Exploring Nature in the San Francisco Bay Area
Inspired by a teaching stint with inner-city kids 20 years ago, English-born teacher Mandi Billinge founded an organization that gives thousands of Bay Area children their first hands-on experience with nature.
In west Petaluma, a hilly, treeless plot of land will be declared the Paula Lane Nature Preserve next month because of the tenacious work of local residents who were inspired by an equally tenacious creature — the American badger.
This year, five burrowing owls have been documented at the Berkeley marina. The small ground-dwelling birds spend much of the day sitting alertly near their burrows, astonishingly close to all those humans with dogs, kites and strollers.
Now you see it. Now you don’t. Jim Denevan creates art –very large art — out of the most ephemeral media: patterns in sand which will wash away with the tide, tracings in the earth that will disappear with the first rain, etchings upon icy lakes that must melt with the coming of spring. Beach…
Scientists and citizen scientists may share a love of nature, but they have few tools to exchange information. A new online tool called the Bay Area Bio-Atlas seeks to deepen those links in an effort to provide a real-time field guide to the region’s flora and fauna.
As part of his Point Reyes Walkabout, Jules Evens covers 10 miles on the Estero Trail, spots a bobcat, and logs a record-early sighting of a common butterfly, possibly thanks to climate change.
Independent, nonprofit environmental journalism connecting people with nature in the San Francisco Bay Area.
