Exploring Nature in the San Francisco Bay Area
Steelhead are coming to spawn in a stream near you. If you’re lucky, you may see some making their way upstream.
On a typical walk through a BART station, it’s hard to ignore the advertisements covering the available wall space. But a few ads are most striking in their mystery: A Steller’s jay? A black-tailed deer? Both with nothing but a subtle BART train in the background. No message. No sell. What are these all about?
Recently, people have been finding debilitated, or even dead, brown pelicans up and down the West Coast. Initially baffled, scientists now believe the birds’ expanding range clashed with an unusually severe winter storm in December 2008.
What brings together professionals and amateur naturalists, butterfly specialists and evolutionary biologists, children and adults, all in the name of endangered species? Try the Golden Gate National Recreation Area’s Big Year for Endangered Species.
Fall is harvest time for crab fishermen, who place “crab pots” offshore to catch Dungeness crabs. The crabs, the largest species on the West Coast, have a complex lifecycle that takes them from the open ocean to the Bay and back again.
Every winter, coho salmon return to coastal streams, though only 1 percent of the half million fish that once filled local streams. But you can still see them, and even help them survive.
Independent, nonprofit environmental journalism connecting people with nature in the San Francisco Bay Area.
