Hikers and equestrians can find a new swath of accessible open space in the bucolic eastern foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. The 2,428-acre Rancho Cañada del Oro was the site of walnut orchards at a time when Silicon Valley, … Read more
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.
Saving El Palo Alto
Imagine a landmark so prominent that anyone looking south from San Francisco or north from San Jose could spot it. Spanish missionary Padre Pedro Font wrote in his diary in March 1776: “I beheld in the distance a tree of … Read more
Altamont Pass Wind Debate
In the January-March 2004 issue of Bay Nature, Ear to the Ground covered the deaths of hundreds of raptors each year at the Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area in Livermore. In response to the large numbers of bird kills in … Read more
Bolinas Lagoon
Land management changes are also on the table for the Bolinas Lagoon in Marin County. Beginning in the 1880s, logging, road-building, and grazing around this 1,100-acre tidal estuary introduced tremendous amounts of silt to the lagoon’s mudflats and marshlands. The … Read more
Magna Albany Mall Plan
In May of 2002, Magna Entertainment Corporation, owner of the Golden Gate Fields racetrack, adjacent to Berkeley and Albany, proposed a development project totaling more than 1 million square feet, in place of the existing racetrack. In February of 2004, … Read more
Marine Sanctuaries Public Comment
The Farallones Marine Sanctuary Association is also encouraging folks from coastal California to participate in several last-chance review planning sessions for the Gulf of the Farallones, Monterey Bay, and the Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuaries. Since 2001, the sanctuaries have … Read more
California Wildlands Grassroots Fund
For small, locally based environmental groups, finding the resources to engage governmental agencies and conduct compelling scientific research can be difficult, but this could change thanks to two different funding initiatives dedicated exclusively to assisting grassroots environmental initiatives in California. … Read more
Rush Ranch and China Camp Become a NERR
Rush Ranch Open Space features the largest intact brackish tidal marsh in the San Francisco Estuary. That’s why it has been designated, along with China Camp State Park, as California’s newest and largest National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR). The NERR … Read more
Sonoma Baylands, SLT, and Miwoks
Another area along the North Bay shoreline has been in the news lately: the 1,679 acres of the Sonoma Baylands located at the intersection of Lakeville Highway and Highway 37. On November 10, 2003, the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria … Read more
Book Review: San Francisco Bay: Portrait of an Estuary
by John Hart (text) and David Sanger (photography), University of California Press, 2003, 212 pages, $34.95 (www.ucpress.edu). Early European explorers sailed right past the mouth of the San Francisco Bay; blinded by sun or fog, or perhaps the monotony of … Read more