Human settlement in the San Francisco Bay Area dates back 10,000 years to early Native American settlements. Today, the region is a teeming metropolis of 7 million people that collectively challenge the health of the region’s ecosystems. How it got this way is a story that prompts a deeper understanding of our place in the landscape.
From whale-watching expeditions to wildflower forays to the annual Christmas Bird Count, naturalist David Wimpfheimer takes great pleasure in leading people on what he likes to call natural "treasure hunts."
Making the most of a popular Thanksgiving dish and Native American agricultural traditions, students at Frank Havens School planted a "Three Sisters" garden. The fifth-graders planted squash, corn and beans together – known as succotash -- in an effort to demonstrate how the plants help each other grow without the need of chemicals and how, when combined, provide complete nutrition.
The Saint Mary's College Museum of Art is honoring California landscape painter William Keith a century after his death with 150 paintings from the college's permanent collection. "The Comprehensive Keith: A Centennial Tribute," on view through December 18, 2011, includes dozens of Bay Area views, from Pacheco Pass to San Anselmo. Some are startlingly familiar. Others are lost to roads and subdivisions. All will help you see local nature with new eyes.
Photos by Stephen Joseph, text by Linda Rimac Colberg, Mount Diablo Interpretive Association, 2010, 266 pages, $50. Photographer Stephen Joseph has amassed a wide-ranging body of work–from a project to photograph Bay Area farms (see his photos in this issue) … Read more
Artist Eva Chrysanthe has always been intrigued by the Farallon Islands, those distant humps on the western horizon. But when she discovered a trove of old letters about the islands, she discovered a dramatic story that's taking shape as a new graphic novel about the Farallon Egg Wars. She'll talk about the project this Thursday in San Francisco.
On August 6, the Oakland Museum of California opened "A Walk in the Wild," an exhibit highlighting the life of naturalist John Muir. Open through January 2012, the show aims to portray Muir's life in a way that captures the attention of a diverse audience, to reawaken the "spirit of Muir" in the general public.
Jeff Miller is a man on a mission: He is dedicated to being an effective voice for endangered species and preserving the Northern California habitats they depend on for survival. He currently pursues this mission as founding director of the Alameda Creek Alliance and as a conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity.
Seeing a snowy egret along the Bay shore is certainly not news. But bird rescue volunteer Cindy Margulis watches them anyway, and a few weeks ago she noticed one with a band whose number she could read. Suddenly, an anonymous egret revealed itself to be a bird she'd helped rehab and rescue a year ago.
Many people living in the Bay Area know very little about San Bruno Mountain -- the massive, bald hill just south of San Francisco.The surprising story of this largest undeveloped landmass in the urban U.S. is told in the documentary Butterflies & Bulldozers, showing this week at the first San Francisco Green Film Festival.
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.
Independent, nonprofit environmental journalism connecting people with nature in the San Francisco Bay Area.
