Exploring Nature in the San Francisco Bay Area
Some of the most conspicuous animals in Northern California tidepools don’t look like animals at all. They resemble flowers more than any animal you’re probably familiar with.
Here in the Bay Area, we pride ourselves on being environmental trailblazers. Our achievements include pioneering curbside recycling, prohibiting the use of ozone-depleting Styrofoam, and leading the effort to ban plastic bags, straws, and utensils. California, likewise, has long been a global leader on environmental and climate change issues. But there is still much work…
I think I saw a worm swimming in the Bay, what is it? It was mid August in 2015 when I first held one, its long thread like body rolling and pulsing in my hand. Tickled by the anticipation of a bite or sting my blood pumper was doing double time as sweat dripped off…
Skunks almost always spray out of sight of humans. A hidden trail camera in Jasper Ridge shows what it looks like.
I once spit my dinner across a room. I was watching the local news in the fall of 2008, and the story showed the opening day of the new California Academy of Sciences building. My brains left my body as well when the screen showed many, many children pulling the lids off boxes, releasing monarch…
How do slugs and salamanders survive the summer? Ah, seasons. The Bay Area may not have the distinct seasonality of New England, but there is a definite cool and rainy season and a definite dry and hot season, and our natural denizens have had to adapt. Many plants do this by, well, not surviving by…
Independent, nonprofit environmental journalism connecting people with nature in the San Francisco Bay Area.
