25 Years of Change

When Bay Nature was born 25 years ago, the greater Bay Area stood at a tipping point. Environmental movements of the 1970s had galvanized a core group of people committed to bringing nature back. Thanks to key achievements—the Clean Water Act, the founding of land trusts, new state and federal funding—stinking landfills became parks, and areas once slated for bulldozing were protected. 

Now environmental groups had to do something with the places they had saved. “It went from ‘You’re not going to develop this’ to ‘We’re going to restore this,’” says David Loeb, who cofounded Bay Nature with Malcolm Margolin and was its publisher and editor in chief for 17 years. After news-grabbing purchases come far less glamorous years of developing restoration blueprints, applying for permits, cleaning up trash, and rearing native plants. Meanwhile the threats to nature have grown and changed, Loeb says. Development continues to encroach upon natural areas, but climate change now drives much of the restoration work. New invasive species are always arriving. Yet many places have been transformed for the better, and more people are invested in local nature. “It’s not just a specialized cadre,” Loeb says. “You have a whole ecosystem of people now.”