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Like San Mateo County, Sonoma County has both a private nonprofit land trust and a government body working to protect the landscape, though here the trust came first. The Sonoma Land Trust set up shop in 1976 and acquired some … Read more
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Driving out to the coast among the seemingly endless ranks of Marin County hills, studded with rock outcrops and spotted with grazing cows, you can feel the calmness that flows from a stable landscape. It has always been this way, … Read more
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A visit to remnant native grasslands in Richmond or diverse oak woodlands in eastern Alameda County gives a taste of our region’s native habitats. But few of us are aware of an important element that helped shape those habitats: the regimes of burning, pruning, and digging carried out over centuries by the East Bay’s indigenous inhabitants, some of whom still carry on those traditions today.
The several thousand sandhill cranes that come to the Cosumnes River Preserve each year are just a fraction of the 250,000 sandhills that visit California, with populations as far north as the Klamath Basin and as far south as the … Read more
If you are interested in learning more about conservation easements, pay a visit to the San Francisco Bay Area Open Space Council’s website: www.openspacecouncil.org. Among the resources the Council has made available is their 1999 report, “Ensuring the Promise of … Read more
From a modern perspective, it is difficult to imagine the time when women in this country were discouraged from seriously pursuing vocations in science and natural history. But until the late 1800s, there were few if any women working in … Read more
“Ascending Franklin Ridge: A Greenbelt Grows above Martinez” Back in 2004, a fight was brewing over ballot Measure M a proposal limiting development in Hercules’ Franklin Canyon to one home every 40 acres. Voters passed Measure M despite opposition from … Read more
2005 “By the Water’s Edge: A Chronicle of Two Creeks” Our January-March 2005 issue highlighted the riparian habitats of the East Bay’s Alameda Creek watershed. Recently, the Alameda Creek Alliance (ACA) received $1 million from the National Fish and Wildlife … Read more
At Vasco Regional Preserve, stone balls the size of dinosaur eggs litter the landscape, the winds burrow into stone, and cup-sized pools tucked into sandstone outcrops teem with fairies (of the crustacean variety). The preserve, owned by the East Bay … Read more
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Thirty years ago, few people gave a second thought to the Laguna de Santa Rosa, the North Coast’s largest freshwater wetland. The once-teeming marshland had become a dumping ground. But things are changing, and this complex waterway is finally beginning to recover some of its former glory.
