Twin Peaks Description
Twin Peaks is the second highest hill in San Francisco, after Mt Davidson. It has fantastic areas of grasslands and coastal scrub that support lots of important and rare critters, including the endangered mission blue butterfly. Along with Mt D, Twin Peaks has extensive coverage of Pacific reed grass, Calamagrostic nutkaensis.
Twin Peaks consists of a patchwork of jurisdictional fiefdoms belonging to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and the Rec&Park Department. The Natural Areas Program manages the Significant Natural Resource Areas within the RPD holdings.
The primary volunteer groups are REI employees and Hands on Bay Area, which work with Natural Areas Program staff every other month or so. In addition, the Yerba Buena Chapter of the California Native Plant Society rotates through Twin Peaks on a regular basis.
Management challenges on Twin Peaks include the usual problems of French broom, cotoneaster, oxallis, and ehrharta grass. Here is the management plan.
Twin Peaks currently has 31 volunteers who have subscribed to our regular email newsletters and work at this site. They have posted 11 photos and 1 post to their blog.
Regular Workparty Schedule
- Last Saturday, about every third month from 9:00 to 12:00
Regular Meeting Location
- North Peak Turnout -- [Map and Details]
Blog Posts
Here are blog posts about the Twin Peaks project — presented 2 at a time in reverse chronological order. Browse to earlier or later posts via the pagination controls below.
CNPS Workparty Feb 2008
20 February 2008 - 16:35, Tinman said:
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The rains parted long enough for a truly dazzling afternoon on Twin Peaks. The primary objectives were Scotch broom, radish, and Italian thistle in the rich grasslands on the northern and eastern flanks of Twin Peaks.
The upper reaches of Twin Peaks have been the focus of concerted work for a number of years, and the impenetrable thickets that used to be there are gone, requiring fairly trivial sweep operations to keep them that way.
However, lower down on Twin Peaks, the broom remains a terrible problem:
Small broom plants can be pulled by hand or with a weed wrench, but really large tree-like broom must be dealt with via the “cut-n-peel” technique. The bark on the stump peels remarkably easily and cleanly down to ground level, which reliably kills the plant:
We encountered one critter—a small local lizard:
We found remarkable displays of blooming perennials; check them out in the photo section!
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