 Welcome, YouTube viewers. And we are here for another boost of nature, nature boost. And we are in for a treat today because we have Jonathan Young, Presidio Trusts Wildlife Ecologist. First up though, some valuable library information. Also today at two o'clock, we're gonna be doing these styrofoam printing. Learn the basics of three reduction printing. Should be very fun. And this is led by a San Francisco artist, Alexandra Bloom, two o'clock today. And I wanna thank the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library for all of their support in our Summer Stride programming. Summer Stride is not just for kids, it's for all kids of all ages from zero to death. Read your 20 hours and come get your iconic San Francisco Public Library Tobeck. We wanna welcome you today to the unceded land of the Eloni Tribal people and acknowledge the many Romutish Eloni Tribal groups and families as the rifle stewards of the lands in which we reside. Our library is committed to uplifting the names of these lands and community members from these nations. The library encourages you to learn more about first person culture and land rights. I have a document that I'll put in the chat box that has links to, sorry about that. We'll let that pass. This too shall pass, as my grandmother home said to me. I have a reading list about a reading and resource list about first person culture and native land rights and some really great information that you should check up on. Plus, we have a lot of YouTube shows. And I just saw today that Alameda County is going to be playing a land rights, tax land rights back. So that's really interesting news on the land rights front. Let's see, and so this weekend, we have a big program that is a one time only event. And this is part of our jail and reentry services department at the library. I don't know if many of you know that we have this department. So our small but mighty department serves the jails in San Francisco. And that means actually going into the jails and providing books and services that way. But we also do reference mail by mail for all jails and prisons west of the Mississippi. So it's pretty huge service. And with COVID reference service has just been spiked. So they do amazing work. And I can't say enough about the work that they do. This film screening, and it's a one time only screening and panel discussion will be with the director, filmmaker and Troy Williams who was incarcerated at San Quentin. And this is about a social reform movement and transforming when you get out of prison. So please come. I encourage you all to please come check this out. Tuesday, every Tuesday throughout summer, we have an author talk all the way up until August 31st. This Tuesday, August 3rd, we have author Cheney Quack in conversation with Ziziba's Oscar Villalon. Please come on and check that out. August 8th, we have Karlie Huebner talking about the art of surrealist women. All right, and I am honored to have, we are honored today to have Jonathan Young, as I said, who's a Presidio Trust Wildlife Ecologist. And he will be talking about the past, present and future of Presidio Wildlife. And welcome, Jonathan, thank you for being here. Yeah, thank you for having me. Let's get this screen set up, let me know when it is in view. How's that looking? Looks good. All right, hi everyone. Thank you all for joining. I, probably some of you were tuning in a couple of weeks ago, maybe a couple of months ago when a colleague and myself were doing a talk on coyotes. So we're gonna be talking, well, I'm gonna be talking about more than just coyotes today and specifically talking about the city of San Francisco, which is a national park site. You can see it here in the background, reaching out to the Golden Gate Bridge. And I'll be talking specifically about the wildlife, otherwise known as wild animals. So I'm gonna be talking a lot about nature, focusing mostly on the animals of Presidio and San Francisco. Talk a little bit about the past, present and then what the future holds for some of our animal neighbors, our wild animal neighbors here in San Francisco. So obviously you can see San Francisco and all its glory here and from the aerial shot looking west. And a lot of you probably know, but maybe some of you never really thought that this isn't how the city always used to look. This area has been around for thousands and thousands of years, of course, Elona used to live here long before the Europeans came in and eventually became the city that we see here today. But just to give you some imagery of what it looked like, this is one of the earliest images we have that I'm aware of, 1816, that's the Golden Gate right there. It's the main post of the Presidio. Just I want, I'm gonna scroll through really quickly some of these historic photos. I just want you to see what the landscape looked like before it became what we noticed today. Ocean Beach, look at all those plants, all the colors. This is a cliff house, look at those dunes in the background. A lot of sand dunes, which San Francisco used to be a lot of sand dunes. This is the beginning of Golden Gate Park. This is one of many long lost lakes and ponds and wetlands, this is Coal Valley. This is Mount Lake, I'm gonna be talking a lot more about Mount Lake today. And this is one of many