The San Francisco Bay Area is bejeweled with hundreds of parks and open space preserves as well as a rich set of laws and policies meant to ensure the survival of vulnerable species and ecosystems. Real people made this happen through a dedicated call to stewardship.
Even before Woodie Guthrie sang "This land is your land...," Americans had a solid history of maintaining and sharing public lands. September 24 brings this value into sharp focus: The annual National Public Lands Day is the largest assembly of volunteer effort on behalf of public lands in history. We'll help you get in on the action!
Inspired by a childhood divided between urban Oakland and a Lake County working ranch, Rue Mapp founded Outdoor Afro, an online community and organization that reconnects African-Americans with natural spaces and one another through outdoor recreational activities.
This Saturday from 9 a.m. to noon, more than 80,000 people will hit the California coast for a not-so-typical day at the beach. Coastal Cleanup Day is right around the corner and the state's largest volunteering event will likely net some 1.2 million pounds of trash. A staggering number indeed, which raises the question -- How does all this debris end up on the shore?
If someone asked you to name the 26 states that offer certified "master naturalist" programs, there's a good chance you'd class California among those. Until recently, you'd have been wrong. But, like Texas before us, we in the Golden State now finally have such a program.
Bay Area native Sue Gardner says her work on stewardship programs combines her two passions: people and nature. For almost 20 years, she's been running innovative programs that get diverse groups of people out helping take care of the diverse habitats of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
Can a pile of dredge spoils covered in a jumble of invasive weeds be transformed into an island paradise for shorebirds, songbirds, and seals? The folks at the Richardson Bay Audubon Center and Sanctuary think so. And after years of planning, ground-breaking on their ambitious restoration project has finally begun on a small island near Tiburon.
As the Crissy Field Center celebrates its 10th anniversary, the center continues to bridge the gap between urban youth and environmental education. In July 2011, the center's Inspiring Young Emerging Leaders (I-YEL) program won the "Take Pride in America" national award given by the Department of Interior for outstanding youth program. Jie Chen, a former student intern and current manager of the I-YEL program described the award as "amazing to see and be a part of."
If you happen to be in El Cerrito and hear a frog calling, or catch sight of a large yellow butterfly flitting through your yard, it might be Jim McKissock's doing.
Janet McBride has spent the past 13 years championing the two region-wide trails that encircle the Bay Area, making her one of our great unsung heroes of human-powered outdoor recreation in the Bay Area.
When the Sonoma Land Trust acquired the Jenner Headlands, the best guess was that it would become a state park. Instead, the land trust will work with the Southern California-based Wildlands Conservancy to manage the large parcel, which includes a spot hawk watchers have staked out as a new “Hawk Hill north.”
Independent, nonprofit environmental journalism connecting people with nature in the San Francisco Bay Area.
