The North Shoreline Ecosystem

The North Richmond Shoreline is one of San Francisco Bay's most important natural treasures.This spectacular shoreline stretches from Wildcat Creek Marsh north to Pt. Pinole and contains 500 acres of tidal marsh, 800 acres of mudflats, and the largest eelgrass bed in the San Francisco Bay. Eelgrass provides essential habitat to fish and foraging birds such as the California least tern, an endangered species. Wildcat, San Pablo, and Rheem Creeks all flow into the shoreline.

The value of the North Richmond Shoreline is that it has so many different types of habitat that are lost in many other parts of the Bay. That means that the Shoreline can support many types of animals that are missing elsewhere in the region. In the past 150 years, we have lost nearly 95% of our tidal marsh around the Bay. North Richmond has lost more than half of its tidal marshes, but it still has 550 acres of this very productive habitat.

Underwater on the North Richmond Shoreline are 1,500 acres of eelgrass meadows – that’s about half of all the eelgrass in the entire Bay. Eelgrass is a long-bladed grass that is one of the most productive marine habitats in the world. It is where young salmon and herring grow to be large fish.

Much of the North Richmond Shoreline has been built upon, but nearly thousand acres of upland habitat remain, mostly in Point Pinole Regional Shoreline. All of these different habitat types together make for an incredible natural treasure worthy of protecting.

It is a valuable portion of Richmond's 32 miles of shoreline - the longest of any city in the Bay Area. The shoreline is home to numerous shorebirds and the shallow waters are a critical habitat for diverse aquatic life including oysters, Pacific herring, lingcod, and salmon.

The area is a habitat for the California clapper rail and salt marsh harvest mouse, both endangered species, and three candidates for federal endangered status: the black rail, salt marsh wandering shrew, and the San Pablo vole.  Great egrets, white-tailed kites, and great blue herons, all species of concern, also call the shoreline home.