Exploring Nature in the San Francisco Bay Area
Though California brown pelicans are the smallest of all pelicans, they are still very impressive birds, with wingspans occasionally as big as eight feet. Nearly driven to extinction by DDT, they’ve made a comeback but are now threatened by mysterious harmful algae blooms.
Along the coast of Northern California, nearly every stream and creek once had its own migratory population of coho salmon. Their return each winter, once as reliable as the next train or bus, now happens in fewer and fewer places each year. Where the fish do return, it’s often thanks to dedicated volunteers working to…
If you’re lucky some spring day in a few small patches of land near San Francisco, you may catch the glint of a male mission blue butterfly’s iridescent wings. If you are so fortunate, thank the determined conservationists who’ve been working to protect a small butterfly from big threats.
Imagine a time when buses and streetcars and trains are everywhere in San Francisco, when everyone takes transit and almost no one owns a private car. This was close to reality just 70 years ago. Since then the urban ecosystem has changed, and buses were outcompeted by private cars. Today, though, that urban ecosystem might…
Every once in a while, a small and unremarkable animal makes a huge impact on a landscape. So it is with the salt marsh harvest mouse around the edges of the San Francisco Bay. The endangered species status of the harvest mouse, along with that of the California clapper rail, has been a prime mover…
Reptile expert Robert Stebbins calls the San Francisco garter snake “one of the most beautiful serpents in North America.” The snake’s dazzling patterns of color serve as camouflage in its native habitat: the open marshes, stream banks, grasslands, and vernal pools of the San Francisco Peninsula. But the best camouflage is little help if your…
Independent, nonprofit environmental journalism connecting people with nature in the San Francisco Bay Area.
