A fried of mine had some land on the Pleasonton Ridge. The park was trying to take it from him and they were fighting legal battles with them for years. One of their gimmicks was to accuse him of endangering a certain type of salamander. A quick search of information about that salamander showed that it didn't even exist in the hills where his land was located. They said that he had to prove to them that they were not there by doing a study. We had to clean an area of land to bare soil and then record the tracks of what walked across that soil for a month. It was ridiculous, but the park hired some college kids to monitor this and make sure we were doing it correctly. I just helped out, so I wasn't there every day. Those college kids took this very seriously and had done this on other properties all over the area. The one I talked to, a young girl, told me that she had never seen or found any sign of that type of salamander yet, and that she was very worried about them. I asked her about the book that we had which stated that it wasn't in the hills and shouldn't even be there. She said that the book was wrong and that there were there to find out where they existed for themselves.
There has to be a point when those college kids realize that they are just being used for somebodies political agenda, but when that happens and how it happens is beyond me.
Seeing those pictures and knowing that area, it's hard to imagine that there are any salamanders of any kind out there roaming those hills. Just another way for the government to spend money that it does't have, pandering to the wacko extremist in their pursuit of feel good policies that have nothing to do with reality.
Thanks for the pics and update on your project. It's always fun to hear first hand what's going on in the Bay Area.
Eddie