Author: Jonathan Eisen

If you live near Davis you should check out the Davis Wetlands – a pseudopreserve over by the landfill. Its got amazing birds and some nice trails to walk around on. The only problem is, in the Winter, when it is wettest and the birding is best, the Wetlands is closed almost all the time. It is only open to the public for a few hours on Mondays. In addition, there are signs all over on most of the trails saying they are closed to vistors. What gives?

I found this to be completely lame and so I wrote to the Davis government about it

To whom it may concern

I am writing to ask some questions regarding usage policies for the Davis Wetlands. I think Davis Wetlands is one of the gems of this city. I have taken my now 20 month old daughter there many times to walk around and see the birds and animals and get a nice park-like experience. I am writing because I am concerned about the severe usage restrictions at the Davis Wetlands.

First, in the Winter months, the park is only open on Mondays which means those of us who work regular hours cannot use the park. I am wondering if there is some reason why the park is not open all days of the week in Winter and also how Monday was chosen as the day to be open. I would like to recommend that in Winter the park be open on at least one weekend day.

Second, I am wondering why such a large fraction of the park has signs that say “Park Employee’s Only” or something like that. These are all over the park on many of the levees and they mean that very little of the park can be seen by non employees. I am wondering why so much is off limits and whether there are any plans to expand public access. If not, I would recommend you do so.

The response I got was quick, although not what I expected …

Dear Mr. Eisen,
Thank you for contacting the Davis Public Works Department.
Your message has been forwarded to Mr. John McNerney, Wildlife
Resource Specialist, in-charge of the Davis Wetlands. If you wish to
contact Mr. McNerney, his direct line is (530) 757-5680.

If you have any questions, please call (530) 757-5686 or e-mail us
at: pwweb@cityofdavis.org

Thanks!
Maria Briilantes
Office Assistant

And then McNerny replied the next day

Dear Mr. Eisen,

Thanks you for inquiring about the access times for the Davis
Wastewater Treatment Wetlands. As you are aware, the current access
periods are:
Feb 15 – August 31 (summer)– 7 days per week 7am to 1pm.
Sept 1 – Feb 14 (winter) — Mondays only from 7am to 1pm.

In addition to the normal access times, a docent led tour is offered
the first Saturday of the month from 9 to 11am (during summer hours) and
from 3 to 5pm (winter).

The current access times were negotiated during the drafting of the
original purchase agreement with the neighboring landowners (Conaway
Ranch Conservancy). These periods and times were set to reduce Wetlands
visitor conflicts with adjacent land use activities (primarily hunting)
on the Conaway Ranch. The Sept 1 – Feb 15 period coincides with the
hunting season. There are obvious hazards associated with public access
at the Wetlands while firearms are being used in the adjacent fields.
Conaway Ranch agreed that no hunting would take place on Mondays or the
first Saturday of the month from 3-5pm.

We are currently planning on re-visiting our access agreement with
Conaway Ranch. We will be discussing the Monday only restriction and
hope to add at least one additional weekly access day during the winter,
ideally on a weekend.

To address your second question, it is important to note that many of
the roads within the Wetlands are narrow and winding. The auto tour
route has been improved for heavy traffic use including use by larger
vehicles such as buses. The “authorized personal only” signs are there
to help keep visitors vehicles off of these smaller roads. With that
said, we do encourage visitors to park in the designated parking areas
and walk around. Foot traffic is permitted on the “restricted” access
roads. We will be updating the signs to be clear about this issue.

A final note on the limited access to the southern portion of the
Wetlands. Being as the Wetlands serve hundreds of thousands of migrating
waterfowl and shorebirds, it is important to offer some quite and
undisturbed areas for these species to forage and rest. Promoting
increased human disturbance in these areas would be a less than ideal
management strategy.

Thanks for your interest in the Wetlands and its inhabitants. Please
feel free to contact me if you have more questions or suggestions.

Sincerely,

John

–>–>–>–>–>–><–<–<–<–<–<–
John T. McNerney
Wildlife Resource Specialist
City of Davis, Public Works
23 Russell Blvd.
Davis, CA 95616
530-757-5680 Fax- 758-0354

I guess this is understandable from the Conaway and the Davis point of view but it would seem to me given the size of Conaway Ranch that the hunters could stay away from the portions that border the Davis Wetlands without too much trouble. But maybe that is where the best hunting is — I do not know. Nevertheless, I am hoping that Davis changes its mind and tries to open up more access in the Winter. As of last week it seems no more access has been granted:

I am writing to find out if anything has been changed in terms of the winter access to the Wetlands.

I know the Winter is almost over, but I am still interested in expanding access during these months.

Jonathan

Hi Jonathan,

I have nothing new to report. We are still waiting on Conaway to commit
to a meeting time.

I’ll be sure to update you if/when things change.

Thanks for your continued interest,

John

–>–>–>–>–>–><–<–<–<–<–<–
John T. McNerney
Wildlife Resource Specialist
City of Davis, Public Works
23 Russell Blvd.
Davis, CA 95616
530-757-5680 Fax- 758-0354

An interesting and somewhat strange article in the Guardian. In it, Ben Goldacre, who writes the Badscience column discusses Open Access to scinetific papers. He says, correctly in my mind

There are some things which are so self-evidently right and good that it’s hard to imagine how anyone could disagree with you. The “open access” academic journal movement is one of those things. It’s a no-brainer. Academic literature should be freely available: developing countries need access; part time tinkering thinkers like you deserve full access; journalists and the public can benefit; and most importantly of all, you’ve already paid for much of this stuff with your taxes, they are important new ideas from humanity, and morally, you are entitled to them.

I completely agree with this sentiment and it sums up many of the reasons I support Open Access. He also points out that

These closed journals are hardly the kind of people whose pockets you would want to line. Reed-Elsevier ….. are the same company that runs the DSEI international arms fair in London, at which vile weapons are sold to murderous regimes for cash profit extracted from very real suffering and pain, in countries you will never visit on holiday.

Finally he discussed the Eric Denzenhall hiring issue:

These people do not deserve our charity, and I will be very pleased to see you outside DSEI later this year, 300th copper from the left: because when you are so wrong you need police, security, wire fences, and the pitbull of PR to defend you, then you know you’re in trouble.

I like the tone here but one thing I did not get in his article is the claim that Open Access journals cannot

get journalists to directly link to their studies. I suspect newspapers like to fantasise that they are mediators between specialist tricky knowledge and the wider public, but I wouldn’t be so flattering.

I have not seen this — I have had multiple stories written about my Open Access work and many have directly linked to my papers …. anyone have any idea what he is talking about here?

Just heard another talk by Drew Endy about Synthetic Biology and his attempts to make the field work more like Engineering than Biology. Basically, what he is trying to do is to make biological parts (e.g., Biobricks) at the DNA level that would work like circuitry board parts do for making computer chips and related devices. As they get more biological parts, more people will be able to treat synthetic biology in an abstract way – that is they will not need to know per se how the biological parts work, just that they have particular properties.

My favorite part of the field of Synthetic Biology is IGEM, the The international Genetically Engineered Machine competition. Students compete to make cools things from their biological parts. Among the more interesting items that have been made is a bacterallawnthat work as a camera.

In general, I like synthetic biology and the potential it has to produce major benefits for the world, although I wish some of the practitioners were less flippant about the potential risks in the field. And, this minor blog would not be complete without the self interest. THe UC Davis Genome Center has just announced a new faculty position in this area (specifically in cmputational and experimental approaches to network and synthetic biology). So if you are in this field and want to join a great collection of faculty working in diverse areas of genomics, please apply.

Job at Davis