All donations made by June 15 will be matched by an anonymous donor up to $3000.
Help us meet this deadline by donating now. Send checks made payable to CNPS (California Native Plant Society) to
Lee Ann Smith
Treasurer, Friends of Knowland Park
111 Shadow Mountain
Oakland, CA, 94605
Or you can donate using PayPal by pressing the Donate button. All donations are tax deductible. Please help us make this match in time!
It’s Your Park!
Money - the Big Problem with Oakland City Government and the Oakland Zoo
It comes as no surprise that the Oakland Zoo has announced that it will seek yet another source of public funding (up to $5 million a year), this time from Alameda County residents. The zoo has been soliciting support for the county-wide tax measure on its website page, “It’s Your Zoo.” The zoo already receives money from Alameda and Contra Costa residents through the East Bay Regional Park District (EBRPD) which taps residents for a portion of their parcel taxes through its special tax district (check your property tax bill and you’ll see it listed).
The California Chaparral Institute has joined the Knowland Park Coalition. Located in Escondido, California, CCI is a non-profit organization of naturalists, scientists, wildland firefighters, and educators who value the chaparral as both a valuable resource and a place to enjoy the wilderness. Providing “a voice for the chaparral,” CCI joins the Knowland Park Coalition to help educate the public on the value of the maritime chaparral found in Knowland Park and to speak up for its protection.
CCI recognizes the threat that the Oakland Zoo expansion project poses to our rare maritime chaparral stand. It has fought similar poorly planned development that results in the accompanying fuels management that decimates this resource.
Rick Halsey, Director and Founder of CCI, acknowledged the work of our coalition: “Your group is a model of citizen activism.” CCI joins a list of prestigious environmental organizations dedicated to protecting the native communities found in Knowland Park. We welcome their support. Visit their website at www.californiachaparral.com.
Laura Baker is an environmental activist and former Conservation Chair of the California Native Plant Society. Growing up in Missouri, she learned that the cure for most ills rests in spending time out in nature. She wishes for every child to have the experience of wholeness that nature provides. Laura holds an M.A. in Ecology and Systematic Biology.
Laura’s Knowlander blog is dedicated to building an online library of the natural history of Knowland Park so that the public may enjoy the park for the natural heritage treasure that it is. Knowing the land is a never ending process of inquiry open to all. We welcome your comments, contributions, and photos
Today (Thursday, April 19) the judge heard arguments in our legal case. Our attorneys argued forcefully that the massive changes to the Zoo’s plans meant that it should have been considered as a new project, rather than piggybacking on a lesser level environmental document for the old project, which lacked any information whatsoever about key project impacts and which misrepresented others. The City and Zoo attorneys, in turn, argued that we were trying to apply the wrong legal standard, that the previous Memorandum of Understanding with the community had no legal significance (see http://www.saveknowland.org/2012/04/04/bait-and-switch-how-the-zoo-and-the-city-of-oakland-used-a-1998-mou-to-mislead-the-community/ ) and should be ignored, and that the criteria for activating a key provision in the California Environmental Quality Act had not been met–namely, that there were NOT new circumstances or new impacts from the changed project. It’s hard to imagine how they can make such an argument with a straight face, but there it is.
The Fund for Wild Nature has announced that it has awarded Friends of Knowland Park a $2000 grant towards its costs of litigation to save the Park! The FWN ” believes that healthy ecosystems are too essential to be sacrificed. Increasingly rare, wild areas constitute the main reservoirs of biodiversity, and provide key spiritual and scientific reference points for our understanding of the planet’s wondrous cycles of birth, life, death and decay.” The FWN has been funding grassroots environmental groups since 1982. One of the first grantees went on to become the Center for Biological Diversity. FOKP is proud to be among FWN’s grantees, who are carrying on the fight to save our natural ecosystems and to change how people relate to the animals and plants that share our earth.
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 Ruth Malone |
 Laura Baker |
 Jim Hanson |
 Mack Casterman |
We support Oakland's public spaces!
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