seasonal ponds that would have come after the rains in our dunes all across San Francisco. All of this landscape, all of these different types of plants that would have been growing throughout this area would have been different types of habitat for a lot of different wildlife. And we're gonna be talking about that today. So this is the sunset you can see from the late 1930s. That was the last little bit of San Francisco dunes and then it was all covered up. And as you lose landscapes, as I said, these landscapes are habitat for wildlife. And what I mean by habitat is generally habitat, wildlife habitat is food, water, and shelter. All the things that wild animals need to live, food, water, and shelter. When you lose the landscape, you lose the habitat. And there's nothing there that can support these animals. And this is an example. It's the first butterfly known to go extinct, meaning it no longer exists anywhere in the world. It first animal to go extinct known to by the cause of humans. So we lost its habitat, the dunes of San Francisco and because we lost the habitat, we lost the butterfly. Same goes for our state and city bird, the California quail. We lost the habitat that supported this bird in San Francisco. And therefore we lost the bird itself. So the city has changed a lot in particular in the 1770s when the European and Spanish first arrived. That's when things really changed drastically for the worst in terms of wildlife. But we're going to talk about how that's starting to change for the better here. So I'm going to talk more about the Presidio. And again, this is a national park site within the larger Golden Gate National Recreation Area. 1500 acres, you can see right here. I'm sure a lot of you have been there. And if you haven't, after this talk, you're definitely going to want to go check out some of these animals that I was talking about. You can go find today right now. So as I mentioned before, thousands of years, the indigenous Saloni people were all throughout this area, including the Presidio. And in the 1770s, the Spanish came in and claimed it as their fort, El Presidio, Spanish for the fort. And from there went from the Spanish Empire to the Mexican Empire to the United States military in the Gold Rush, 1840s, late 1840s, early 1850s. Again, this is looking towards the Golden Gate. You can see the landscape way before the bridge was built. And so eventually in the late 1990s, this military base transitioned over to becoming a national park site that we know and love today, the Presidio of San Francisco. So when the military left, they left a huge mess. They didn't export any of their garbage, any of their waste. They just either buried it in landfills or left it like this. They just up and left for the park to become a national park. Not only did they leave garbage, but they also left a lot of munitions and other unsavory, unsafe chemicals that we are still finding and cleaning up today. However, they actually unintentionally preserved prehistoric San Francisco. So because the military didn't allow the neighborhoods to come in and develop into the neighborhoods that we know of San Francisco today, they actually prevented the loss, the complete loss of what San Francisco would have looked like thousands and thousands of years ago. But nonetheless, this landscape was still struggling and still had a lot of problems that needed our help. And that is the role of the Presidio trust. That's what we do in the Presidio. We are trying to rewild or also known as restore in the landscape. So what does that mean? What that means is we wanna improve the ecosystem health. So we wanna improve the health of the nature in the Presidio. And we do that through increasing and promoting different types of plants and animals, those different types of plants and animals that were here for thousands and thousands of years. And so you can see here, a lot of the work that's been done and is being done to help nature is done by volunteers. And you can see what they're doing there. That's they're pulling up what is called Cape Ivy, excuse me, ice plant. Ice plant came in, they brought it in from South Africa and they planted it. It's basically like a carpet. You can see it grows over all of the plants that were here for thousands of years and covers them. Imagine what happens when you cover a plant with a blanket, it dies. And that's what ice plant does, it kills all the plants. So removing the ice plant allows all these other plants that were here for thousands of years to grow and thrive and the animals that rely on those plants to grow and thrive. So that's what we do. And we are restoring the habitat. Here's another example of restoring the needs of the wildlife, the habitat, food, water and shelter that wildlife you need to survive. So this is one example of what we call daylighting a creek. So there used to be a creek in this field way below. The military came in, they filled it with their garbage, put the creek under in a pipe and then made this field. And look at this field, there's not much going on. There's some grass, a couple of weeds, not much to support a lot of wildlife. So we wanted to daylight this creek starting around 15 years ago. This is what we did. We uncovered the creek, we dug it out, we contoured the creek, there it is. The creek