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.

Amongst marshes, a salty past

May 18, 2012 •  by

The Hayward regional shoreline consists of over a thousand acres of marshes and seasonal wetlands. At low tide sandpipers and black stilts wander about the mud flats searching for food, while cyclists and runners exercise along a 5-mile trail.It’s hard to imagine that more than a hundred years ago, mounds of salt covered these same Hayward marshes like a fresh blanket of snow. The salt attracted harvesters, going way back to the original inhabitants.

Depicting conservation success stories

April 27, 2012 •  by

It’s easy to get depressed about the loss of biodiversity when every day, it seems, some new species pops up on a watch list like a death toll. But there are success stories that offer rays of hope in a world beset by climate change and habitat destruction. A new art exhibit opening on May 1 at the Tilden environmental education center in Berkeley showcases species that have made it back from the brink of extinction.

Imaginations from the sky

April 26, 2012 •  by

Originally working in packaged design, Robyn Hodess became a landscape painter after a cross country plane ride sparked her imagination. Her landscapes look like they exist, somewhere, but are actually all from her head. She’s come to see nature differently: “Before, I was looking at it very closely, ‘Oh, look at the bud.’ … Now I’m saying, ‘What are the textures in the world? What are the colors in the world?'”

Caching nature

April 13, 2012 •  by

Lee Van Der Bokke is a world-class geocacher – someone who hides, and searches for, “caches”—hidden containers of different sizes that are tagged and located using GPS (global positioning system) or mobile devices. He says they’re a great way to get people — young and old — exploring nature.

A Wiggle in Time

March 14, 2012 •  by

If you ride your bike in San Francisco, chances are you have discovered The Wiggle, and you’re probably thankful you did. The meandering one-mile route from Duboce Ave to Fell St. saves cyclists from notoriously steep hills as they make their way from downtown to western neighborhoods.There’s a reason why the riding is easy. The bike route was a once stream bed in a place called San Souci Valley, now thoroughly transformed into the Victorian-dotted neighborhoods of Duboce Triangle and the Lower Haight.

Hidden Villa Memories

January 1, 2012 •  by

Jean Rusmore first visited Hidden Villa as a college student in 1942, and she’s been going ever since.

Students explore origins of popular Thanksgiving dish

November 23, 2011 •  by

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.