Shell hash is common in the Briones Formation, in the East Bay. Photo by Andrew Alden

The Bay Area, rich as it is in geological interest, is not supreme in fossils. We have no dinosaur bones here, no human ancestors, none of the truly precious lagerstätten sites like the Solnhofen Limestone or Burgess Shale. But fossil collecting can still be a subject fraught with disagreement.

The legal codes are clear. California Public Resources Code section 5097.5 forbids anyone to "excavate upon, or remove, destroy, injure, or deface, any . . . vertebrate paleontological site . . . or any other . . . paleontological . . . feature, situated on public lands, except with the express permission of the public agency having jurisdiction over the lands." This covers city, county, regional and state parks. National parks? Forget that too.

"Express permission" is possible. Most parks permit scientists to conduct research, but that is carefully specified so as not to affect your full enjoyment of the public's land. And park staff can carry out excavations for, as the East Bay Regional Parks District puts it, "research, interpretive, educational or park operational purposes."

These people take their responsibility very seriously. In "Junior Ranger" programs in state parks, the instructors allow children to pick up fossils, but after making rubbings of them to take home (or take photos, of course) the kids leave the fossils behind. Even rocks must be returned to where they were found. Guides for the public (like the U.S. Geological Survey's guide to the fossils of Fitzgerald Marine Preserve) scrupulously invite you to "observe" the fossils.

I hope that you will honor and internalize this attitude. Nevertheless, here are three good ways to collect lots of fossils in California.

1. The most straightforward is to visit private lands, where the owner can grant permission and charge an appropriate fee. The remarkable Ernst Quarry in the Sharktooth Hill district, near Bakersfield, is a good example. And at Sonoma's Petrified Forest, a private park, you can buy specimens in the gift shop. Once they're yours, fossils can be traded or sold as you wish.

Sonoma Petrified Forest photo courtesy Kate Sheehan under Creative Commons license

2. Some public parks allow the public to participate in fossil research under supervision. The Los Angeles County Natural History Museum, for instance, will let you help its professionals on digs at Red Rock Canyon State Park. Whatever you find typically belongs to the state.

3. On federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands, the default is that casual personal collecting is allowed without a permit. This opens up vast areas of the state to you. There are limits: vertebrate fossils (that is, fossil bones) and scientifically valuable finds must be left alone and reported. Other common invertebrates and plant fossils are OK to collect for personal enjoyment in reasonable quantities, but not for trading or for sale. There should be "negligible disturbance to the Earth's surface and other resources."

To judge from the postings on public fossil forums, many fossil collectors carry the BLM's approach away from BLM lands, to private lands like railroad tracks and public lands like beach cliffs and roadcuts. That remains a violation of statute law.

In Bob Dylan's words, "To live outside the law you must be honest." If you are thinking about becoming such a fossil collector, I can only advise you not to. My own practice is catch and release: I bring a brush and collect with a camera. That's how I collected this Pliocene clam at Capitola Beach. If it's still in the cliff when you visit, you can collect it too.

But for those who will ignore my advice, I suggest an honorable rule: do no more than nature does. Roadcuts are always shedding debris, which road crews shovel up and discard. Breaking up this material and taking hand specimens leaves no trace. And at the beach, every stone is there to be destroyed by the scrubbing and chipping of the waves. A handful taken away has slim odds of harming scientific interests. You will risk a scolding by park rangers or landowners, which is no fun for them or for you. They have the law on their side and must speak up. Finally, nature does not conduct trading or selling.

If I had my druthers, some of our parks would find a way to grant express permission to fossil collectors. This happens in other states. There might be a place in, say, Walnut Creek's Shell Ridge Open Space where an old borrow pit could be dedicated to the interests of fossil hunters. Trading and sale of fossils would remain unlawful. I think that by cultivating awareness and appreciation of our fossil resources, it might help inoculate the rest of the land from casual collection.

Castle Rock State Park; photo courtesy Bill Bumgarner of Flickr under Creative Commons license.

Among the most heartbreaking casualties of California's political crisis are dozens of state parks that are scheduled to be shut down during the coming year, some sooner and some later. Historical monuments, wildlife preserves and simple recreation areas are on the chopping block, along with the experienced staffers who guard and maintain them. Causes for hope are small, but they do exist.

All of the closures are cause for mourning (visit the California State Parks Foundation site to see the whole list), but I will speak for the geologizers among us. From north to south, here are some of the significant properties to close in the Bay Area counties. In some cases there are organized groups active on the park's behalf.

Sonoma County

Austin Creek State Recreation Area: About 6000 acres of meadows and oak-studded hills north of Guerneville are set in classic Franciscan rocks including serpentinite, sandstone, greenstone and silica-carbonate rocks.

Sugarloaf Ridge State Park: East of Santa Rosa is 2700 acres of varied rocks including Franciscan serpentinite, melange and greenstone, mudrocks of the Great Valley sequence, and young Sonoma Volcanics. The Ferguson Observatory is also there.

Marin County

Olompali State Historic Park: Trails in this former ranch give access to the Miocene volcanic rocks of Burdell Mountain, kin to the Moraga basalt of the East Bay hills.

Samuel P. Taylor State Park: The steep walls of Lagunitas Creek and the grassy uplands of Barnabe Mountain lie within Franciscan melange and other rocks.

