5 - Healthy Watershed - Muir Beach AD

WAYSIDE TITLE: Collaborating for a Healthy Watershed-Panel Description

DESCRIPTION OF IMAGE: A photo of green, rolling hills that form a valley. A winding road passes through the middle of the valley floor and climbs up and out the far end. In the blue sky above the valley, a red tail hawk, its dark head tilted upwards, soars with its wings spread wide. Its reddish-brown and white feathers are on full display.

TEXT: Redwood Creek Watershed extends unbroken from the ridge tops of Mount Tamalpais, through the old-growth redwood forest of Muir Woods to Big Lagoon at Muir Beach. Within its nine square miles are expansive grasslands, dense tangles of coastal chaparral, shady redwood forests and refreshing riparian woodlands in which water flows and empties into the Pacific Ocean. Caring people are actively working together to protect and support the health of this precious watershed system.

One hundred years of logging, grazing, construction, trail and road building in the past century left the watershed in a severely degraded condition. To restore and manage the watershed as one continuous system, federal, state and local agencies, non-profits and others adopted a Vision for the Future. This innovative and collaborative document includes a set of guiding principles to protect the watershed and offer hope to endangered species such as the coho salmon and California red-legged frog.

IMAGE LAYOUT: At the bottom of the panel are a series of four images.

DESCRIPTION OF IMAGE: A three-quarter view colored map of the Redwood Creek Watershed. Muir Beach is marked by a red dot at the bottom center, and Mount Tamalpais, at the top. Between them are Green Gulch, Redwood Creek and Muir Woods.

CAPTION: A healthy watershed provides clean water for people, plants and wildlife--water for drinking, agriculture and recreation.

DESCRIPTION OF IMAGE: A fish out of water: a dead, gray coho salmon sitting upright on a bare rock bed.

CAPTION: The cumulative impact of watershed restoration vastly improves habitat for the coho salmon and other threatened and endangered species.

DESCRIPTION OF IMAGE: A smiling, young girl is outside, wearing a gray hoodie sitting on an incline wearing boots and work gloves.

DESCRIPTION OF IMATE: A young boy is outside. He is wearing a green t-shirt bending over a green plant stem he holds between his fingers.

CAPTION: Youth from all over the Bay Area steward the land by participating in education and habitat restoration programs.