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The Peninsula Open Space Trust has opened three more miles of the California Coastal Trail, which someday may run the entire 1,200-mile length of the coast. For now, there’s a great hike to be had between ocean cliffs and farm fields south of Half Moon Bay.
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A substantial wetlands restoration project over at Hill Slough in Solano County is the latest such effort to clash with federal regulations about power lines and sailboats.
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A new report on the state of bird populations shows mixed results for Bay Area populations. People continue to be the biggest threat, with habitat loss and other pressures, and the biggest hope, in the form of major and minor restoration projects all around the Bay.
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Researchers plan to head out this winter looking for micro-plastic in the Bay. Their first-ever trawl last winter turned up concentrations that actually weren’t as bad as some recorded in other waterways. But that might just mean we’re sending more plastic to the Pacific.
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Marine scientists gathering data off the Golden Gate have zeroed in on a number of hotspots of biodiversity, including transects north and south of the Farallon Islands. Turns out, though, that even hot spots aren’t so hot when a toxic red tide rolls in.
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When the Sonoma Land Trust acquired the Jenner Headlands, the best guess was that it would become a state park. Instead, the land trust will work with the Southern California-based Wildlands Conservancy to manage the large parcel, which includes a spot hawk watchers have staked out as a new “Hawk Hill north.”
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Even with state park closure looming, South Bay land trusts and philanthropists are thinking big with a major new initiative to protect 80,000 acres from San Benito County to San Francisco.
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Sonoma County’s 832-acre Bohemia Ranch has been eyed as a potential public park since the 1990s. With park funding hard to find, it seemed like access was a long way off until the land’s owners decided to partner with the nonprofit LandPaths to open the land to the public.
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Aramburu Island sounds like it might be in the South Pacific, and until recently, it was about as noticed locally as some distant atoll. But then in 2007, in the wake of an oil spill, folks from Tiburon Audubon discovered that this humble island in Richardson Bay was a major refuge for injured birds. Now, they’re hoping to make it good habitat for healthy birds and other wildlife too.
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Advocates for native plants and wetlands say now is the time to worry about Algerian sea lavender, an invasive plant that barely has a toehold at the moment. If it spreads, it could become a major problem. But for now, it’s a test case for the Bay Area Early Detection Network, which aims to help eradicate invasives before they become intractable.