Tomales Bay State Park: The stick-straight ditch of Tomales Bay marks the trace of the San Andreas fault, and the Salinian granitic rocks on the western shore contrast sharply with the Franciscan rocks on the other side.

San Mateo County

Gray Whale Cove State Beach: On the shore below Devil's Slide is this intimate beach exposing the long-traveled granitic rock known as Montara Quartz Diorite (which I showed you at Quarry Park in El Granada).

Portola Redwoods State Park: Along with the mighty redwoods and pristine creeks are exposures of the young Monterey Formation and the shelly Purisima Formation as well as basalt. The Portola and Castle Rock Foundation has an interest here.

Santa Clara County

Henry Coe State Park: Northern California's largest state park has every rock type found in the Diablo Range (Franciscan and Great Valley Sequence) in its 80,000 acres, with the rugged terrain that displays them best. The Pine Ridge Association has been involved with the park since 1975, and the Coe Park Preservation Fund is taking donations.

Santa Cruz County

Castle Rock State Park: At the county's northern tip is a climber's and photographer's playland, and a geologizer's place to study the Vaqueros Sandstone. The Friends of Santa Cruz State Parks are involved, as is the local Sierra Club chapter.

If you go farther afield, there are other precious places set to close all over the state: Castle Crags, Malakoff Diggins, Palomar Mountain, Picacho, Providence Mountains, Mono Lake Tufa, and the California State Mining and Mineral Museum. My colleague, blogger and teacher Garry Hayes, has strong feelings for Limekiln State Park on the Bug Sur coast. If you have more, by all means mention them in a comment. The California State Parks Foundation has just launched its Magnificent 70 site to ratchet up the argument.

California State Mining and Mineral Museum in Mariposa, a world-class resource set to be shuttered. I have several mineral specimens that I bought here. Photo by Andrew Alden.

Photographer Eliya Selhub has set out to document the parks that are slated to close, at closingcaliforniaparks.com; so have Melody and David Noceti at their 70 in 70 site. Again, if you find more of these, mention them in a comment.

One cause for hope is the passage of Assembly Bill 42 on September 6, which would allow nonprofit organizations to help operate parks on the kill list. Governor Brown loves the outdoors—I greeted him just this week as we shared a parkland trail—and he has a month to sign AB42 into law. Considering the vagaries of legislation, things may change for the better before anything can actually happen under AB42. Still, I think the park closures should be taken seriously. The bill may seem a pitifully small step, and not every park has a Friends organization with the resources to do what's needed, but this is all we have for now. The Parks Foundation has a page to facilitate your support; an old-fashioned letter addressed to "Governor Jerry Brown, Sacramento" will do too.

Angel Island and other state parks are facing cuts in services and hours. Photo Credit: Andrea Kissack

One week after the defeat of Proposition 21, California State Parks supporters are facing some tough decisions. The measure would have raised money for parks by imposing an eighteen dollar fee on vehicle licenses. Without that revenue, State Parks continue to face a shrinking budget and staff as well as an estimated 1 billion dollar maintenance backlog.

State Parks Director Ruth Coleman says scheduled cuts in services and hours will continue. But in the long run full park closures may be hard to avoid. “Is it better to be spreading these costs across all the parks and having a really substandard experience for everyone or are we to the point where we really need to be closing some parks permanently, at least for the foreseeable future, and be able to redirect resources to preserve the park experience,” she says. Coleman explains her department is looking at a number of funding options including raising entrance fees and soliciting corporate donations.

Any long term solutions would have to get the support of Governor-elect Jerry Brown who said after Tuesday’s election that Californians sent a message that they are, “in no mood to add to their burdens” with new taxes. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had proposed closing 220 of the state's 278 state parks but after public outcry he scaled the proposal way back. The state ended up reducing services and hours at about 150 state parks.

Listen to Saving Our Parks radio report.

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Henry Coe State Park won't be experiencing any part-time closures, but it will reduce trash and restroom service and has shuttered a new visitor center off the Pacheco Pass.

So you want to reserve that primo camping spot at your favorite California State Park? You might just have to take your chances. Most state parks are not accepting reservations through spring of 2010. It's part of a series of service cuts to slash millions from the State Parks' budget. Remember back in September when the Governor threatened to close 100 parks to balance the budget? Well, after a giant public outcry, he backed off but he still is requiring California State Parks to cut this year's budget by 14-million dollars. Superintendents from the state's 21 parks have come up with a plan to close that budget gap.

More than half of the state's parks will be scaling back days or hours. The list includes inland campgrounds and day use areas, many state beaches, museums and missions. In addition to reduced hours, trash and restroom service will be cut back at many state parks. I visited Henry Coe State Park in Morgan Hill. Because of it huge acreage (87,000 acres) and back country wilderness, Coe won't be experiencing any part-time closures, but it will reduce trash and restroom service and has shuttered a new visitor center off the Pacheco Pass. The park also lost all of its ranger aides. I also took a tour with the Superintendent at Angel Island State Park where they will be closing some restrooms, postponing school field trips and non-emergency repair needs. The situation is not expected to get better right away. The governor has already signed a budget that requires State Parks to cut 22-million dollars next year. California's parks have relied on the state's unpredictable general fund…and that has resulted in a billion dollar maintenance backlog. Park supporters are considering a ballot measure for next year that would impose about a 15-dollar a year vehicle license fee to pay for park operations. Want to hear more? Check out our radio report.

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