Author Rebecca Solnit celebrates the quotidian landscape of oaks and grasses of her childhood ramblings on Mount Burdell in Marin County. Has anyone, she asks, written a poem about bunchgrass? Or buckeyes? If no one has yet, someone should.
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.
Book Review: A State of Change: Forgotten Landscapes of California
This book is an unmatched picture–in paintings and words– of what California might have been like before the arrival of Europeans.
Book Review: California Place Names: The Origin and Etymology of Current Geographical Names
by Erwin G. Gudde (revised by William Bright), UC Press, 2010, 496 pages, $27.50 What’s in a name? Sometimes rich history and intriguing stories. The 40th-anniversary edition of California Place Names animates many local geographic names we take for granted. … Read more
Book Review: Dorothy Erskine, Graceful Crusader for Our Environment
A strong biography of the founder of Greenbelt Alliance, dorothy Erskine, who deserves to be remembered widely and well.
Book Review: Living Landscape: Rise of the East Bay Regional Park District
A new book chronicles the recent history of the East Bay Rewgional Park District, which turned 75 years old in 2009 and remains the largest regional park district in the nation.
Letter from the Publisher: Bay Nature and a Changing Planet
We’re looking forward to celebrating Bay Nature’s 10th anniversary in January, while wondering what happened to summer–and what’s in store for our climate.
The Once and Future Delta
About the only thing people agree on about the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta–the subject of countless white papers, editorials, and political debates–is that it’s in a heap of trouble. But this 1,000-square-mile patchwork of islands, sloughs, wetlands, and farmlands is also a rich and complex–if highly altered–ecosystem at the core of the San Francisco Estuary. Here we take a look behind today’s news to understand what the Delta once was, how it has been changed, and what it might become . . . with a lot of help from its friends.
Book Review: California Indians and Their Environment: An Introduction
California Natural History Guide No. 96, by Kent G. Lightfoot and Otis Parrish, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2009. $19.95. Available at ucpress.edu. This book is a synthesis of a huge amount of new information and a re-interpretation of old … Read more
GGRO’s 25 Years Getting to Know Raptors
2009 marks the 25th anniversary of the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory, the Marin-based organization that tracks the movements of birds of prey over the Marin Headlands. Since 1984, more than 1,500 volunteers have logged 40,000 hours alongside staff and scientists to monitor raptors along one of West Coast’s most trafficked migratory routes.
A Pasture Becomes a Rich Birdwatching and Kayaking Area in Point Reyes
Wildlife thrives at Giacomini Wetland at the south end of Tomales Bay.