Protecting the wetlands and their inhabitants along the northern edge of San Pablo Bay has been Myrna Hayes’ driving passion for the past three decades.
"I knew nothing about wetlands. I don't know that I knew the word,” said Hayes, who grew up hundreds of miles away in the Butte County town of Paradise.Sign up for NBC Bay Area’s Housing Deconstructed newsletter.
But in the early 1990s, Hayes was living in Vallejo and was drafted by her neighbors into the effort to fight a proposed development. Once Hayes understood the value of what she was working to preserve, there was no turning back. “The wetlands definitely do not wow you like Yosemite,” Hayes said. “They seep through your skin into your bloodstream and you really have to just be there.”
In the interest of getting others to just “be there,” Hayes has organized for the past 28 years the San Francisco Bay Flyway Festival on Mare Island. Primarily a gathering for birders to watch just some of the millions of birds that migrate to the Bay Area each year, Hayes hopes that non-birders find their way there as well.
She is convinced that if she gets someone to spend even a small amount of time on the shores of San Pablo Bay, she will have won a convert to her cause.
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