At the age of three, I could hardly comprehend the vastness of the Grand Canyon. It did not look anything like my home in Michigan.

With my family I visited several national parks from the Great Smoky Mountains to Big Bend and Sequoia/Kings Canyon. Like many tourists, we snapped photos of the most iconic vistas, historic features or odd incongruous attractions – like the tunnel log in Sequoia National Park.

It wasn’t until years later, when I clumsily hoisted on an external frame overstuffed backpack and ventured off into the Yosemite National Park wilderness with a close friend, that I started to really appreciate wild places. As we hiked deeper into the woods and climbed in elevation, the low-pitched hoots of blue grouse frequently startled us. At the time, we had no idea what animal was making this mysterious call.

After that trip, I was starting to get it – the feeling of “transcendence” often referred to in Ken Burns’ new film “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea.” Naturally, the hero in the first episodes is John Muir (voice of Lee Stetson), who reached Yosemite the first time by walking 300 miles from the Bay Area. The final three in the series will air on PBS stations across the country through Friday. If you missed the previous episodes, don’t despair. You can view them for a limited time on the PBS Web site or buy the DVDs.

Just as this epic series about the national parks airs this week, last week the newly formed National Parks Second Century Commission released an extensive report on the condition of our national parks and a vision for the next century. With that, the San Francisco Chronicle published a story about the growing concern over youth not having access to or an interest in nature.

Then, with all this attention on our national parks, on Monday the New York Times ran an editorial on Ken Burns’ new documentary, making the case that the “best idea needs to be protected and celebrated.”

I don’t know about you, but I am getting the sense that there is an urgency around engaging more Americans to experience wild places and connect to our shared national heritage.

Serving as a reminder of the democratic principles of parks, the words of President Theodore Roosevelt are carved in an archway entrance to Yellowstone National Park and read, “For the benefit and enjoyment of the people.”

If you are in the Bay Area, KQED’s QUEST tells the story of the national park right here in our “backyards”.


QUEST on KQED Public Media.

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Western snowy plover

Almost one year ago, the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA) launched a competition to save endangered species in San Francisco, the Peninsula and Marin. On Saturday, January 10, the year-long event called the “2008 GGNRA Endangered Species Big Year” will come to a close with an announcement of the grand prize award winner and free food and other gifts for wildlife enthusiasts at the Crissy Field Center.

The closing ceremony will feature give aways from Arizmendi Bakery, free 2009 nature almanacs from WildNature and free subscriptions to Bay Nature Magazine for 50 visitors. After the ceremony, bird experts will lead a short hike to search for the Western snowy plover, an endangered San Francisco shorebird.

GGNRA, a unit of the national park system, includes the world-renowned destinations of Alcatraz Island and Muir Woods and is the world’s largest urban national park with over 75,000 acres in San Francisco, Marin, and San Mateo counties. GGNRA has a unique geographical position covering a broad range of habitats for plants and wildlife including marine habitats, salt marshes, redwood forests, chaparral and coastal scrub habitats, and grasslands, just to name a few.

According to the National Park Service, the GGNRA contains more endangered species than any other National Park in continental North America: more than Yellowstone, Yosemite, Kings Canyon, and Sequoia National Parks combined.

The 2008 GGNRA Endangered Species Big Year was a race against time to see and save each of the park’s 33 endangered species. During 2008, over 250 Endangered Species Big Year competitors raced to see each of the 33 endangered species found in the GGNRA, and then take 33 actions that help these species recover during the calendar year in 2008.

According to GGNRA, three competitors are vying for the grand prize: Liam O’Brien, former Broadway actor; Steve Price, branding expert who named products such as Blackberry, Pentium and Apple PowerBook; and David Seaborg, son of the Berkeley physicist for whom the element Seaborgium is named.

For more information, visit www.ggnrabigyear.org

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Every year the Foundation Center in San Francisco hosts a forum on regional corporate philanthropy trends in the Bay Area. In light of the state of the economy and possible fundraising impacts on the social sector, this is a good time to hear from corporate giving officers.

Representatives from Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Intel, and Cisco Foundation will present trends in corporate philanthropy and forecast their giving for next year and beyond. Some nonprofits are wondering if we will see impacts reminiscent of the economic fallout earlier in the decade, when giving portfolios shrank and competition for grants and charitable donations became fiercer.

Janet Camarena, the director of the San Francisco Foundation Center, will moderate the forum. She recently launched a new blog for the Center and has invited the community to post questions to the blog for consideration during the November 14, 2008 forum.

Co-sponsored by San Francisco Business Times and the Development Executives Roundtable (DER), this popular forum typically fills to capacity early.

Go to DER’s Web site to register.

The forum is free if you bring your own lunch, $12 for DER members and $10 for non-members.

UPDATE:
The Foundation Center’s video recording of this event is now available on their Web site.

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Now in its eighth year of publication, Berkeley-based Bay Nature magazine recently announced the launch of a new content-rich Web site (baynature.org). While many nonprofits have good stories to tell, Bay Nature now has over 700.

The concept of Bay Nature magazine began as a conversation in 1997 between publisher David Loeb and Malcolm Margolin, author of the much-admired Ohlone Way and founder of Heyday Books in Berkeley. With seed funding from the David and Lucille Packard Foundation and other local funders, the inaugural issue covered by a majestic great blue heron photograph hit local magazine racks in January 2001. Now, just over ten years after that initial conversation, the magazine is one of four programs that make up the nonprofit Bay Nature Institute.

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