Why is Butters Canyon important?
Butters Canyon is the headwaters of Peralta Creek, so it is important as a riparian corridor (a creekside ecosystem). It is also important as a public recreation area, since it is a stretch of creekside land that is used daily by pedestrians and cyclists from around the Bay Area. Isn t this NIMBYism? Aren t you just protecting your own backyards? The area we seek to protect is in our neighborhood, but preserving it benefits more than our neighborhood. It is a thriving riparian and wildlife corridor, and if we lose it, we lose a historic landscape in Oakland, one of the last remaining above-ground creeks and canyons. We preserve it in order to protect water quality in the Peralta Creek watershed and the San Francisco Bay as well as provide a recreation corridor for cyclists and pedestrians, a place to encounter nature in a green urban getaway.
