Exploring Nature in the San Francisco Bay Area
These days, taxidermy and conservation might seem to run at cross purposes outside the dim halls of natural history museums. Those dioramas come from a time when field science was rather more dangerous to wildlife than it is today. Artist Aimee Baldwin’s unusual sculptures, which she calls vegan taxidermy, remove the inconvenient contradiction between loving…
Jeff Miller is a man on a mission: He is dedicated to being an effective voice for endangered species and preserving the Northern California habitats they depend on for survival. He currently pursues this mission as founding director of the Alameda Creek Alliance and as a conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity.
Longtime Merritt College teacher Ron Felzer helped blaze the trail of environmental education with hundreds of field seminars he’s taught since the 1970s. Felzer is semi-retired now, but he and other field educators at Merritt are facing the hardest budget struggles Felzer’s ever known, with fewer and fewer classes making it onto the college’s schedule.
Seeing a snowy egret along the Bay shore is certainly not news. But bird rescue volunteer Cindy Margulis watches them anyway, and a few weeks ago she noticed one with a band whose number she could read. Suddenly, an anonymous egret revealed itself to be a bird she’d helped rehab and rescue a year ago.
The ongoing debate over protected species at San Francisco’s Sharp Park golf course in Pacifica seems to have accelerated a long-simmering effort to enact a citywide biodiversity policy. But with enactment two years away, Sharp Park’s fate may be decided before the new rules take effect.
This coming weekend, you could count yourself among an elite few folks who use only bicycles and mass transit to summit the Bay Area’s three major peaks in one day. Or join in for just one or two. Or follow along and learn just how far you can get without a car.
Independent, nonprofit environmental journalism connecting people with nature in the San Francisco Bay Area.
