Find out how a little worm ties together the lives, and deaths, of several ocean animals, from sea otters to surf scoters to the mole crabs that live in great numbers in the sands of many beaches.
The Ocean | Wildlife

Standing sentinel near the highest point in the East Bay Regional Park District, an ancient blue oak is our window into a spectrum of life in the orbit of one grand tree. From passing raptors and nesting acorn woodpeckers and browsing deer, we zoom in to the strange and colorful world of the gall wasps. These tiny insects are first-rate engineers, manipulating their host trees into creating peculiar shelters for the wasps' larvae, in often-fanciful shapes reminiscent of sea urchins, dunce caps, and more.
Botany | Wildlife

Clad in bike helmets and ratty clothes, staff and volunteers with the San Francisco Bird Observatory brave the South Bay's raucous seagull nesting colonies, where the explosion of breeding gulls threatens to push aside less aggressive species.
Wildlife

On a hot July afternoon last year, UC Davis graduate students Alpa Wintzer and Mariah Meek dipped glass jars and nets into Suisun Slough at Suisun City's public dock in Solano County. They were capturing small gelatinous creatures that look and act like jellyfish. These jelly look-alikes seemed to be everywhere and are beautiful to watch. But they're also a problem...
The Bay | Wildlife

The Marine Mammal Center, one of the foremost wildlife rescue organizations on the West Coast, has a new home where you can see a lot more of what the center's staff and volunteers do to care for and study injured and ill seals, sea lions, and other marine mammals.
Archive | Wildlife

In May 2009, the Bay Area--and the nation--lost one of its most eloquent and effective advocates for open space preservation and access. Brian O'Neill, superintendent of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA) since 1986, died of complications from heart surgery...
Stewardship

Kids take the Creek Seeker Express to Martinez to learn about the creeks that run through our neighborhoods, while a new juried exhibit shows off designers' ideas for confronting sea level rise.
Climate Change | The Bay

About one-eighth of California's land area is covered in oak woodlands. Despite that vast acreage, it's hard to be an oak in California. Threats to oak survival include the effects of fire management, increased pressure from booming rodent and deer populations, disease, drought, competition from exotic plants, and the largest threat of all, development...
Botany

If you’ve ever hiked Sweeney Ridge, or biked the Marin Headlands, or birdwatched at Fort Funston, or been seduced by wildflowers at Mori Point, Brian O’Neill has touched your life. And he will continue to touch it, even though the long-time superintendent of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA) passed away on May 13, […]
Uncategorized

I think the mantis must taste like a high Aas it scalds through an alto sax: tangy, wounding, green.The tamarisk branch sounds her with a single breath. The wasp gall, speckled as a festive egg, andfuchsia stars full of midge that bloom like urchins,unexpectedly, on the underside of leaves are more the work of a […]
Art and Design

Using kite-mounted cameras and field microscopes, an architecture professor and a retired microbiologist have uncovered surprising diversity in an unassuming ditch next to a railroad grade that cuts across the South Bay salt ponds near Alviso. From vivid oranges laced with bird tracks to bright greens bubbling with oxygen exhaled by cyanobacteria, there's complexity and wonder waiting at the Weep, from several hundred feet in the air down to the microscopic level.
The Bay

Memories of the 1930s in what is now Samuel P. Taylor State Park.
History

Which bird that migrates to or through the Bay Area travels the farthest to get here from its breeding grounds?
Ask the Naturalist | Wildlife

Spend a night out as a bat and you'll be amazed by these critters' abilities to "see" in the dark and fly nimbly as they catch fast-flying bugs.
Wildlife

Wake up and smell the tarweeds, the scent of summer.
Botany

An innovative program uses albatrosses as “winged ambassadors” to help middle school students learn about the distant consequences of plastics that end up in our ocean.
Pollution | The Ocean

Put your boat or raft in the river above Healdsburg and follow a wild, green thread flowing through an altered landscape.
Paddling | Wildlife