is now daylight. Daylighter used to expose to the air in the daylight. We planted it with the native plants, the plants that would have been here for thousands of years. And look as the plants start to grow in. So it went from that barren field to this rich, vibrant creek. So food, water and shelter. So a lot of water from the creek for the animals and a lot of these native plants that produced flowering plants, so nectar, I think butterflies, butterflies and hummingbirds need nectar food, bearing fruit producing plants, a lot of birds like fruit. And then all these trees where birds can build their nets, food, water, shelter, that's what habitat is. We've been restoring that. And now this one example, and throughout the Presidio we have a lot of examples of where habitat has been restored for the wildlife. And this is one really cool, I'm just gonna go through some really fun examples of how the restoration or the rewilding of Presidio has resulted in a lot of resurgence of our local wildlife. This is the Western bluebird. This bird used to be probably about 23 years ago was very uncommon in San Francisco because the habitat that it requires just didn't exist anymore in San Francisco. However, as we began to restore and promote healthy habitat and healthy nature in the Presidio, the Western bluebird is now fairly common in the Presidio and you can come out and see it. Every year it breeds here more and more. So we're getting more and more Western bluebirds. This is another example of something we try to use to promote and enhance and encourage some of our nesting birds, what we call secondary cavity nesters. So this chestnut-backed chickadee, as well as that Western bluebird I mentioned and a number of other birds need to live in these old cavities. Things that primary cavity nesters like woodpeckers, we all know woodpeckers, right? They peck little holes in dead trees and create a cavity to nest in. Then eventually those woodpeckers abandon those nests and then secondary cavity nesters like this chickadee will actually come in and take over that abandoned cavity. And so we find that a lot of our dead trees have to be removed for public safety and fire hazards. So we lose the opportunity for woodpeckers to make these cavities, which then chickadees and bluebirds will take over eventually. So what we have done is we will supplement the cavity with homemade birdhouses. And you can see these secondary cavity nesters are really starting to use these and we're getting more and more of these different types of birds to reproduce in our part. Another example of if you build it, they will come. So if you restore their habitat, they will come back. If they can, this is the green hair streak. This is a very small butterfly about the size of a dine. And it is very rare in San Francisco because it is very closely tied to the dune habitats that once covered all of San Francisco. And specifically what they're tied to is the host plant which is called host buckwheat. The host plant is the only plant that a butterfly can lay its egg on and that the caterpillar will eat. So many different types of butterflies have many different types of host plants. And in the case of the green hair streak, it is the coast buckwheat, which was part of the dune ecosystem that I showed earlier in those pictures. And when you lose the dune ecosystem, you lose a lot of the coast buckwheat and therefore you lose a lot of the butterflies habitat. So in the Presidio, we've been expanding our dunes and replanting a lot of dune plants such as the coast buckwheat. This tiny little butterfly was just barely hanging on in the Presidio. And as we've been expanding its host plant, so too have we been expanding the butterfly, the butterfly is starting to spread into new areas where we planted its host plant. This is another example. This is the Ackman blue rare throughout San Francisco with fairly common in the Presidio. And it's here sitting on the coast buckwheat, another host of this butterfly. Host buckwheat, a very beautiful plant. And that flower right there is also a very important flower for a lot of our local pollinators. Another really cool recent example of building the habitat and watching the native wildlife come back in on its own. This is quartermaster reach. We all know and love Chrissy Field and Chrissy Marsh back there in the background, but you can see right here near the highway. That's a brand new brackish ecosystem. And what brackish means is to the left is where creek spills out. Remember that creek I showed earlier that's what was being daylight. That's the creek upstream of this brackish area. Brackish means where fresh water meets salty bay water and you have this mixture of brackish, not quite fresh, not quite salty and this very unique habitat type that supports very unique marine organisms, marine animals and plants that is very rare in the Bay because a lot of that was cemented over. So as we've been building this, we were trying to encourage our native oysters. These are the Olympia oysters. You can see here, as we all know, or maybe not, but oysters will grow together and they're basically glued on to each other. And the more that grow in a certain area, the more come in and grow and grow and it creates these big clusters or some people might call oyster reefs. And