Junior Rangers at the Refuge: Snowy Plover Party!
Go to this event page to join the waitlist for this popular event.
Become a Junior Ranger as you explore your local National Wildlife Refuge!
Go to this event page to join the waitlist for this popular event.
Become a Junior Ranger as you explore your local National Wildlife Refuge!
You can explore birds, baylands, and active restoration on a docent-led walk leading out to the Flyway Trail!
You'll discover wildlife from a 360 degree view at the Ravenswood Unit of the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge.
You can celebrate our Earth with the Don Edwards Refuge at this special event offering tours, arts & crafts, and nature activities!
The event hosted by the Refuge friends group, the San Francisco Bay Wildlife Society, is an open house - feel free to come and stay as you'd like!
Scheduled programs that day:
Happy Earth Month! You can join Save The Bay at Eden Landing Ecological Reserve to help restore former industrial salt ponds into healthy salt marsh habitat! This vision includes turning vulnerable fields of invasive mustard and thistle into resilient shoreline full of natives like California Poppy, Sticky Monkeyflower and Marsh Gumplant. They will be pulling the invasive species crowding their recently planted native species, and will potentially be spreading mulch around native plants as well.
You can come out to the Don Edwards Refuge in Alviso to observe and record high King Tides!
The King Tides event is being held concurrently in two different locations on the Refuge: Alviso and Ravenswood (Menlo Park). The same content will be covered. Visit the Refuge Eventbrite page if you want to attend the Ravenswood event instead.
Amy Hutzel, Executive Officer of the State Coastal Conservancy and Restoration Project Executive Project Manager Dave Halsing are among the speakers at this Save The Bay free virtual panel discussion.
We will be tabling at this free event - you can find out more at https://parks.santaclaracounty.gov/day-bay-2025
The County of Santa Clara presents this festival along the South Bay shores of Alviso. The 2025 event will include a resource fair centered on environmental health, The day also features several family-friendly and recreation activities. Activities include:
You can join the Don Edwards Refuge for Coastal Cleanup Day!
This year marks the 36th anniversary of Coastal Cleanup Day and is one of California’s largest volunteer events with sites all over the state participating.
Volunteers will help Refuge staff and partners pick up litter from the roads and trails around the Environmental Education Center (EEC) to help keep waterways and wetlands clean!
California Biodiversity Day is all about appreciating the many species that call California home. The San Francisco Bay Wildlife Society will be leading a BioBlitz to celebrate!
BioBlitzing involves exploring an area in search of plants, birds, insects, mammals, fungi, reptiles and any other organisms around. We’ll be snapping photos and posting them to iNaturalist so we have records of our amazing biodiversity, essential to understanding how things are changing or staying the same on the Don Edwards Refuge.
The Don Edwards SF Bay National Wildlife Refuge is a haven for shorebirds. In honor of World Shorebirds Day, join the San Francisco Bay Wildlife Society for a beginner- and family-friendly bird outing. We will discuss the wildlife refuge and provide an introduction to shorebirds and a few identification tips!
Other Considerations:
Did you know that wetlands naturally protect us against climate change?
It is planting season! All the work Save The Bay has done throughout the year collecting seed and growing and caring for our precious native plants has led to this moment of opportunity provided by the seasonal rains. You can join them in putting these plants in the ground at their newest site, at the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project's recently breached Pond R4, adjacent to Menlo Park's Bedwell Bayfront Park.
It is planting season! All the work Save The Bay has done throughout the year collecting seed and growing and caring for our precious native plants has led to this moment of opportunity provided by the seasonal rains. You can join them in putting these plants in the ground at their newest site, the Ravenswood All American Canal Levee, adjacent to Menlo Park's Bedwell Bayfront Park.
You can join Save The Bay at the Ravenswood Unit of Don Edwards National Wildlife Refuge, adjacent to Menlo Park's Bedwell Bayfront Park, to help pull up invasive plants and maintain their beautiful new native plant community planted last winter! Native plants are the backbone holding the habitat together at the upland transition zone slope (also called a horizontal levee) recently constructed by the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project at the All American Canal. Depending on the site needs of the day, volunteers may even be able to plant some new native plant sod!
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge Complex is made up of seven national wildlife refuges, protecting tens of thousands of acres of habitat for birds, endangered species, and other wildlife. Learn about these incredible places, with a focus on our largest, the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge in the South Bay, at this free San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory virtual presentation.
Learn how creek flows and sediments can benefit restoring tidal marshes from Michael MacWilliams of FlowWest, who has modeled hydrodynamics where the Calabazas and San Tomas Aquino creeks adjoin the salt ponds in northern San Jose. His work informs Valley Water’s project to connect those creeks with an Alviso pond in the Restoration Project.
Learn about San Francisco Bay breeding waterbirds from Dr. Josh Ackerman of USGS, who has looked at South Bay avocets, stilts and terns to understand how their abundance has changed since the inception more than 20 years ago of the Restoration Project. He has also examined the effect on birds of predators and the utility of various management actions to maintain and expand waterbird numbers as former industrial salt ponds are restored to tidal wetlands.
In order to speed the growth of restoring Eden Landing tidal marshes in the face of sea level rise, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in late 2023 tried something new: piling sediments off the Eden Landing shore for waves and tides to bring to the nearby marshes and mudflats. This novel approach avoids the harm that could occur by directly placing sediments on marsh. It could be a new tool in the toolbox to help sustain Bay mudflats and marshlands by using natural processes to transport sediment and provide nourishment for long-term wetland restoration efforts.