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Rats don’t have the best reputation, but you’ve gotta respect these adaptable survivors! Here’s how to identify your city’s rats.
Urban Rat Watcher’s Guide
March 30, 2021 •
Science & Nature
Art & Design | Botany | Climate Change | El Niño | Fire | Fungi | Geology | History | The Bay | The Ocean | Urban Nature | Water | Weather | Wildlife
Rebuilding Big Basin
March 24, 2021 •
California’s first State Park burned in the 2020 CZU Lightning Fires. Now conservation groups want it to rebuild as the model of state parks for the future.
LNU Fire Complex Scalds Some Berryessa-Snow Mountain National Monument Landscapes, Spares Others, Tour Reveals
February 23, 2021 •
The splash of green on the ashen landscape was unexpected. Marc Hoshovsky, a naturalist retired from a career with California state agencies, was reviewing a satellite photo of areas burned in the LNU Complex fire last fall, hoping to tease … Read more
What a City Can Do for Nature
February 18, 2021 •
In the early 1990s, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service reviewed the status of a rare coastal sand dune plant called the San Francisco lessingia, which grows only in San Francisco and San Mateo Counties. The background the service … Read more
The Most Eye-Catching Mushrooms to See in Winter
February 10, 2021 •
A naturalist on the “flowers of winter”
Meet the Rare Dawn Redwood at a Bay Area Park
February 4, 2021 •
Rare and once thought extinct, the dawn redwood is an ancient relative of the more familiar coast redwood.
Atmospheric Rivers Like This One are Vital to Understanding California
January 28, 2021 •
Ten days ago the state set new heat records and brush fires broke out. Burn areas in the Santa Cruz Mountains rekindled. Then, over the last three days, a 2,000-mile-long filament of water in the sky burst over the areas that last week sat brown and smoking.
Packed at Pillar Point
January 12, 2021 •
Huge crowds are harvesting mussels and other invertebrates. Could this damage the much-beloved reef?
Volunteer Divers Hope to Restore Kelp from the Ground Up
January 7, 2021 •
Can volunteer scuba divers start a turnaround for Northern California kelp forests?
Reading the Landscape for Fire
January 3, 2021 •
In the beginning, fire burned the world. Don Hankins’ Plains Miwok ancestors passed on this understanding of fire through generations, and he draws from it as a traditional cultural practitioner pyrogeographer when burning landscapes in California.