basically what's happening, this is the planktonic larvae aka a baby oyster. They're floating around throughout the bay, just floating around with the currents and they're trying to sense out what other oysters are. They're essentially smelling out where other oysters are. And when they find other oysters in other hard places, they settle down on them and then they grow and they glue on and they turn into the oysters that we all know and love today. So again, a lack of habitat because most of it was just paved over. These oysters aren't that common anymore today, but what we're trying to do to encourage them to come and settle and grow and quarter master each new marsh I showed you is actually build oyster reefs. And that's what we are. What you see in the very far back, it's a big pile of old oyster shells that we collected and recycled from local restaurants. We crushed them up and then we put them into cement molds and you see these molds right here. You can see crushed up oyster shells. It's the crushed up oyster shells that attracts the baby oysters to come settle. And you can see here, these are also hollow. So when we stack them up on the water, not only do they attract oysters, but they attract all kinds of little critters of different fish and different crabs and shrimp and sea slugs, things that want to grow and move and hide in between all these nooks and crannies. So we all know pollinators and we all know the importance pollinators, but what we don't really understand or what we're starting to really show in the city of at least is the huge diversity of pollinators, primarily bees, but a lot of other things are helping pollinate our plants. And the really important thing to understand is a lot of these really unique special bees and other pollinators have had thousands of years relationships evolving together with some very specific plants. So having plant diversity, otherwise known as a variety of different plant types that have been here for thousands of years, you will have a variety of different types of pollinator or pollinator diversity. And those are very integral and very complex relationships. These very unique plants depend on very unique pollinators. And in some cases, if you lose a pollinator, you'll lose the plant. Or otherwise, if you lose the plant, you'll lose the pollinator. So what we want to do in the city is we want to promote and maintain the diversity and the variety of plants that were here for thousands of years, that a lot of these unique pollinator species and other insects that aren't pollinators that might eat those plants, we call herbivores. They rely on these very specific types of plants that they've relied on for thousands and thousands of years. So we want to maintain the diversity or the variety of our native plants because that supports the diversity of the variety of our insects and a variety and healthy insect community goes up the food chain and supports all the other predators of insects like birds, for example. They rely on insects and fruit of plants for food. So speaking of predators and healthy ecosystems, this is one of our many families of red-tailed hawks that we have here in the Presidio. You can find these throughout San Francisco, they're fairly common, but they are raptors and they are predators and they actually, you can see here, this is the mom on the right bringing in food rodents to her chicks and we actually had a live stream camera on this nest a couple of years ago. So we're actually able to watch the whole process of the parents raising these fudgelings and actually we're able to share it with the world. But this is a really cool picture. You can actually see some really cool, important things here. The mom is feeding these very hungry chicks and mom and dad are always hunting rodents to feed their chicks. So this is what we would call an ecosystem service. So think about rats. A lot of us don't like rats and we have a lot of problems trying to keep rats out of our homes. And we wanna control rats so that they don't take over our houses, right? Well, it turns out predators like raptors and hawks and other birds of prey actually like to consume rats, gophers and other little things like mice that we would consider pests. So they are providing a service to humans through their predation of rodents because they help us naturally control and balance out rodents that would otherwise go out of control and take over our homes and have all problems and return we don't wanna do. But this is another really important lesson that we need to understand is a lot of us wanna get rid of rats from our homes. So we use rodenticides, which is a poison. Poisoning the rats to kill them and get them out of your homes is not a good thing because what happens is those rats will consume the poison and then eventually that poison will be consumed by baby hawks. See those little rodents right there? They came from the Presidio. Presidio does not allow rodenticides. But what about the hawks that are eating the rats that ate poison somewhere else in the city? Ultimately, the poison gets into the food chain. So we don't wanna use rodenticides because ultimately it gets into the food chain and poisons our wildlife that we want around. Speaking of predators, I mentioned I had a talk with my colleague, Coyote