From November to February this past winter, biologists scoured lower Russian River tributaries in search of spawning coho salmon. The fish they were hoping to find were no ordinary salmon, but the hatchery-spawned offspring of wild salmon. The survivors from … Read more
Tag: restoration
History
Presidio, Past and Present
San Francisco’s Presidio is among the richest historical sites in the Bay region, or perhaps in all of California, a place with structures and changes in the landscape that go back to the arrival of the Spanish in 1776 and … Read more
Winter Issue 2007
The Napa Valley, and a History of Water and Wine
The Napa Valley was once a place of enormous natural bounty, fed by a vibrant, healthy river teeming with salmon and steelhead. Today, the valley is more famous for its managed bounty of grapes and fine wine. The river, hemmed in by vineyards, has too often been relegated to the status of a waste canal. But now a unique alliance of growers and scientists has come together to give the Napa’s upper reach a chance to regain some of its wildness.
Fall Issue 2006
Unearthing Mountain Lake
In 2001, bulldozers excavated two immense old army water tanks that long sat at the edge of Mountain Lake, a two-and-a-half-acre lake in San Francisco’s Presidio that’s one of only three natural lakes in the city. That same year, native … Read more
Spring Issue 2006
Threatened Steelhead
In late December 2005, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) reaffirmed the threatened status of Central California Coast steelhead trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss), including steelhead in Bay Area streams. NMFS added that the Central Coast steelhead population—first listed as threatened under … Read more
Spring Issue 2006
Growing a Greenway in Hunters Point
On San Francisco’s southeastern waterfront, Heron’s Head Park hosts nesting avocets, nature education programs, and the seeds of a revitalized city Bay shore.
Spring Issue 2006
Squawk of the Auklet
Not many people get to visit Año Nuevo Island—you need a rubber boat, a strong stomach, and a research permit. But sea lions haul out here in droves, and hundreds of seabirds—including rhinoceros auklets—come to breed on its few wind-swept acres. Today, erosion is threatening the auklets’ deep burrows, so researchers are working to restore this critical breeding site for these strange-looking seabirds.
Winter Issue 2006
Dance of the Cranes
The Cosumnes Preserve near I-5 in the Central Valley is a surprising mosaic of flooded rice fields teeming with birds, breached levees creating new forests, and a river reclaiming a landscape.
Winter Issue 2006
Restoration of Dutch Slough
In the city of Oakley, Dutch Slough has one foot on the reed-covered banks of the Delta in northeastern Contra Costa County and the other toe-to-toe with a housing development. Great blue herons, egrets, and blackbirds frequent this 1,166-acre freshwater … Read more
Stewardship
Update: Steelhead on Alameda Creek
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 … Read more
