Sarah Sweedler
I'm a freelance writer
based in San Francisco, California. On a good day I write more
than grocery lists.
I often write
articles on California history and
restoration, including this piece in Bay
Nature magazine which describes how pollen analysis was
used at Mountain
Lake park to recreate the
historic
landscape before the great eucalyptus/ivy invasion.
This Bay Nature
article
also focuses on urban open space: in the heart of the city atop Mt
Sutro,
volunteer trail crews removed invasives to discover a century-old
rock-retaining wall
and a native plant -- the fairy bell flower -- long
thought to have vanished from city limits.
I had the privilege of writing for the new California Academy of Sciences
website, for which I authored the desert,
ocean,
and tropical
rainforest biomes (which were called ecosystems when I went to
college).
Water issues, in California? Pilarcitos
creek was dammed in the 1860s to provide San Francisco's first
large-scale water source, and for more than 140 years the water utility
has protected the land from logging and development. But all is not
well in paradise: Creating those dams flooded valuable habitat, blocked
migrating steelhead from some spawning habitat, and greatly reduced
water flowing downstream for all wildlife.
I co-authored Fort Ross and the Sonoma Coast, published by Arcadia in 2004
and now in its third printing.
Thanks to a generous grant from
the National Endowment of the
Humanities, I am currently working with an international team to
research
the archives of the St. Petersburg Naval Museum, where we will locate,
translate, and publish
materials relating to early California history, flora, and fauna.
If you're
puzzled about why we would travel to Russia to gather information on
Alta California, check out the Fort Ross Interpretive
Association website. (I'm on the board of
directors.)
== KQED Radio
==
Periodically I contribute to
KQED-FM, including this somewhat earnest look at the folly
of charging
bicyclists to cross the Golden
Gate bridge.
Feeding the coyote or the
corvid stresses wildlife in ways you don't necessarily see. In this
KQED essay
I make the argument that feeding urban animals
subsidizes the generalists yet
harms the specialists.
I have also written for San Francisco magazine,
Diablo Custom Publishing, Bay Area
Parent, and more.
Sarah Sweedler
