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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

The day after Donald Trump’s re-election, Ann Willis, the California regional director for American Rivers, sent an email to her staff. “We all have to remember that we have all made a commitment to ...

A San Francisco crabber for 15 years, Nick Krieger arrived at the Bay Model Visitor Center in Sausalito a bit late after a morning of teaching surf lessons. He noticed that attendance was sparse, and ...

On a gray early March morning in Sonoma County, everything is dripping. Somewhere, out of sight, in hollow trees and rocky caves, tiny American black bear cubs nurse in the dark. Born at less than a ...

Ukiah Fire Chief Doug Hutchison knew what kind of hassle the city was getting into by acquiring some 763 acres of overgrown, fire-starved forest on the city’s western edge—but it seemed worth it.

Durrell Kapan keeps checking his Yeti cooler of 13 butterflies. He caught them yesterday at Garrapata State Park, and checked into a seaside motel for the night, where he fed them a nectar-like ...

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 ...