You don’t need bait to catch an Alameda whipsnake—just luck, and a low, fifty-foot-long fiberboard fence staked into the ground. If a snake encounters this fence, it will naturally respond by running ...

A battle-cry of a screech was issued above my car. I looked up to see a flurry of talons and feathers over a telephone pole.

A white-headed woodpecker stirs the dawn quiet, hammering at a patch of charred bark stretching 15 feet up the trunk of a ponderosa pine. The first streaks of sun light the tree’s green crown, sending ...

Later this year, the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band—Indigenous people whose ancestors lived throughout the river valleys that stretch inland from Monterey Bay—will reclaim land within the tribe’s historical ...

Jeff Miller stands atop the fish barrier at the base of Niles Community Park as they rescue stranded steelhead in 2016. (Courtesy of Jeff Miller) In the summer of 1997, Jeff Miller went for a long ...

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 ...

Along the marsh’s edge at Cache Creek Nature Preserve, 20 miles northwest of Sacramento, Diana Almendariz harvests bundles of tule (Schoenoplectus acutus)— green, smooth cylinders up to 10 feet high.

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 ...

One of Kimberly Stevenot’s responsibilities as a kid was to hang out by the side of the road and look for park rangers—or anyone else who looked like they might be trouble. The Tuolumne Rancheria, ...

The dredger Njord runs 24 hours a day, scooping up sediment to keep channels navigable for big ships. Now that sediment will help save our shorelines. (Sonya Bennett-Brandt) As I arrived at the Port ...

This article has been conserved for you by Sonoma Land Trust. Learn more about our Online Article Conservation Program here. The lazy waters of Willow Creek flow under a small highway bridge just a ...