Highway to the Flyway
Along the gentle arc of the northern San Pablo Bay shoreline, one of the region's least loved highways, Highway 37, traverses one of its most fascinating landscapes. Best to be...
Science and Nature
Dam Removal for Steelhead
In what ought to be a landmark action to restore steelhead trout runs in the region, two dams are slated for removal this year on Alameda Creek, which drains the...
Marsh Gumplant
Defining the edge of a shifting body of water like San Francisco Bay, whose exact extent changes with every tide, every season, every storm, can be tricky business. In our...
Record Spring Rain, 2006
All that springtime rain may seem a distant memory now, but the record still holds: San Francisco had the rainiest March on record, and the city’s season-to-date rainfall is 12...
Napa-Sonoma Marshes
We are somewhere west of the Napa River, nosing in a small boat along a slough between hollow islands known as Pond 2 and Pond 5, trying to grasp just...
San Francisco Natural Areas Program
San Francisco’s Natural Areas Program is in the final stages of hammering out a plan to guide the management and improvement of its designated Natural Resource Areas. Of the 3,480...
Sears Point
The southernmost hump of the Sears Point ridge, known locally as Cougar Mountain, looms over Highway 37. Not its height but its isolated station makes it visible from highways and...
From Collecting to Recollecting
This San Mateo coast reserve--home to brilliantly colored nudibranchs, 20-armed sun stars, and pupping harbor seals--has been transformed from a place of collection and plunder to one of exploration and...
The Other Rail
Everybody knows about the California clapper rail, the charismatic (though elusive) endangered bird of San Francisco Bay marshes. The San Pablo Baylands shelter almost half its known population. But here...
Farallon Island Fur Seals
Two hundred years ago, the captain of a 280-ton whaling vessel reported seeing a bounty of fur seals on the Farallon Islands, 28 miles west of San Francisco. Subsequently, the...
.jpg){kind=link}