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In Woodside’s fourth year of recognizing residents who allow their properties to be open and accessible to wildlife, the town has honored a non-resident for erecting a fence on land not within town boundaries.
A unanimous Town Council voted to give Stanford University an honorary Backyard Habitat Award for choosing to replace a deteriorating wooden post-and-wire fence in a grassy meadow with another such fence using recycled posts rather than aluminum posts as had been planned, according Nancy Reyering of the town’s Open Space Committee.
The award recognizes the presence of native plants, areas allowed to revert to a wild state, permissive fencing, unobstructed stream beds, and wildlife corridors.
“This gesture will have positive ramifications both for the Backyard Habitat Program, as this fence line is so long and visible, but also to the community as a whole, as it sets a standard that is embodied in our General Plan and Residential Design Guidelines,” Ms. Reyering said in a letter.
By Dave Boyce
By Dave Boyce
By Dave Boyce
Change of plans: Research campus to leave Menlo Park, make way for more housingJune 12, 2026 6:46 pm
The wooden posts seem to be only a veneer on the metal posts that support the barbed wire (visible in places when passing on a bike), but yes, the fence looks nice.
So Stanford gets an award which “recognizes the presence of native plants, areas allowed to revert to a wild state, permissive fencing, unobstructed streambeds, and wildlife corridors” while at the same time they:
– Overgraze much of their undeveloped oak savannah with cattle, preventing oak regeneration, and promoting non-native annual grasses.
– Have a dam and reservoir full of non-native plant and animal species that spread throughout the watershed and negatively impact native wildlife.
– Won’t let Jasper Ridge habitat revert to a wild state and instead support an unneeded dam.
– Have a huge, 8-foot tall cyclone fence with razor wire around Jasper Ridge impeding wildlife migration.
– Have obstructed the creek’s streamed more than any other stakeholder in the watershed with multiple dams, diversions, and road crossings.
– Continue to block wildlife migration corridors around the campus, including threatened steelhead trout at their Searsville Dam.
Giving this award to Stanford would be laughable if the reality wasn’t so dire.
Very well said. Woodside was asleep at the switch in giving this award to what is, at bottom, a narcissistic and deeply capitalist enterprise.
This fence is gorgeous! Well done Woodside.
Congratulations to Woodside for recognizing Stanford as being a “good rural neighbor”!
I am lucky enough to drive this stretch almost every day, and the artful way Stanford engineered this fence replacement preserves the scenic corridor. If they hadn’t used the old posts as façades over the metal ones, the entire fence line would be shiny silver, and would have lost its charming country appeal.
I’m not a Woodside resident, but I am grateful for the work the Woodside people did to liaison with Stanford for this project.
This award is important, and meaningful to those who care about preserving the environment, but also recognizing the need to keep areas accessible to the wildlife that inhabits our special lands. Good on Stanford for upholding these standards, and good on Woodside for the recognition. Both entities are trailblazing!