Mike, and look it up. I'm not gonna speak too much about coyotes because there's a lot to talk about. So watch that video and you'll hear a lot more. But coyotes are also predators of rodents and small things like raccoons and gophers. So they too indicate a healthy ecosystem and they too provide an ecosystem service by their consumption of small rodents that we otherwise don't want in our houses. And of course, zooming out to the bigger picture, Presidio is not about just the animals that live here locally, but it's also a really important resource for the long-distance migrations. This is such as the violet-green swallow. This bird flies all the way up from Central America more than 2,000 miles away just to nest and reproduce and raise its young here in the Presidio where it can feast and collect all the insects that it needs to feed itself and feed its young. But not only is it the violet-green swallow, there's a whole bunch of different types of ducks and hawks and eagles and hummingbirds and even bats that fuse the Pacific coast to further long-distance migrations. And the Presidio is a very important place for them to rest and or to nest. So we wanna have the resources, the food, water and shelter for these long-distance migratory animals to come and to rest and to recharge and to raise their family before going back to where they came from and the cycle will continue hopefully forever. But not only is it vertebrates, so not only is it birds with bat bones and bats, but it's also our long-distance migrating insects. And the famous one is the monarch butterfly. These insects fly from as far away as the Rocky Mountains to overwinter on our coastal California coast in the mild climate throughout the wintertime. And they actually use our eucalyptus forest, you can see here, to overwinter. And what they really want is very specific habitat. So they don't want too much wind, they don't want too much fog, but they want some sun and they want nectarine plants so they can feed themselves as they overwinter. So we actually manage the forest and the Presidio with the thought of monarch habitat in mind. So we want to promote and encourage successful overwintering of our monarchs. Unfortunately, monarchs have taken a big dive. I'm sure a lot of you have heard of that. And there's a lot that we can do locally such as planting nectar plants to support our monarchs. And hopefully they will rebound from this big crash that they're having. So this is the fun stuff. This is the stuff when we talk about the future, the current and the future of wildlife in the Presidio. Remember I said we lost a lot of the landscape, a lot of the habitat over San Francisco and the Presidio. Well, over the last 20 years, we've been bringing back that lost landscape, that lost habitat. A lot of that wildlife came back on its own, but a lot of wildlife can't come back on its own. A lot of lost wildlife cannot come here on its own. So as we've been restoring the landscape and the habitat, now we are at the point in the Presidio where we can start to talk about bringing back, helping giving the animals that were lost long ago, helping hand to come back to the Presidio. So one example, this is the variable checker spot butterfly was last seen in the Presidio in the late 1970s, a long time ago. And it went away because again, how its habitat was just decimated. Remember I talked about the host plant and butterflies? Well, this butterfly is closely linked to the California bee plant and the sticky monkey flower. And it'll lay its eggs on basically just those two plants. And its caterpillars will basically only just those two plants. So if you lose those two plants, you lose the butterfly. We lost most of those plants in the Presidio and throughout San Francisco. So we lost this butterfly. But now that those plants are back and thriving, we have brought back this butterfly and we brought it back from San Bruno Mountain. If you haven't been to San Bruno Mountain, you have to go explore San Bruno Mountain. It is a treasure of the Bay Area. And that's where these butterflies came from. And now they are thriving since 2017, they're thriving in the Presidio. So the flight season just ended, but in the springtime, March, April and May, you can really see these butterflies all over the Presidio. They're doing great and they're beautiful. Another example, this is the California arena. We're currently working on this right now. We started this year. This is a grassland species of butterfly. As we lost most of our grasslands and throughout California, we're using a lot of grasslands because they're very easy to develop over and to build houses on. We've been restoring the grasslands in the Presidio. So therefore, now we have the habitat that will support this butterfly. So we've been bringing this butterfly back from the Mern Heavens, just across the Golden Gate Bridge. This butterfly is way too small to fly across the Golden Gate on its own. So we've been collecting it and driving it over and releasing it. If you haven't been to the Mern Heavens, you have to go explore the Mern, the beautiful, beautiful wildlife and wildlands that again, would have looked like that thousands and thousands of years ago. So this is a story that I'm gonna focus in. Now remember, I showed that picture of Mountain Lake from