Natural History Wanderings

From Save Knowland Park

Oakland’s beautiful and wild Knowland Park is under threat, and we need your help. Right now, it’s home to range of wildlife, including threatened species, native grasslands, and woodlands, and it’s free to the public. However, the Oakland Zoo wants to take over the heart of it, 77 acres, to add to zoo property, including an exhibit on species that are regionally extinct due to development—while displacing a wide range of species that currently rely on the park.

We need YOU to come to Oakland’s City Council Meeting on Tues 11/18, to show that you support protecting this important parkland.

This has been a long saga, which you may have heard about, and this may be the last chance we have to protect the park. The Oakland City Council will meet on TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 18 at 5:30 pm at Oakland City Hall to vote on whether to grant the zoo additional park acreage.

Please RSVP to come out to City Hall on Tues 11/18 to protect our park! bit.ly/knowlandmeeting

It is absolutely critical that we turn out a BIG crowd to demonstrate that—as our recent poll findings showed—voters don’t support the current zoo expansion plan sited on the park’s most sensitive natural area. Right now the zoo is trying to take more parkland—from the public—to “mitigate” for its bad decision in insisting on building atop the ridgeline. What?!

Please join us at the City Council meeting to tell the City Council what the wildlife protection agencies recommended in the first place, and the public has been demanding for years: move the development elsewhere—and preserve the park for all the resident wildlife, including the prime habitat for the threatened Alameda Whipsnake, rather than having to mitigate for its loss.

Sign up here if you can come, or want to help out: bit.ly/knowlandmeeting.

Thanks for helping us win this fight!