annually under its management contract with the city – namely, a “capital improvement budget, spending plan, actual expenses and schedule describing its projected development for the current budget year and for the next 2 following years.” The zoo has never produced any of these materials. Instead, it periodically produces retrospective feel-good reports couched in broad general terms, so it has been impossible for citizens to see how the zoo planned to or actually did spend its money – despite the fact that it gets a large amount of public funding every year from the city, the county, bond measures and the East Bay Regional Park District. And despite us raising this issue over and over, the city was apparently never willing to do anything about the fact that the zoo did not ever file the required annual reports and ignored its contractual obligation to do so.

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“We shouldn’t have lied,” says zoo board member

By admin on March 2, 2013 in Campaign Updates, Oakland Politics, Opinions & Editorials

Wow. Have you noticed how quiet things have gotten since the Measure A1 campaign? We have, and wondered whether it indicated some dissension within the zoo board ranks about how to proceed. The “anonymous” $1 million gift we heard they received seemed awfully convenient since they had just spent exactly that amount on a losing campaign. A way to reassure nervous donors, maybe?

Well, a zoo member who decided to attend the first zoo board meeting after the defeat of Measure A1 was interested to hear how the board responded after the defeat of a ballot measure on which so much money was spent. She contacted us later and told us that she was shocked to hear one of the zoo’s own board members calling out the untruth that characterized the whole campaign. According to this observer, the board member said (discussing zoo management’s denials that the money from the measure would fund the expansion):

“I don’t see why we didn’t acknowledge that this is about expansion. Of course it is. We shouldn’t have lied.”

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