about 100 plus years ago. That's that lake right there. This 2000 year old lake has gone through a lot, especially in the last 100 plus years, it's really had some problems. So when the Presidio became a national park site, the lake was just ruined. It was healthy. We had mosquito, unhealthy, excuse me, very unhealthy. We had mosquito problems. Not that many different animals could actually live and thrive in this lake. It was not doing well. And all the problems that we were having were related to runoff. So weird chemicals and fertilizers from that golf course, running down into the lake and highway one, the highway that runs up to the Bony Bridge, a lot of those weird chemicals and oils and gasoline ending up in the lake, causing all kinds of problems and causing a lot of the local wildlife to just disappear. And same with invasive species. So unwanted pets that people didn't want anymore. They released into this lake and those pets, those different types of species like red-eared slider turtles and crayfish are notorious for harming and killing native wildlife like frogs, those crayfish baby frogs. And those turtles will actually introduce diseases that will just decimate the animals that would have been living in this lake for thousands of years and causing all kinds of problems. So we wanted to actually help fix this lake and return it to a healthier lake full of the variety of life that once lived there. And so we wanted cleaner water and we wanted to increase and promote and to sustain a lot of the lost wildlife. And so we cleaned up the lake and we started to bring back a lot of those lost animals that couldn't come back on their own. For example, the Western pond turtle. This is the only native species of aquatic turtle that ever occurred in California and it's not doing well at all. It was over harvested in the Presidio during the Cold Rush era for the meat market. It was very popular during the early minor's days. They would actually love to eat turtles and the frogs that would have lived in the lake as well. So we partnered with San Francisco Zoo and they released baby turtles in the lake of 2005. And as of 2021, they finally started to have their own babies. We found this tiny little baby hatchling this year. So they're finally starting to reproduce on their own which is a very good sign. Another classic one that was almost extinct from San Francisco is the chorus frog. Now that the lake has been cleaned up, these frogs are thriving in the lake. These frogs need clean, healthy water to lay their eggs so that their tadpoles can grow in clean, healthy water. Now these frogs are thriving. If you go out in the late winter or the spring in the evening time, you'll hear why they call them chorus frogs. Very beautiful sound. This is the three-spine stickleback, very common fish in the bay. That's right, these fish can live both in salt water and in fresh water. And so we brought this fish back and this fish has a very important role because it likes to eat mosquitoes. We don't want mosquitoes to have a big problem because there's a lot of people around the lake. There's a playground at the lake. It's a beautiful playground. You should go play it there. And we don't wanna have mosquito problems. So the stickleback, bringing the stickleback back, it was lost from the lake. But now that it's back, it's helping us control the mosquitoes. And again, that's what we would call an ecosystem service because their predation on mosquito, bathing mosquitoes actually reduces the amount of mosquitoes flying around and biting people. And the stickleback also have a very important role to play when we talk about these freshwater mussels. One of my favorite animals, these mussels are very rare and becoming more rare throughout California, not marine mussels, not the mussels you see in the ocean. These mussels live only in fresh water and they move around in the sediment and they can live for about 15 to 20 years. And they have a very complex life cycle that they actually require the stickleback as their host fish. They're babies. You can, tiny little baby mussels you can see on the left actually will clamp down. They're in the water. The baby mussels are in the water. They eat the fish. They clamp down the fish without hurting the fish and they absorb nutrients or food from the fish and grow and then eventually fall off the fish and start all over. So if you don't have the stickleback, you can't have these mussels. So the stickleback are very important in the life cycle of these freshwater mussels. But not only are mussels cool because they have really crazy life cycle, they're also very important for cleaning up our water. You can see on the left, dirty water without mussels and you can see on the right, clean water. These mussels feed through filtering or filter feeders. They suck in the water. They can remove all the little particulates that make the water unclear and then they spit out clean, clear water. Not only do they remove the particulates like algae, but they also remove E. coli, which is a pathogen that makes us sick. So they help us clean our water. Again, another example of an ecosystem servers. Presence of these mussels are cleaning our water. Very cool. Another really cool example. This is a damselfly, San Francisco forktail damselfly. It's