Looking Back at Urban Tilth’s Visit to the Richardson Bay Audubon Center & Sanctuary

The conditions were perfect: sunny with a few clouds, and warm, but not oppressively so. A group of familiar faces stood around me on the red brick patio of the Richardson Bay Audubon Center’s Lyford House. These were my coworkers from my previous position at Urban Tilth, a nonprofit organization based in Richmond, California with a self-stated mission of building a more just food system and engaging the local community in urban agriculture. I was hosting my former coworkers for a day at the Center, and we were preparing to embark on a bird walk followed by a kayaking excursion and eelgrass lesson on the Richardson Bay.

As an organization, Urban Tilth prioritizes reconnecting Black and Brown people with land and nature in Richmond and the larger Contra Costa County. In the United States, people of color spend disproportionately less time in nature compared to White Americans, and they are three times as likely as White individuals to reside in areas with limited green space. Although the organization found its start with urban farming and a community focus on reclaiming agency over their food system, they have since expanded to include robust environmental education programming and a watershed restoration program. One way in which Urban Tilth expresses their commitment to helping the local community improve their connection to the land is through educational workshops, the topics of which can range from creating homemade soil amendments to lessons on local ecology. 

As the sun shone over us and gave the water of Richardson Bay a crystal-blue shimmer, I explained the mission of the Center and Sanctuary and the history behind the Lyford House. I told the story of Rose “Rosie” Rodrigues da Fonta, the woman who had tended the land on which the Center is located and eventually bequeathed it to the Audubon Society in the mid-20th century. As I recounted how the house had been placed on a boat and barged from where it was constructed in neighboring Strawberry to where it presently stands in Tiburon, I watched as my former coworkers’ faces lit up in shock and wonder.

We then embarked on a walk along the Center’s half-mile-long Nature Trail, which winds through coast live oak woodlands and past intertidal mudflats. This trail allows access to one of the Center’s beaches known as Back Beach, which faces Strawberry and Aramburu Island, a man-made island that was created from dredge spoils and fill in the 1960s and eventually restored into wetland habitat that currently serves as nesting grounds for many shorebird species. From here, we watched as double-crested cormorants and brown pelicans glided through the air just above the water line and caspian terns dove for fish, periodically breaking the water’s surface with their torpedo-like bodies. One of the Urban Tilth staff remarked that his favorite bird was actually the caspian tern, because a visiting biologist leading a workshop on local wildlife had described them as the “Ferraris of birds” in reference to their sleek builds.

As we prepared to embark on our kayaking excursion, I asked my former Urban Tilth coworkers if they had prior kayaking experience, to which approximately half of the group responded in the affirmative. Some members spoke up, crediting their exposure to kayaking to the nonprofit organization Rich City Rays, another Richmond-based nonprofit which aims to increase accessibility of outdoor recreation activities, particularly kayaking, to groups which have historically been barred from such spaces. Their founder, Luna Angulo, stated that their work of putting Black and Brown people, particularly youths, on kayaks was to allow these historically excluded individuals to “reclaim their right to have a relationship with the land and the water.”

Audubon California has also taken steps to improve the equitability of nature access. This past session, Audubon California was a co-sponsor for Senator Lena Gonzalez’s bill (which passed in September!) calling for the codification of Governor Newsom’s Outdoors for All Initiative, which aims to improve access to parks and open spaces for all Californians. In addition, the Audubon Center at Debs Park in Los Angeles regularly hosts volunteer habitat restoration events, which allow the neighboring predominantly Latinx community direct involvement in improving the health of their local ecosystem. Audubon California staff at the Salton Sea have also worked with communities in Bombay Beach to develop and improve public access features at the Bombay Beach Wetland Enhancement Project. Finally, the staff at the Richardson Bay Audubon Center and Sanctuary have also conducted environmental education and outreach to local communities. In May, myself and the other Community Conservation Fellow facilitated an event at the Center hosted by WildCare, a San Rafael-based nature education and wildlife rehabilitation center, during which we taught families from San Rafael’s predominantly Latinx Canal District about the bird species seen at the Sanctuary and engaged them in birdwatching using spotting scopes and binoculars.

As expected, the kayaking trip went off without a hitch, and everyone had the opportunity to observe Richardson Bay from a new perspective while learning about the eelgrass and estuarine ecosystem around them. After we made it back on land, Laura admitted to me that she had originally been apprehensive about kayaking, as she had no prior swimming or kayaking knowledge, but after having the opportunity to experience the water herself, those initial fears had been replaced by a sense of calm and wonder. “I want to thank Rosie for giving this land to the Audubon,” Laura said. “Because of her, we were able to become more connected with the land and the water around us.”