Yellowjackets usually stick close to the nest, within about 1,000 feet, so when you see a lot of them at once, a nest is ...

This article is from bioGraphic, an independent magazine about nature and regeneration powered by the California Academy of Sciences. I see my first sunflower sea star in a plastic container barely ...

Audrey Fusco can’t help getting excited at the sight of one monarch butterfly these days. In the spring sun in Bolinas, one poses briefly on the spire of a tall purple flower, wings aglow in the ...

This piece was originally published in KneeDeep Times, a digital magazine featuring stories from the frontlines of climate resilience in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. The mud at Richmond, ...

Lifelong San José resident Apollo-Genesis Braddock-Layton has fished the Pacific Coast’s shore for as long as he can remember—catching horseshoe crabs, smelt, and stingrays while listening to his ...

Pastures are visible from a derelict milking barn at the historic D Ranch, founded in 1870 and abandoned after the creation of Point Reyes National Seashore. (Lisa M. Krieger) In the gently rolling ...

Before it was a city, much of San Francisco was a dunescape. Nearly a third of it was covered in sand. Western winds swept the sand into heaps and piles—one 80-foot dune rested in the future Union ...

During the Bay Area’s damp winters, we can’t afford to be fair-weather hikers. Fortunately, some hikes in the Bay Area are best enjoyed in the rainy winter months. While vistas might be engulfed in ...

In the shallows of south Lake Tahoe, diver Brandon Berry is slurping up clouds of algae with an underwater vacuum cleaner. Snorkeling above, I can hear his Darth Vader breaths better than I can see ...

The environment is on the ballot this November—and not just in the presidential race. Amidst a plethora of other measures, Californians will vote on Proposition 4, the so-called climate bond, which ...

In dense fog 30 miles out from the Golden Gate Bridge, the 50,000-pound humpback whale’s leap out of the water is almost totally silent, maybe 300 feet away. Its motion is as smooth and natural as an ...