
On August 10, 2007, the California Coastal Commission unanimously voted to deny a fishing permit to allow experimental long-line fishing off the coast of California and Oregon for the first time since 2004. The proposal by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) would have allowed the Ocean Pacific Sea Food Company to make four expeditions…

A field guide to help Bay Area naturalists in their search for local, lost species that are presumed extinct.

How do you commission portraits of species the world has dismissed as extinct, species no one has seen in decades? That was the conundrum we at Bay Nature faced when it came time to solicit illustrations to accompany Presumed Extinct: Lost Species of the Bay Area. To reanimate these lost species, Bay Nature tapped the…

The November 7 oil spill in San Francisco Bay has us all looking for information on how to help. At this point, most of the immediate clean-up work is done, but there are still a number of reources available online, as well as important opportunities to get involved with training and restoration programs all over…

Weighing in at almost 5,000 pounds, measuring over ten feet across, infested with scores of parasites, carrying more eggs than any other vertebrate, and shaped like a giant dinner plate, the giant ocean sunfish (Mola mola) is a creature defined by superlatives.

The 19th-century cattle baron Henry Miller (not the noted California author of the same name), who once had an estate on Mount Madonna (the subject of our July-September 2007 On the Trail feature) is not generally remembered for his conservation efforts. In fact, he was at the forefront of the endeavor to drain and plow…