Exploring Nature in the San Francisco Bay Area
The East Bay Regional Park District and other parks agencies own and operate an impressive array of shoreline parks in the East Bay. Visit a different one every week, and you’d still be busy for at least four months. Here’s a near-comprehensive list: Brooks Island 373-acre island just off the Richmond Inner Harbor shore. Features…
Eastshore State Park, an 8.5-mile-long ribbon of East Bay shoreline between the Bay Bridge and Richmond’s Marina Bay, is proof that many good things don’t come easily. The park is the result of 20 years of advocacy, negotiation, and planning that started with a small group of devoted activists and grew to include the State…
For many Bay Area commuters, the San Francisco Bay is unfortunately more an obstacle to be crossed during rush hour than the signature natural feature of our region. But a variety of shoreline parks and visitor centers offer us an opportunity to get close to, and learn more about, that body of water you’ve been…
The first time I began to pay closer attention to the small band of Columbian blacktail deer that coexist—more or less peacefully—with my neighborhood’s human residents was during the summer of 1997 while working outside on my house in Belmont on the San Francisco Peninsula. Here, as in many other Bay Area neighborhoods, human habitation…
The Bay Area is home to almost 150 species of butterflies, skippers, and moths—and to quite a few butterfly lovers as well. If you number yourself among that group, spring is high season. Here’s a sampling of local butterfly events: The Bay Area is home to the largest concentration of butterfly counts in the country,…
Late last year, the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) withdrew its controversial proposed Central Valley-Bay Area routes that would have girdled Henry Coe State Park and the adjacent Orestimba Wilderness. But while the heart of the park has been spared, John Woodbury of the Bay Area Open Space Council cautions that the two northerly Diablo…
Independent, nonprofit environmental journalism connecting people with nature in the San Francisco Bay Area.