basically a small dragonfly. It's about two inches long as this flying adult is. This is a male here. This is one of the rarest damselflies in North America. Only exists in a handful of locations in the Bay Area and it's becoming more rare. So we wanna save it. So we've been working with San Francisco Zoo and they've started a captive breeding program to reintroduce it back into the mountain lake and other wetland areas that we've been restoring throughout the Presidio. This is a baby damselfly, also called a nymph or a niad. Very fun words to say. Tiny little thing. And you see those tails hanging off of its little butt there? Those are the gills. These little babies require water year-round, clean, clear water year-round to thrive and to grow and to turn into adults. So if you don't have clean water or water year-round like a drought, for example, you'll lose these damselflies. Fortunately, mountain lake, although very low during this drought, will survive throughout this drought. A lot of our wetlands are drying up because of the drought, but these damselflies and other damselflies will do okay in the lake because it's holding water even throughout this drought. But not only are these damselflies really cool because they're beautiful and rare, but they're also very important to focus control mosquitoes. They're voracious predators of mosquitoes, not only the adults like you see here, but also the little babies. They love things like mosquitoes. And again, we don't wanna have problems with mosquitoes. So these animals help us reduce mosquitoes. Again, another example of an ecosystem service, mosquito control. And so, of course, the next generation is gonna be the most important. So a lot of you youngins watching this right now, it's gonna be you that are gonna carry on the legacy and promote not only a healthy lake, but a healthy nature throughout San Francisco. So part of our jobs in the Presidio is to tell the stories of mountain lake and how to live and how to promote healthy nature in your cities. And some of these right here, don't ever feed the wildlife. Like I said with priorities, you never wanna feed wildlife. It's bad for the animals and it can result in very bad things and unsafe situations for people. So never feed the wildlife. You always wanna pick up after your pets. A lot of the Ecoli and pathogens that end up in our water can be linked back to not picking up after your pets. Don't abandon your pets. Remember I said a lot of those abandoned pets like turtles and the crayfish and the big fish. A lot of those were abandoned pets and a lot of those were the reason why a lot of our native wildlife like frogs and turtles were gone from the lake because they either ate them all or they spread and introduced diseases that killed them all. So don't ever abandon your pets and share this knowledge. We need more people to know about these really cool stories and what we can do as neighbors of these wild animals, what we can do to help promote and sustain these wild animals in our cities. And so what does the future hold for Presidio Wildlife? Well, as I said earlier, a lot of landscape and habitat was lost. Lost in the early days as the city became what it is today. So a lot of wildlife was lost as well. Not all wildlife, some wildlife stuck around just barely was able to hold on and we've been able to reverse that and increase those numbers of some of those rare species but a lot of them didn't hold on. A lot of them just disappeared because they lost their habitat but now the Presidio is bringing back their habitat but a lot of these species that you see here we know they used to be here. We have records of them being here in our museums and other records like that but they can't come back on their own. They need our help to bring them back. And so we're looking at a lot of these species thinking how can we bring them back? Why are they gone? Well, we know why a lot of them are gone and we've reversed the reasons why they're gone. We've addressed those reasons, we've restored their habitat and now can we bring them back? And yeah, I think a lot of these actually could come back and so there's a very bright future for the wildlife in San Francisco and in the Presidio. So a lot of these species, some to look out for in the future some exciting things coming down the road. So again, just to wrap it up why does urban wildlife, why does it matter? Ecosystem strength, I talked about that a little bit when I talked about some of the relationships between our pollinators and our plants. The more variety you have of native plants and native pollinators that all interact and they've interacted for thousands of years, the stronger your ecosystem is. The healthier nature is, the more resilient our ecosystems are in the face of climate change. We want to have strong resilient ecosystems to support our local wild animals. Ecosystem services, I talked a lot about that freshwater mussels cleaning our waterways, damselflies, helping and stickleback fish helping control mosquitoes, raptors and coyotes helping us control the rodent population. Ecosystem services, these animals actually make things cleaner and healthier for us here in our city. Sense of place. There's no other place like San Francisco and there's no other combination of these wild animals like