Posted on October 23, 2024
The Saturday morning, Oct. 19, was crisp, breezy and full of excitement, as nearly 300 people gathered at Bedwell Bayfront Park to celebrate the opening of the park’s newest trail: The Flyway Trail in Menlo Park. The opening of the Flyway Trail was the cherry on top of an approximately decade-long wetland restoration project that has been underway in the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge, which is situated directly next to Bedwell.
In December 2023, excavators crawled out onto levees separating a long-barren industrial salt pond from the San Francisco Bay, and sliced through the dirt mounds. This levee breach allowed thousands of gallons of bay water to surge into the 300 acres of flat dirt, located just across from Meta’s headquarters, that had been used for salt harvesting since the 19th century. The water brought with it nutritious bay sediment as well as small crustaceans, and seeds of plants from nearby marshes, which have slowly begun to restore the previously arid area to its former marshy glory.
The levee breach at Don Edwards and the Flyway Trail opening at Bedwell Bayfront Park are part of a larger restoration project that aims to restore 15,000 acres of dry salt ponds into wetlands across the southern portion of the San Francisco Bay.
“You can see how much the vegetation is already growing in … one year ago, it looked like that,” said Dave Halsing, executive project manager at the South Bay Salt Ponds Restoration Project, gesturing at a dry area that has not been restored. “Now we’ve got the beginnings of a marsh!”
Since California became a state, the region around the San Francisco Bay has lost approximately 85% of its original wetland habitat, largely due to nearby development and conversion to industrial salt ponds. This vital marshland not only offers habitat for shorebirds and other animals, it also serves as a buffer from rising sea levels that can help protect the regions bordering the bay from rising sea levels and flooding. However, restoring these areas is not easy.
“I’d argue that conservation is probably (harder) here than anywhere else in the country,” said Jeff McCreary, director of the western region of Ducks Unlimited, a nonprofit dedicated to wetland and waterfowl conservation. “Not only do you have the bay, which creates its own tidal challenges, but you have an urban interface, power lines and everything else that goes on around here.”
The newly restored marsh at Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge, with the beginnings of vegetation growing in post-levee breach on Oct. 19, 2024.
As tides rise and fall, new sediment and new seeds will be deposited on the bottom of the former salt pond, and Menlo Park residents will be able to see the change in the scenery along the half-mile long trail as it fills in with vegetation and animal life. However, restoration along the bay’s former marshes is still ongoing.
“We are indeed celebrating one of the final steps in making this project complete, but we can’t stop here,” said McCreary. “The threats are coming all around us. The sea level is coming up, people are still moving here, and there’s degradation all across the bay.”
The new half-mile -long Flyway Trail sits atop an old salt pond berm. Tents and interpretive signage are set up along the trail to celebrate its opening on Oct. 19, 2024.
Halsing said that the first step of the project was locating enough dirt to build up the levees at the sides of what would become the new marsh.
“Our goal was not to build a true flood protection levee, but to raise the old salt pond berms enough to contain the tidal flows,” he said. “So that means finding upwards of 500,000 cubic yards (of soil).”
The berm on which the new Flyway Trail sits was created out of this imported soil, which South Bay Salt Ponds and its partners sourced from construction sites after screening it for cleanliness and suitability. It was designed to gradually slope into the restored marsh, which provides much better protection from rising waters than the straight sides and deep ditches that used to line the salt ponds, said Halsing.
Project managers also had to balance competing conservation goals. The new levees not only separate the tidal flows from the nearby Bayfront Expressway, but also from a dry salt pond that will never be restored to tidal marsh for a good reason.
“We want this one dry because there is a really important bird, the western snowy plover, that uses it,” said Halsing. “It’s a critical species — and very cute.”
Halsing said that dry salt ponds have become a favorite nesting ground for the threatened western snowy plover. The salt crystals in the drained ponds closely resemble the sandy coastal beaches that plovers used to rear their chicks before development pushed them out. South Bay Salt Ponds and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service restored this dry area to be an ideal habitat for the small birds to raise their young.
Birds aren’t the only beneficiaries of the new Flyway Trail. The trail offers expanded recreational opportunities for Menlo Park’s residents as well.
“It’s been a pleasure for me to be a part of this project, not just on the Menlo Park City Council, but as a resident that lives just on the other side of (Meta’s West Campus) buildings,” said Menlo Park Mayor Cecilia Taylor.
Meta’s West Campus, which sits just across the Bayfront expressway from the new trail and the newly restored marsh, is connected to the Flyway Trail and the Bay Trail by a newly constructed pedestrian bridge. This connection allows Menlo Park residents to more easily access the existing network of trails at Bedwell Bayfront Park and other bayside open space preserves.
The Flyway Trail is aptly named for the great Pacific Flyway, one of the major north-south sky highways that birds follow each year as they migrate in spring and fall. In fact, Bedwell Bayfront park sits within a California Audubon Society-designated “Important Bird Area.” Important Bird Areas are sites that provide essential habitat for birds that help support the state’s bird diversity.
That diversity is on full display at the Flyway Trail, as it is situated at the intersection of three separate kinds of habitat that attract a variety of amazing birds, both migratory and year-round residents.
A pair of black-necked stilts enjoy the water in the newly restored tidal marsh.
One side of the trail is bordered by a pond that supports waterfowl such as pintails, green-winged teals, northern shoveler ducks, great egrets and more. The other side of the trail is split between views of the newly restored tidal marsh, which provides habitat for many kinds of migratory shorebirds like American avocets, greater yellowlegs, black-necked stilts, and the restored snowy plover habitat.
“I grew up in the Bay Area — I used to live in that neighborhood right over there in my 20s,” said Halsing. “This all happened so quickly, and it’s great seeing three different habitats, a trail, and neighbors, the community walking over the bridge. This is everything that we should be doing in one spot on Earth.”
‘This all happened so quickly, and it’s great seeing three different habitats, a trail, and neighbors, the community walking over the bridge. This is everything that we should be doing in one spot on Earth.’
Dave Halsing, executive project manager, South Bay Salt Ponds Restoration Project
Attendees at the Flyway Trail opening ceremony celebrate the new trail and trail signage.
