The high ridges and sandstone outcrops at Castle Rock have fascinated adventurers from explorer George Vancouver to the pioneers of modern rock climbing. Prolific wildflowers, great views, and an 80-foot waterfall add to the allure.
Art & Design | Botany | Climate Change | El Niño | Fire | Fungi | Geology | History | The Bay | The Ocean | Urban Nature | Water | Weather | Wildlife
Getting Closer to the Water in Petaluma
River advocate David Yearsley continues his quest to connect people of all ages to the Petaluma River, now with a Petaluma River Heritage Center that focuses on boating, boatbuilding, and wetland restoration.
Restoring Two Creeks for Coho
Restoration work along Marin County’s Redwood Creek is making this watershed more habitable for the state’s southernmost run of coho salmon, while activists push for new protections in the Lagunitas watershed, home to California’s largest remaining runs of these once-plentiful fish.
Studying Underwater Mountains in Monterey Bay
The remarkable Davidson Sea Mount has gained new protections as part of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. This and other nearby seamounts attract spectacularly diverse sea life.
Naturalist’s Notebook: A Small Bird That Acts Big
Turns out this little songbird is a little fiercer than most.
Petaluma’s Teenage Fish Force
At first glance the tan building blends into the rest of Petaluma’s Casa Grande High School. It’s nondescript from the outside, but it houses a rare kind of conservation organization, the United Anglers of Casa Grande. The high school students in the club run their own hatchery, and learn more about salmon than most folks ever know…
Public Transit and Other Endangered Species
Might the streets we travel have once been migratory corridors for other species, now displaced and threatened by our urban ways? Did butterflies pass by this way, looking for mates, or did salmon swim up a creek long since buried? Could we once again share this landscape and these corridors with other species, if our own daily migrations became more communal–a few buses in place of a swarm of cars, a single train where SUVs now reign?
Rafting Time for Diving Ducks
The great rafts of ducks on San Francisco and Tomales bays, mostly surf scoter, greater and lesser scaup, and canvasback, are a wintertime spectacle. Scoter flocks can range from many hundreds to a few thousand birds. Why do they form these aggregations?
What’s the deal with pelicans’ weird bills?
Can a pelican really hold a week’s worth of food in its bill?
Antioch Developer Evicts Burrowing Owls
Scott and Heather Artis of Antioch have adopted a local community of burrowing owls as their own stewardship project and were looking forward to this year’s nesting season, but in November 2009 the state handed the owls an eviction notice, to make way for a housing development…