Loma Prieta Chapter eNewsletter: October, Volume 2
October 27, 2025
YOU Can Make a Difference. Read How Here.
► Explore our 2025 Guardians of Nature Benefit photo album to relive a night of inspiration.
► Read our update on the recent Lehigh Restoration inspection.
► Learn about the launch of our 2025 - 2026 Environmental Stewardship Program.
► Watch the Bay Alive Campaign's video honoring Jeremy Lowe.
► Take a hike! See the comprehensive list of Chapter activities available through mid-November.
Another Unforgettable Guardians of Nature Benefit
More than 200 guests gathered on Friday, October 10th at our Guardians of Nature Benefit to honor Garnetta Annable, a visionary leader whose more than three decades of advocacy have protected thousands of acres of some of the most iconic open spaces in Santa Clara County. The evening was filled with inspiration and gratitude as our community came together to celebrate the remarkable legacy of Garnetta and the latest advocacy successes of your Sierra Club Loma Prieta Chapter.
Thanks to the incredible generosity of our supporters, we raised $105,000 to empower our Chapter’s ongoing work to protect our local environment. We are deeply grateful to all who made this event unforgettable.
Please enjoy exploring the event photos album and help us continue the celebration by liking, sharing and commenting under the photos.
Permanente Creek Restoration Update
On October 3rd, the Sierra Club inspection team (Reed Zars, Al Cornwell, and Katja Irvin) joined Heidelberg Materials (Lehigh) project staff and consultants to inspect the Permanente Creek Restoration Project Year One work completed. Our inspections will continue as the restoration of other creek reaches on Heidelberg's property is scheduled over the next three years. These inspections validate Lehigh's full response to a Sierra Club lawsuit and settlement agreement that required this restoration project.
Environmental Stewardship Program 2025 - 2026 Launches
With the return of in-person sessions, the Environmental Stewardship Program kicked off with great energy and enthusiasm! Thirty-five new participants signed up to join the growing community of graduates from this flagship chapter program, which over the past nine years has inspired and launched many environmental activists including elected officials to high school students. Program founder Sue Chow sparked a lively discussion on legislative advocacy, noting that “The Center for Biological Diversity has described Senate Bill 131 (2025) as the most environmentally damaging bill the legislature has adopted in at least half a century.”Learn more about the launch.
Bay Alive Campaign Honors Jeremy Lowe
The Bay Alive Campaign is thrilled to honor Jeremy Lowe with its first ever award for outstanding contribution to Bay resilience. When Jeremy is a contributor on a project in the Bay, our Bay Alive team breathes a sigh of relief. His integrity and reputation guarantee a project's credibility and success. When Jeremy is involved we know the best interests of the Bay and Bay communities are being represented.
Day on the Bay in Alviso brought together a wonderful mix of people of all ages and backgrounds. Both visiting the Bay Alive table to learn about sea level rise, and behind the table explaining how Bay Alive is educating the public and local politicians about the need to plan ahead and work WITH nature to achieve the most cost-effective, sustainable strategies for adapting to sea level rise.
Then, at the Loma Prieta 2025 Guardians of Nature Benefit, Eileen displayed one of our most effective interactive resources that asks probing questions about a healthy bay - with answers and explanation provided.
Finally, Martial Cottle Sustainable Garden brought people who were so interested in how their habits influenced The Bay's health and how they could help, that they filled over two pages of sign up sheets listing a wide range of skills! Learn more about Bay Alive in the Community.
Sea Level Rise Webinar Series
Learn how nature can help fight sea level rise with cost-effective and sustainable solutions. Watch recordings of our webinar series with SF Bay experts and please share with your local elected officials.
Sign the Petition to Save San Bruno Mountain
A massive threat looms over one of our most cherished natural treasures. San Bruno Mountain is not just any mountain, it is a sanctuary for endangered butterflies, a haven for rare plants, and a refuge of unparalleled ecological significance. The proposed project threatens to unravel the delicate balance of this natural treasure, and we urge you to take action to protect it.
The City of Brisbane is considering a plan to build a massive 1.3 million-square-foot warehouse, 100 feet tall, right in the heart of San Bruno Mountain, at the historic Guadalupe Quarry.
This industrial facility would bring hundreds of workers (1,500!) and an incredible amount of traffic through our city and into the heart of sensitive habitat. Sign the petition today.
FOREST PROTECTION
Forest Protection Forum
Extreme Climate and Active Management Drive Unprecedented Forest Degradation October 27th, 4:00 pm Presented by Dr. Dominick A. DellaSala
Forests around the world and in North America are under unprecedented stressors from climate change interacting with inappropriate active management practices that amplify the global climate and extinction crises. Dr. DellaSala will outline what's driving fast-fires, insect outbreaks, and forest degradation in western North America. This talk may help activists deal with overzealous thinning projects and related logging and road building that falsely claim to restore and prepare ecosystems for climate change. The talk is based on peer-reviewed articles with co-authors from forest regions in North America (US & Canada), western Europe, and south-eastern Australia that are finding the same patterns of forest losses despite major differences in biogeographical locations. It should help in pushing back on inappropriate active management. Learn more and register.
