The Future Looks Bright

San Pablo Bay may not be what it once was — nearly twice as large and far healthier — but then again, looking backwards can be a waste of time. Looking forward, there is a better future in store for this life-nourishing, life-giving estuary.

Much of that optimism has to do with the presence of San Pablo Bay National Wildlife Refuge, which today protects 16,000 acres of reclaimed shoreline and inland marsh along the bay's northern rim.

Established in 1974 by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, it exists because of tireless conservation efforts by state and federal agencies and organizations such as the Sonoma Land Trust, California State Coastal Conservancy and the Nature Conservancy.

Most of us know the refuge for what runs through a large portion of it — Highway 37, a nondescript strip of pavement that in fact skims something pretty wondrous: the estaurine wetlands, mudflats and marshes that support and protect the bay's wildlife — hundreds of thousands of native and migratory birds, for example — and the plants that serve as food and habitat, like pickleweed and eelgrass, which in turn also help to keep the water fresh, clean and healthy.

"Wildlife first is our mantra," says refuge manager Don L. Brubaker of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, who we've met up with at the ranger station on Lakeville Highway for a tour of the refuge's latest coup — Skaggs Island, 3,310 acres along the north side of Highway 37.

Skaggs Island Naval communications center.

Skagg's Island Reverie

Fifty years ago, Skaggs Island was a top-secret Naval intelligence facility, with the latest high-tech gizmos at its fingertips to intercept whatever communications it was looking for.

Despite all the intrigue of world war and Cold War eavesdropping, Skaggs Island was a typical Naval base, where people lived and shopped, got together to party or play ball. There was a bowling alley at the base, an elementary school, a commissary, a post office, single-family dwellings, administration buildings, and, as the above aerial photograph shows, high-security spy-business office space. With a row of exotic palm trees lining the entrance, it looked like, from old snapshots, a pleasant place to live for the 400 or so people stationed there.

Today it is disheveled, in the process of going wild. The buildings are gone — 140 of them were torn down in June of 2010. The roads are disappearing. Nature is reclaiming anything man-made that still stands in its path, to the delight of all involved in the official transfer of Skaggs Island to the refuge in June of this year.

"We'd like to make it what it used to be," Brubaker says of the reclaimed lands.

San Pablo Bay wetland. Photo by Jocelyn Knight.

Honey, I Shrunk the Bay

What Skaggs Island was, historically, was marsh — part of the massive inland tidal marshland that spread from where San Pablo Bay ends today along the southern fringes of Highway 37 north to the edges of the hills that are now covered with vineyards. (View pop-up map of historical San Pablo Bay. Darker blue above the bay indicates original marshland boundaries.)

In fact, as the map shows, just about everything north of Lakeville Highway and Highway 37 was marshland, an expanse that quickly shrank — reducing the bay's total size by nearly one-half — thanks first to the Gold Rush. In their rush to pull out as much gold as possible, miners turned to hydrolic mining, a process that used water to blast the earth to expose the buried treasure. As a result, hundreds of thousands of tons of sediment made its way from the American River through Carquinez Strait and into San Pablo Bay.

Also affecting the original marshland, and a more modern pursuit, agricultural uses that resulted in changes to the landscape around the northern shores of the bay.

"We are not a national park or [with] the Bureau of Land Management," says Brubaker as he maneuvers the service's hybrid SUV over the narrow and rutted Skaggs Island roads, stopping at points of interest or to watch a hawk flying low over the bulrushes. "We are here for wildlife, plants, insects."

Looking east across Skaggs Island flatlands. Photo by Jocelyn Knight

Returning Nature's Favor

A refuge is a distinct entity, and not altogether people-friendly, in the sense of offering open space and parkland for hiking or picnicking. Some parts of the San Pablo Bay refuge can't be roamed in; they're water or mudflats, or marshland that can be quickly covered with water when the tide comes in.

San Pablo Bay refuge lands are also delicate because of what they support: habitats that shelter life and give life to innumerable creatures and plants. It's not healthy for this natural nursery to be trampled upon, so there are few trails and mostly unauthorized access. San Pablo Bay Wildlife Refuge, as Brubaker emphasizes, is doing what it's supposed to do: protecting what remains of what was once a wholly natural place (and one that also includes seasonal hunting).

At this point, "about one-half of the refuge is as natural as it can be," says Brubaker, with "as can be" allowing for almost impossible-to-get-rid-of "nonnative invasive weedy plants." The upland habitats "aren't natural," including Skaggs Island, for now. But as Brubaker notes, nodding at the tangle of plants, "it's working its way back to that."

Restoring Skaggs Island's marshland habitat could happen, someday, Brubaker says; but it won't be easy. The marshland has been deprived of its natural waterways, with exceptions including Sonoma Creek and Napa Slough. Today, this low-lying land is a riot of grasses, shrubs, trees and other native and nonnative vegetation.

If restored, what will probably stay, Brubaker confides, is a grove of eucalyptus trees. Possibly the most lambasted of the Bay Area's nonnative trees, in the case of Skaggs Island, a grove near the Sonoma Creek houses a natural wonder, even more remarkable for its roadside visibility — a heron and egret rookery.

Nest in the eucalyptus grove at Skaggs Island, an egret and heron rookery. Photo by Jocelyn Knight.

Time Will Tell

We've left Skaggs Island to make a quick stop on the other side of the refuge, near Brubaker's small ranger station not far from the Infineon Raceway turnoff, before calling it a day.

An experimental wetland restoration project by the Army Corps of Engineers is what we're viewing, a thriving example of how San Pablo Bay did — and could — look in its natural state. Here, that natural state is a classic wetland landscape: islands of cordgrass, pickleweed and glasswort, which attracts the endangered salt marsh harvest mouse, scattered like steps in healthy, still water.

It is a small but impressive example of a larger Army Corps of Engineers project aimed at restoring agricultural land — and it's open to the public.

While the majority of the San Pablo Bay refuge is closed to the public — Skaggs Island, in particular, with its locked gate — Brubaker talks of opening more areas for educational purposes and for recreational viewing. He also has his eyes set on connecting the refuge with the around-the-bay Bay Trail.

Whether more land is restored, agricultural or at Skaggs Island, or whether Brubaker's Bay Trail connection comes to fruition, only time will tell.

While "the challenges and opportunities are endless" for giving wildlands like San Pablo Bay a second chance, patience is what Brubaker and his colleagues learn to develop early on.

From experience he advises, "Nothing is going to happen overnight."