Exploring Nature in the San Francisco Bay Area
As the California Supreme Court wrote, “CEQA does not require an agency to consider the impact of existing conditions on future project users.”
If you look up the Arrowhead Marsh along the Oakland shoreline on Google Maps, the arrowhead shape is striking. If you look closer, you see that the eastern half of the marsh is noticeably darker in color than the western half; there seems to be an imaginary line bisecting the marsh, and there might as…
Cape Horn is a concrete and earth-filled dam on the upper Eel River in Mendocino County. About 140 miles north of San Francisco, the dam was built in 1907 and blocks the waters of the Eel to form the Van Arsdale Reservoir. Part of the Potter Valley hydro-electricity project along with the Scott Dam 11…
Basking sharks can be over 30 feet long and are characterized by their enormous gill rakers and three-foot tall dorsal fins. But these mysterious, massive, filter-feeding cousins of the great white shark aren’t just a scientific curiosity – they also seem to be vanishing from California and the rest of the Eastern North Pacific. The…
Newts carry enough toxin to kill a dozen people. Yet in the Bay Area garter snakes feast on them without harm.
It is now a given that the health of an ecosystem can be measured by the abundance and diversity of the native organisms able to survive and thrive there – i.e., its level of biodiversity. The concept has now even worked its way into official California state policy with the 2018 California Biodiversity Initiative. But…
Independent, nonprofit environmental journalism connecting people with nature in the San Francisco Bay Area.