The Mediterranean Oak Borer: A Growing Threat to California’s Oak Trees and What You Can Do
Although Sudden Oak Death from Phytophthora ramoruminfection is currently more prevalent in Northern California, its iconic oak woodlands are facing yet another serious threat: Xyleborus mediterraneus, also known as the Mediterranean Oak Borer (MOB). The Mediterranean Oak Borer, an ambrosia beetle, poses a substantial risk to the oak ecosystems of the Loma Prieta Chapter, and local foresters, ecologists, and governments are raising the alarm about it.
"During the April 2025 on-site Planning and Natural Resources Committee visit, we were struck by the presence of Fernald’s irises scattered across the open grassland. It reinforced what cannot be overstated; open wildflower meadows of this kind are exceptionally rare in the Sierra Azul landscape. This meadow’s ecological value as habitat for native wildflowers, birds, pollinators, and wildlife movement would be permanently diminished by grading, paving, or fragmentation."
Initial Study/Mitigated Negative Declaration for Surrey Farms Estates
"Based on our review of the IS/MND and the recent October 2025 comment letter from the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board (RWQCB), we find substantial evidence that the project may result in significant hydrological and biological impacts that are not adequately disclosed, analyzed, or mitigated. As detailed below, the IS/MND fails to address the jurisdictional status of an on-site ephemeral drainage, potential dewatering of riparian habitat, habitat fragmentation for wildlife, impacts from lighting and collision hazards to birds, and procedural conflicts with CEQA’s fair argument standard. For these reasons, the Town must withdraw the IS/MND and prepare a full Environmental Impact Report (EIR) to ensure adequate environmental review in compliance with CEQA."
"As a follow up to our meeting on September 23rd, below are the main comments we made verbally at the meeting with you on the Formal Application (of August 4, 2025). SLU would like to see these comments factored into the final approved project. SLU would also be interested in meeting with you again as we expect to have more comments as the project goes through its approval process. We do plan to meet with City Staff, as well."
"The undersigned organizations respectfully urge the Planning Commission to deny the appeal of the Vista de Almaden project. As with previous appeals to the Commission in the past few weeks, this project did not meet the 90-day deadline for complete applications and was appropriately deemed incomplete. The Planning Commission should uphold the staff incompleteness determination for the Vista de Almaden project and deny the appeal."
The Loma Prieta Chapter remains vigilant in protecting the Palo Alto Baylands from any expansion of the Palo Alto Airport. In doing so we collaborate with a number of local environmental groups including the Palo Alto Student Climate Coalition and the Santa Clara Valley Bird Alliance. Our efforts were mentioned in recent Palo Alto article.
During the past six years, the Loma Prieta Chapter has been successful in promoting the adoption of dozens of strong building codes, modeled by Silicon Valley Clean Energy and Peninsula Clean Energy, in cities and counties in our Chapter.
Your connection: Thanks to those who sent the thousands of comments, more than 5,200 from Sierra Club! Help protect local parks by volunteering with and/or donating to your local Loma Prieta Chapter, and see our Annual Summary to learn what we've been doing locally.
Your connection: Your Loma Prieta Chapter works to save all wildlife, even those less celebrated but still crucial. If you love wildlife and want to help protect local nature, consider volunteering with and/or donating to your local Loma Prieta Chapter of the Sierra Club.
Your connection: Check out this article about different ways to look at the proposed Fix Our Forests Act, a bill which just passed the Senate Agriculture Committee.
Sierra Club opposes the bill. Here are a few reasons why:
- FOFA will allow CE's (categorical exclusions from NEPA) on areas up to 10,000 acres (increased from 3,000 acres). This will result in omitting public comment opportunities from many logging projects in federal forests.
- FOFA decreases opportunities for judicial review by decreasing the window of opportunity for legal action to 150 days (decreased from 6 years). This will make it harder for local communities or smaller environmental groups to take action on harmful logging projects, and could lead to hasty actions.
Read the article to learn more and to hear from both sides.
In the Community
BioBlitz (November 2nd), and Cleanups, (November 8th, 15th, and 18th) from our friends at Keep Coyote Creek Beautiful.
One of the best ways to safeguard a thriving and just future is by ensuring that your Loma Prieta Chapter remains a champion for the environment of Santa Clara, San Mateo, and San Benito Counties. Naming us as a beneficiary in your bequest will provide meaningful and enduring resources that will allow continued local and powerful environmental activism.
Please contact our Chapter Development Coordinator Justyna Guterman for the specific language for your estate planning and/or read more here. For additional information about planning a bequest please contact Julia Curtis, (800) 932-4270.
Photographers, see the great images in our Chapter Annual Summaries and help protect local nature with your images! Share with us your high-resolution photos of local nature, with or without people, to inspire local residents to support Loma Prieta Chapter work. Please contact Chapter Development Coordinator Justyna Guterman.
In History
The Loma Prieta Chapter was founded in 1933; what happened in October of that year? October 12: The United States Army Disciplinary Barracks on Alcatraz was acquired by the United States Department of Justice, to incorporate the island into its Federal Bureau of Prisons as a federal penitentiary. October 17: Albert Einstein arrived in the United States as a refugee from Nazi Germany.
"Repetition only convinces the gullible. The discerning prefer evidence." Professor David Isaacs, Sydney, Australia
2020 Loma Prieta Sierra Singles hike in Shoreline Park.
