Exploring Nature in the San Francisco Bay Area
2005 “By the Water’s Edge: A Chronicle of Two Creeks” Our January-March 2005 issue highlighted the riparian habitats of the East Bay’s Alameda Creek watershed. Recently, the Alameda Creek Alliance (ACA) received $1 million from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation for the construction of fish screens and the removal of an inflatable dam. In…
At Vasco Regional Preserve, stone balls the size of dinosaur eggs litter the landscape, the winds burrow into stone, and cup-sized pools tucked into sandstone outcrops teem with fairies (of the crustacean variety). The preserve, owned by the East Bay Regional Park District, just recently opened its doors to the public after a trial run…
The East Bay Regional Park District and other parks agencies own and operate an impressive array of shoreline parks in the East Bay. Visit a different one every week, and you’d still be busy for at least four months. Here’s a near-comprehensive list: Brooks Island 373-acre island just off the Richmond Inner Harbor shore. Features…
Eastshore State Park, an 8.5-mile-long ribbon of East Bay shoreline between the Bay Bridge and Richmond’s Marina Bay, is proof that many good things don’t come easily. The park is the result of 20 years of advocacy, negotiation, and planning that started with a small group of devoted activists and grew to include the State…
For many Bay Area commuters, the San Francisco Bay is unfortunately more an obstacle to be crossed during rush hour than the signature natural feature of our region. But a variety of shoreline parks and visitor centers offer us an opportunity to get close to, and learn more about, that body of water you’ve been…
The first time I began to pay closer attention to the small band of Columbian blacktail deer that coexist—more or less peacefully—with my neighborhood’s human residents was during the summer of 1997 while working outside on my house in Belmont on the San Francisco Peninsula. Here, as in many other Bay Area neighborhoods, human habitation…
Independent, nonprofit environmental journalism connecting people with nature in the San Francisco Bay Area.
