Underneath California Forever
Tech billionaires are fighting for their proposed 400,000-person city in Solano County. At least 21 imperiled species depend on the ecosystems where the new city could be built.
Farming and Ranching
Invasive Golden Mussels Upend Life in the Delta
One year after the discovery that golden mussels had invaded the Delta, thick colonies coat boats and piers and threaten water supplies for cities and farms. Yet the state has...
A Legal Settlement Will Usher In a Wilder Point Reyes
Most cattle will leave, and an ambitious plan aims to restore coastal scrub, grasslands, and chaparral. But the agreement immediately drew fire from community members, who decry the loss of...
At Coyote Hills, 300 Acres of Farmland are Transforming
More than 100 different species of birds—from American bitterns to marsh wrens—have visited the native salt grass and sprawling, stubby pickleweed in the newly constructed seasonal wetland.
Congress Expanded a Climate Program for Farmers. Now, Where Are the Applicants?
“We’re in a place where we have more money than we have applications,” says Brandon Bates, assistant state conservationist with NRCS. And the agency really doesn't want to have tosend...
A River Runs Above Us
In mid-November 2021, a great storm begins brewing in the central Pacific Ocean north of Hawai‘i. Especially warm water, heated by the sun, steams off the sea surface and funnels...
Inside the East Oakland Plant Nursery That’s Breaking the Incarceration Cycle
“Nobody's got our kind of re-entry program that mixes soil, re-entry, healing, and good pay,” says Planting Justice's operations manager, Lynn Vidal.
The Rewilding of California’s Parched Central Valley
As SGMA deadlines loom, groundwater sustainability agencies, environmental organizations, and farmers in the San Joaquin Valley are scrambling to prepare for a drier future by experimenting with ways to repurpose...
Birds Flock to a Resurrected Tulare Lake, Peaking at Nearly the Size of Lake Tahoe
The resurrected Tulare Lake and thousands of acres of nearby flooded farmland are providing a temporary respite for the millions of migratory birds that pass through California along the Pacific...
Raptors Rather Than Rodenticide
Replacing pesticides with barn owls for rodent control was one of several innovations that marked a new appetite for more environmentally sustainable production in California vineyards.
