The San Francisco Bay is our region’s dominant geographic feature.
In July, the State Water Resources Control Board approved a plan to clean up mercury in San Francisco Bay, fulfilling a mandate set in 2002 when the Bay was placed on the impaired list under the Clean Water Act. According … Read more
San Francisco Bay is also home to eelgrass beds, two-thirds of them in the shallow waters off the North Richmond Shoreline. And eelgrass is only one important component of the seven miles of shoreline between Point San Pablo and Point … Read more
The November 7 oil spill in San Francisco Bay has us all looking for information on how to help. At this point, most of the immediate clean-up work is done, but there are still a number of reources available online, … Read more
Defining the edge of a shifting body of water like San Francisco Bay, whose exact extent changes with every tide, every season, every storm, can be tricky business. In our region the regulators sometimes fall back on a botanical criterion. … Read more
We are somewhere west of the Napa River, nosing in a small boat along a slough between hollow islands known as Pond 2 and Pond 5, trying to grasp just how much has changed hereabouts in the last 24 months. … Read more
The southernmost hump of the Sears Point ridge, known locally as Cougar Mountain, looms over Highway 37. Not its height but its isolated station makes it visible from highways and byways all over the North Bay. Now its windswept slopes … Read more
The East Bay hills are dotted with hundreds of ponds, many of which offer welcome habitat and shelter to native wildlife, from threatened California red-legged frogs and tiger salamanders to toxic newts, voracious water bugs, and migrating waterfowl. Just about any pond, from a verdant clear blue pool to the merest muddy puddle, has something interesting going on beneath the surface. But perhaps the most remarkable fact about these ponds is that nearly all of them were created as watering holes for livestock. Today, the East Bay Regional Park District is working to understand the complex relationships between native species, grazing cattle, and artificial ponds.
The Islands of San Francisco Bay, edited by James A. Martin and Michael T. Lee, Down Window Press, 2006, 200 pages, $55.00 www.islandsofsfbay.com Ask any ten locals, and chances are that none will know how many islands there are in … Read more
The open hills along the Carquinez Strait are home to working ranches and open space preserves that are meeting places for native species from both the coast and the Central Valley. Today's quiet pastoral landscape makes it hard to envision the violent formative flood that may have cut this critical waterway between the Bay and the Central Valley some half a million years ago.
With stunning views of the Bay and Marin, Richmond’s Point Molate has seen a lot of changes: It’s been a shrimp camp, a huge winery, and a Navy fuel depot. Now the site of a controversial casino proposal, this modest point of land is home to diverse wildlife and some of the East Bay’s last native coastal prairie.
Independent, nonprofit environmental journalism connecting people with nature in the San Francisco Bay Area.
