Sunset Dunes: An Environmental Win for Ocean Beach
Ocean Beach frequently appears in local news. The Great Highway debacle, a symptom of that American exceptionalism (really, you’re not bothered by anything else going on?). That time we got a tsunami warning and cops had to force onlookers off the beach. What about when a boat washed ashore only to be found entirely unmanned? Now the beach is the site of San Francisco’s newest, most controversial park, Sunset Dunes.
We love our frigid, windswept seashore. It has a lengthy role in San Francisco’s history, and is at risk of preventable destruction. But San Francisco’s Recreation & Park Department has a plan to save it. The solution to its preservation is natural, and it starts with sand.
On Ocean Beach, the sands of time are brimming with life
In San Francisco, the ubiquity of sand can lend a false impression. It implies that were it not for human settlement, this would be a treeless range of shifting dunes. In antique photographs, the Richmond and Sunset Districts look ecologically barren and likewise bereft of resources except future real estate. But nothing could be further from the truth.
Pre-contact San Francisco, stewarded for millennia by the Ohlone-speaking Yelamu people, was rich with diverse lifeforms. And, contrary to the barren images from the city’s early days, it had a full ecosystem beyond any settler’s understanding. The village of Sitlintac stood near a shallow marsh teeming with food sources, now the back end of SoMa. Petlenuc sat on a grassy hill near the only freshwater spring for miles, now part of the Presidio. Living on the sandy spit was likely simpler compared to the wild, forested East Bay, though it was plenty possible.
Much, though not all, of that unique natural habitat was leveled to make way for San Francisco. At Ocean Beach, where the dunes once revealed the contours of a constant onshore wind, SF’s development has nearly squeezed them out. Ocean Beach is more than just a scenic shoreline. It’s a priceless strip of endangered native habitat, and the city’s first defense against rising seas. Thankfully, San Francisco’s Recreation & Park Department can anchor vulnerable earth, shelter at-risk wildlife, and protect oceanfront residents with one practice.
Native roots run deep
Native plants aren’t only special because they’re rarer nowadays. They are uniquely beneficial to the environments they’ve been so crudely ripped away from, and each contributed to its habitat. Native beach wildrye (Leymus mollis), a thicker, reedier grass, grows faster underground where it propagates. Rapid growth anchors the sand but leaves other plants with enough nitrogen, plants like yellow bush lupine (Lupinus arboreus) and Chamisso’s lupine (Lupinus chamissonis).
And the results are breathtaking. Similar efforts at Baker Beach (below) offer a glimpse into the environment’s not-too-distant past—and its rightful future.
If you’re thinking, Isn’t there beachgrass already? You aren’t wrong, but the grass is. If it’s coarse and whip-like, it’s probably English marram beachgrass (Ammophila arenaria), planted in the 80s to stabilize the sand. However, like most imported plant species, it created more problems than it solved. Although it did anchor the sand, the nitrogen-zapping roots made the substrate hostile to other plantlife, particularly native plants. Consequently, the dunes aren’t as strong as they can be, with other invasive species like iceplant digging shallow, ineffective roots. It turns out native plants made the hardiest dunes—who’d have thought, besides oft-ignored Native people?
Answer: San Francisco’s Recreation and Park Department.
RELATED: The Fight Over The Great Highway Gets Messy
With $1 million from the California State Coastal Conservancy (SCC), San Francisco’s Recreation and Park Department is rematriating the dunes. Similar to repatriation, rematriation refers to the process of returning land to its indigenous state—to Mother Nature, if you will. “Restoration” isn’t the right term for what’s happening at Ocean Beach. Dune planting won’t solve all the problems sea-level rise causes, Coastal Ecologist Dr. Peter Baye told Bay Nature. The replanted dunes can however give the beach its best shot at survival, “and present something workable for the next generation.”
“If we tried to repeat what was natural here in this system, this would be bare sand,” he said.
To restore Ocean Beach to its truly natural state, we’d have to wind back the clock some three hundred years. That’s what makes this less of a restoration and more an appeal to the Earth’s own ancient knowledge about itself. Like how removing Florida’s protective mangrove barriers worsens damage from hurricanes, we will witness the destructive extent of our intervention. It sounds technical, but scientists like Dr. Baye place heavy emphasis on getting definitions right. True restoration isn’t doable on this scale. But enough links can be repaired that Ocean Beach can protect itself and all living things dependent on its survival.
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