Keeping watch over the coast

Re “A fragile beauty never far from peril,” column July 27

Steve Lopez’s columns on his trip down the California coast have been delights to read and warnings to an often complacent public. His piece on the Point Reyes National Seashore north of San Francisco brought me back to the time I was first introduced to the area.

Previously, I had known nothing about the conservation efforts in that area. In 2009, my husband and I planned a trip to the Bay Area and connected with a friend who was a landscape architect (now retired) with the National Park Service. He gave us a wonderful educational tour of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, including a history of how the park service was able to restore much of the area by encouraging businesses to move east and away from the fragile estuary.

At that time, litigation over the removal of the oyster farm was underway. Thankfully, preservation efforts prevailed, and Lopez’s description of the results is encouraging. Lola Moline Los Angeles