Last week, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service added the Franciscan manzanita to the federal endangered species list and proposed new critical habitat in San Francisco for this famous flowering shrub. The critical habitat designation, though only in draft form … Read more
Tag: endangered species
Stewardship
Looking for that special Tat? Bay Area Millennials inked with endangered species
The name of the project is Tatzoo. The game is a good-natured competition among Bay Area Millennials concerned about local endangered species, and not afraid to show it — permanently.
Stewardship
Endangered Antioch Butterfly Needs a Hand
On a 55-acre lot in Antioch, a few biologists and a crew of volunteers are waging a battle to protect a vanishing bit of the natural world. The cause isn’t easily seen: No whales are threatened and the public isn’t in danger of losing a grove of old-growth redwoods. Instead, an endangered and rapidly dwindling species of butterfly teeters on the brink of extinction. And this week, you can help.
Summer Issue 2010
Habitat and Humanity
With millions of people and millions of acres of open space, the Bay Area is a lively, and sometimes uneasy, blend of wild and urban. In the East Bay, dozens of rare species — from birds along the Bay to wildflowers in the hills — survive against the odds thanks in part to the East Bay Regional Park District, whose staff does everything from creating nesting islands to clearing trees for the sake of imperiled plants and animals.
Spring Issue 2010
The Presidio’s Miracle Manzanita
A construction site along one of San Francisco’s busiest thoroughfares hardly seems like a good spot to find one of our region’s rarest plants. But that’s just where a passing biologist saw a manzanita thought extinct for decades. And now a whole lot of people are trying to make sure this lone survivor isn’t the last Franciscan manzanita.
Winter Issue 2010
Public Transit and Other Endangered Species
Might the streets we travel have once been migratory corridors for other species, now displaced and threatened by our urban ways? Did butterflies pass by this way, looking for mates, or did salmon swim up a creek long since buried? Could we once again share this landscape and these corridors with other species, if our own daily migrations became more communal–a few buses in place of a swarm of cars, a single train where SUVs now reign?
Winter Issue 2009
A Good Big Year
December 31, 2008, marked the end of the 2008 Endangered Species Big Year in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA). The yearlong event was a call to action for people to observe, and do something to preserve, each of … Read more
Wildlife
GGNRA Big Year Comes to a Close
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.
Summer Issue 2008
The Saved and the Dammed
For better and worse, the upper reach of the Pilarcitos watershed on the Peninsula was dammed to supply water to San Francisco in the 1860s. The surrounding land has been protected and kept off-limits to the public ever since, allowing rare species to thrive here. That includes the marbled murrelet, which nests only in old-growth conifers, such as Douglas fir. But the dam and other impacts also leave less water in the creek for oceangoing steelhead. Now, a diverse group of stakeholders has come together to chart a brighter future for the fish and the creek.
Winter Issue 2008
A Big Year for Rare Species
From Mori Point in Pacifica to Lands End in San Francisco and all the way up to Tomales Bay, the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA) forms a patchwork of wild lands and historic sites in a region that is … Read more
