A perfect camping spot cleanses the soul—provided the soul can survive the despair-inducing project of actually booking the campsite. Two-thirds of campers in West Coast states now struggle to book ...

Bay Nature produces environmental journalism, public programs, and community events that connect people with nature in the San Francisco Bay Area.

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 ...

If you ever wander around wanting to know the names of plants and animals around you, Seek, a newly rebuilt app from the iNaturalist team at the California Academy of Sciences, now offers instant ...

Get the latest San Francisco Bay Area nature news delivered straight to your inbox. Bay Nature produces environmental journalism, public programs, and community events that connect people with nature ...

Get the latest San Francisco Bay Area nature news delivered straight to your inbox. Bay Nature produces environmental journalism, public programs, and community events that connect people with nature ...

The camping shortage is brutal, and the latest federal lands chaos doesn’t help. Streamlined permitting could help more Californians go camping—and rural landowners to care for their properties.

In the early 1950s, a Swedish dairy farmer and real estate magnate named Axel Adler came to California and fell in love with Big Sur. The rugged backcountry, the spring flowers, the redwoods tall over ...

In late October 1769, a group of bedraggled Spanish soldiers arrived overland in the territory of the Quiroste Indians on the San Mateo coast. Motivated by news of the encroaching Russian fur trade, ...

In July, Governor Jerry Brown signed into law a bill declaring the lace lichen—found along the Pacific coast and throughout the coast ranges—the state lichen. As of January 1, 2016, California will be ...

We’re peering down into a ravine carved out by Lagunitas Creek, looking for North American river otters. According to official California Department of Fish and Wildlife records, last updated in 1995, ...

The gums are mottled tan and brown like chicken bones, crowded together, the spaces between them choked with brush and hung with streamers of bark. Along with the sweet medicine smell of the trees, ...