San Bruno Mountain, the sleeping giant among us, has something to say.  To hear it, one must witness it, and quietly listen:  “Where is our earth going?  Its species are disappearing, daily, by the thousands... Human population is growing without regard for whether there is enough food and water, energy and space for other species... How will we take a stand to create the kind of world we want for ourselves, for our children, our grandchildren?”    

San Bruno Mountain calls us to come walk up its slopes, up to the irises and checkerbloom, the golden aster and warm grasses, to sit down there, close our eyes, take some deep breaths, stop and listen—listen hard to our deepest minds.  Answers to our questions come more easily on the mountain’s slopes.  It may be subtle for those expecting the spectacular—until you are in the midst of it, and all your senses are engaged, and you say, "I am a part of this."

It is a refuge—a beautiful, natural place for people stressed by urban living to find a moment of tranquility—a sacred meditation mountain—and a special place where children can explore and experience nature, some for the very first time.  

It is also a refuge for a unique ecosystem found nowhere else on this planet.  No one really knows its full story—how the plants, animals, fungi, and other living and nonliving things are intertwined in a web that supports life.  This mountain holds answers to questions that we have not yet even learned to ask.  Yet this vital ecosystem is in danger—and when it is scraped away by the bulldozer’s blade, it cannot be recreated... The balance that once existed is gone forever, and the remaining habitat—reduced in size and fragmented—becomes even more fragile and vulnerable. 

With your support, San Bruno Mountain Watch has worked for forty years to preserve and restore San Bruno Mountain in all its variety and diversity, and to the furthest extent of its reaches, in perpetuity.

 To this end, we work in several program areas—advocacy, stewardship, education, and conservation.  The year 2009 saw us make a lot of progress in our efforts to care for the mountain:

•We upped our stewardship outings to at least three per week.  Volunteers now come out 12 to 15 times a month to care for the living habitat on San Bruno Mountain.
•We have worked with the City of Brisbane to restore a remnant creek in Crocker Industrial Park that is home to rare plants, frogs and dragonflies.
•We secured a $40,000 grant to restore the bog trail on the mountain.
•We took hundreds adults and children on educational hikes.
•We operated a Mountaineers Club for elementary school kids.
•We offer a moon walk to celebrate San Bruno Mountain on each full moon.
•We’ve built a greenhouse and planted native seeds from our own mountain with our own genetic material for restoration projects.
•We've trained one college intern and three high school interns this year alone.
•We protected San Francisco Bay and the Brisbane Lagoon from further sedimentation damage caused by construction activities on the Northeast Ridge through our legal efforts.
•We negotiated for an $80,000 supplemental environmental project for Brisbane to buy an acre for open space.
•We filed a lawsuit to prevent the further destruction and fragmentation of the habitat by developers on the Northeast Ridge of San Bruno Mountain.
•We are actively identifying parcels that should be protected and put in the public trust and we are exploring ways to raise big money for their purchase and/or permanent protection.

San Bruno Mountain Watch is a grassroots organization, supported by individual donations, fundraising events, and foundation grants.  Your contributions provide the basic income upon which everything else depends.  Every dollar donated is multiplied by the work of volunteers.  For example, this year to date we have performed 2275 man hours of restoration work, valued at over $45,500.  If that had been all that we had accomplished, the $20,000 we received in donations would have generated a 228% return on investment.  And yet we did so much more than that.

Please consider a donation of $100 or more to San Bruno Mountain Watch, or whatever gift you can afford.  Your generous investment in saving San Bruno Mountain will be multiplied several times over by our wonderful and dedicated volunteers.  You can become one of these volunteers and enjoy an extra benefit—it turns out that when you help save the mountain, the mountain helps to save you.

And it feels good knowing that your donation really will make a difference—not just this year or next year, but a hundred years from now.

Sincerely,

Ken McIntire

P.S.  I just helped out at our third greenhouse planting day.  Ten people were there happily sifting dirt and carefully planting seeds for future habitat restoration projects on the mountain.  I am more convinced than ever that people, working steadily, can make a difference in preserving San Bruno Mountain!  Please support these efforts!!