An unexpected darkness has recently fallen over the seafloor of the Northern California coast – the shadows cast by bull kelp. The giant marine alga nearly vanished after a perfect storm of environmental and ecological…
Posts published by “Alastair Bland”
When Gov. Jerry Brown announced two weeks ago at an Oakland press conference that he would radically downsize a 100,000-acre wetland restoration job, environmentalists and water policy activists blew the foul whistle. The habitat enhancement…
The drought has reduced California’s water supply to an all-time low, prompting officials to mandate strict cutbacks in urban communities. Farmers, who went unaffected by the regulations, have said they have already made enough sacrifices…
In Southern and Central California, nearly 2,000 California sea lion pups have struggled ashore this winter, starving and lost because the ocean has been unable to provide enough calories for their mothers to adequately feed…
Last summer, Berkeley fisherman Mike Hudson enjoyed some of the most profitable salmon fishing he had seen in a decade. Dense schools of big fish congregated along the Bay Area coast through the spring and…
About 160,000 people in the Sacramento area are uninsured even though they could be signed up for the state’s low-income healthcare plan, Medi-Cal. Instead, they are paying bills from their own pockets, or incurring costs…
Salmon are one of nature’s miracles, a resource of protein and nitrogen that feeds entire ecosystems, both marine and terrestrial. Far inland, within river basins of the Pacific Northwest, their biomass nourishes the soil, while…
Traveling may be thrilling, exhausting, dangerous, mind-opening and, occasionally, boring. But more than anything else, going to faraway places is easier talked about than done. Thus, we find history riddled with quiet rumors and full-fledged…
I left my baggage at a hostel in central Cuenca and rode east, on a small quiet highway that climbed into the beautiful green hills and would eventually lead over a small mountain range and…