that, which you find in San Francisco, they are our hometown heroes. And that's the beauty about traveling. If you go to another city, you're gonna see those local wild species and wild animals and it's gonna be totally different. So it's those local flavors we wanna have and we wanna know San Francisco. These are the animals that have been here and the plants that have been here for thousands and thousands of years and there are wild neighbors. And of course, mental and physical health. Go out, go explore, go hiking, go find all these weird, obscure little animals, go enjoy them, go learn your plants, go learn your butterflies, go learn your birds. There's a lot, a lot to go find and you'll go see the dramas that are happening. Right under our noses, there's all kinds of crazy stories happening and cool things to see like this crab spider here that you would never notice because it's so well camouflaged for that California poppy. But look at that, it's eating a robber fly and robber flies like to eat butterflies. So this crab spider is helping the butterflies by eating the robber fly that would otherwise eat the butterfly. Very cool. So go out and go explore and go find all these crazy weird characters living in your backyard, living in the Presidio. And then finally, just to wrap it up, I wanna thank you all again for stopping by learning about your local wild animals and a couple of things I want you, when you go out to an explorer, I want you to help us and I want you to share your observations. iNaturalist.org, it's a great way to share what you see, but also learn about the wild animals and plants that you might not know what they are, but this application will actually help you identify these plants and animals. And I also want you to go and volunteer, if you're interested, go get dirty, go outside, go join these different groups across San Francisco and in the Presidio. And it's a great way to really learn and be a part of the landscape and to help rebuild and rewild and restore the habitat that supports our local wild animals. And so that, I'm gonna end there and thanks again for joining. Wow, John, that was so amazing information and a great partnership. We did not know that you had such a tight bunch of the zoo. That's so fascinating. Yeah, yeah. We have a question from a YouTuber that says, when I'm hiking, I come across plastic and other trash. My inclination is to pick it up, but sometimes it looks like the bottle or whatever has become part of the environment like plants have thrown over it. Should I remove the trash and perhaps damage the area or leave the trash and feel bad? Yeah, if you're willing to pick up the trash, definitely pick up the trash. Don't worry about small disturbance to plants. In fact, it's a known rule in the world of environmental restoration that some disturbance is actually good for the ecosystem. Some, not a lot, but when you're removing things like trash, the benefits outweigh the risk of disturbance. Absolutely. I think we lost Anissa, but we do have another question. Do you have any recommendations for guides to our local wildlife? Like what to live for, where to live for it? That kind of thing? Yeah, there's a lot of different resources. iNaturalist is one of the better ones that you can do in real time and it can even help you identify if you get a decent enough picture. But if you wanna also look at nature in the city, believe it's natureinthecity.org, they have a lot of resources about the local plants and animals. Also for plants, California Native Plant Society, Yerba Buena chapter, they have their own webpage. There's a lot of information there as well. And then for birds, Golden Gate Audubon Society, they have a lot of information there. But I think the quickest and easiest one is gonna be iNaturalist, because you can just search San Francisco and see what people are seeing and nature in the city because they've compiled a lot of information. Thank you, Jonathan. That's so amazing. We have worked with California Native Plant Society quite a bit at the library and we have a lot of their info on YouTube and they are just humongous wealth of knowledge about all the plants in the area and just a huge support. So go check that out on our YouTube. Do we have any more questions, Lisa, from the YouTube side? Can we follow Jonathan on any social media? The closest thing is the Presidio Tres social media. And a lot of the content, like photos that I get, we'll get out through there. And you can also look for me on iNaturalist. JS underscore Y-O-U-N-G. And you can see a lot of the animals and plants that I find in the Presidio Art. I'm always posting things out there. Cool, we'll make you come back to the library again too. Yeah. All right, friends, and I wanna remind you that we do have another nature boost coming up with the Golden Gate National Park Conservatory, the Presidio Trust and the National Park Services and it's a tour of the Presidio Native Plant nursery. And this will be happening Friday, August 8th, 13th at 11 o'clock, same time, same channel. Find us there. Jonathan, thank you so much for being here today and giving us that wonderful. While some of those insects were gorgeous, the colors are just amazing. Definitely. All right, friends, library community. Jonathan, we appreciate it. Bye everyone. Bye.