This very special tenth-anniversary issue features original work from many of our favorite authors, including Robert Hass, Rebecca Solnit, Greg Sarris, Jon Carroll, Wendy Tokuda, Linda Watanabe McFerrin, and others. We bring you winning photos from our People in Nature photo contest and interview Harold Gilliam, Bay Nature award winner and dean of local environmental journalism. Cover illustration by Kathleen Lipinsky, emerylipinski.com.
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January 01, 2011 by Joan Hamilton
The East Bay Regional Park District is not just the nation’s largest and oldest regional park district. It also has what’s likely the largest corps of professional naturalists of any local park agency. For generations of kids, that’s meant accessible opportunities for hiking, camping, getting dirty, and–most important–discovering the outdoors and getting to know our plant and animal neighbors.
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January 01, 2011 by Robert Hass
The first thing that is apt to raise your eyesAbove the dove-grey and silvery thicketsOf lupine and coyote bush and …
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January 01, 2011 by Diana Jou
Just a thousand yards off the San Mateo coast sits one of the most densely populated places in the Bay Area, with hundreds of residents sharing nine rocky acres, all with great views. But there are no people living here. This is Ano Nuevo Island, a wildlife reserve where four species of seals and sea lions coexist with seven species of seabirds. The only human presence is an occasional visit from a remarkable team of biologists, botanists, and ceramicists.
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January 01, 2011 by Greg Sarris
Greg Sarris, currently Chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, grew up in Santa Rosa, left for many years, and has now resettled on Sonoma Mountain. The bluebellies were there in his childhood and are still there now, woven into the landscape and the history of Sarris’s people.
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January 01, 2011 by Aleta George
After a one-year hiatus, the organizers behind the popular Geography of Hope conference in Point Reyes Station are back with a new topic. Event organizers honored Wallace Stegner at the inaugural conference in 2008 and celebrated sustainable farming in 2009. This year’s theme will be “Reflections on Water.”
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January 01, 2011 by Aleta George
Every September, people flock to Golden Gate Park’s Sharon Meadow to enjoy the arias sung during Opera in the Park. But there is another free concert at the other end of the park: the song of the Nuttall’s white-crowned sparrow. A new restoration project aims to help the sparrows sing a bit louder.
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January 01, 2011 by Aleta George
Ninety percent of the world population of 8,000 to 10,000 mountain plovers winter in California after traveling from their breeding grounds in Montana and Colorado. Mountain plovers, now listed as one of California’s species of greatest concern, numbered around 300,000 in 1975.
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January 01, 2011 by Aleta George
In November, California voters decisively defeated Proposition 23, a measure that would have suspended our landmark law to curb greenhouse gas emissions. That was a genuine victory for the environment, but not an uncomplicated one. For better and worse, it likely means more wind turbines. And that means more dead raptors.
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January 01, 2011 by Aleta George
State Route 84 twists and turns along Alameda Creek through Niles Canyon between Fremont and Sunol. An effort by Caltrans to make the road safer has hit a roadblock: Environmental groups, local citizens, and the City of Fremont claim that widening and straightening the road will simply encourage drivers to go faster while harming a creek that has been the focus of steelhead trout restoration efforts.
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January 01, 2011 by Sue Rosenthal
While transplanted New Englanders may complain about the Bay Area’s inconspicuous seasons, true Californians prefer February flowers to snow shovels. What we lack in extremes we make up in subtle and unexpected beauty. On your winter walks, keep an eye out for the early bloomers, plants that brave winter weather for an early shot at pollination.
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January 01, 2011 by John Muir Laws
Grebes are always fun to watch. Jack Laws helps you tell one from another. If you’re especially lucky, you’ll see their amazing synchronized courtship dances, where male and female zoom like speedboats across the surface of ponds or lakes.
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January 01, 2011 by Jon Carroll
For San Francisco Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll, it all happened at Limantour.
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January 01, 2011 by Linda Watanabe McFerrin
Linda Watanabe-McFerrin goes in search of rare butterflies on San Bruno Mountain, an island of native habitat besieged by subdivisions, roads, and invasive weeds.
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January 01, 2011 by David Kupfer
Before Harold Gilliam began his weekly newspaper column in 1960, the category of environmental journalism simply did not exist. For the next 35 years, Gilliam pioneered and perfected the craft of environmental reporting. We talk to him about his career, biggest stories, and how things are different for today’s environmental journalists.
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January 01, 2011 by William Keener
Here, the sedimentary rocksof the town where I was raisedlift up, the layers of ancient seabed exposed in ridges running …
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January 01, 2011 by Bay Nature Staff
In spring 2010, Bay Nature teamed up with Sarber’s Cameras on a photo contest featuring images of people in the natural places they love. Dozens of local photographers submitted hundreds of photos. Check out the winners!
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January 01, 2011 by Cat Taylor
“Home”–the word evokes many images: memories of your childhood abode or the smell of a home-cooked meal. Animals, too, have different ideas of home–nursery, fortress, or merely a place to rest. Here’s a few fun homes you might see in the woods, if you know where to look.
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January 01, 2011 by John Hart
There is a godwho sits upon the sea’s blue monumentand breathes into the tide.He sits far off, and yet his …
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January 01, 2011 by Rebecca Solnit
Author Rebecca Solnit celebrates the quotidian landscape of oaks and grasses of her childhood ramblings on Mount Burdell in Marin County. Has anyone, she asks, written a poem about bunchgrass? Or buckeyes? If no one has yet, someone should.
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January 01, 2011 by Wendy Tokuda
Longtime television anchorwoman Wendy Tokuda now spends many days in the East Bay hills, finding endangered manzanitas and communing with pileated woodpeckers. All because of her obsession with an invasive weed called French broom. And her years of effort are paying off.
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January 01, 2011 by Brenda Hillman
The sugars drop down in the berries,no longer specific. That mangy deersleeps the summer off. You’ve been herethe night …
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January 01, 2011 by Michael Ellis
Michael Ellis declares that ringtails register a 9.9 on the cuteness scale, and they were reputed to shack up with miners during the Gold Rush. Yet longtime field biologist Wendy has yet to see one of these small mammals. They are elusive, but not as uncommon as you might think.
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