By Olivia Rose The San Francisco Bay Watershed connects communities across more than 75,000 square miles throughout the state of California, and just tickles the southeast corner of Oregon. From the Sierra Nevada mountains down to the San Francisco Bay and ocean, this watershed provides drinking water for more that 25 million people, and is home to countless numbers of nonhuman living plants, insects, birds, fish, and animals. So how can we ensure that these communities, connected by water, are thriving and healthy? Well first, as with any good relationship, we need to check in first to see …
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This Earth Day Explore Your Watershed
EXPLORE YOUR WATERSHED The Explore your Watershed Earth Day event is back! Register to receive the exploration maps, discover the secret word and win prizes! 1. Wander Around the Watershed with our Watershed Exploration ChallengeJoin the Watershed Exploration Challenge! Explore your watershed through three different courses! Each course has a map and directions that lead you to checkpoints that explain natural and cultural history in the San Francisco Bay Area. Collect letters at each checkpoint to spell a word that you can enter to win a prize! If you aren’t able to wander …
What’s in your Watershed: Olympia Oysters
By Eric Hyman Don’t let the name fool you. Though most commonly referred to by the same name as the capital city on Washington state’s Puget Sound, Ostrea lurida, or the Olympia oyster, is native to the entire West Coast, from northern Baja up through British Columbia into southern Alaska. It also has the distinction of being the only oyster species native to our coast, as the two more commonly grown (and eaten) species, miyagis [Crassostrea gigas] and kumamotos [Crassostrea sikamea], are both Japanese imports brought to California in the early to mid 20th century. Those in …
What’s in your Watershed: The Fungus Among Us
By Paula Urtecho All it takes is a little precipitation and they magically begin to appear. Fantastical forms and colors, sometimes delicious and sometimes deadly, yes, I’m talking about mushrooms. Mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of fungi and if you think that all fungi are mushrooms, you’d be mistaken. Mushrooms are the exception not the rule in the wide fungal world, so when you come across one, stop to admire it. This time of year, you should run into at least a few whether on a lawn or a woodland edge. The majority of fungi go unnoticed as they may spend their entire …
What’s in your Watershed: Manzanitas
By Paula Urtecho We are squarely in winter, with cold, drizzly days that make us want to stay indoors. We tend to think of this season as a time to hunker down and go dormant, as many plants do. And yet, in the midst of winter, there is a group of native plants that defy the season and rather than becoming bare and unremarkable, they light up the cold, dark days with profusions of blooms. Manzanitas (Arctostaphylos spp.) are flowering as I write this article and they are waiting for you to get outside and witness their clusters of fragrant, urn-shaped blooms in habitats all over …
What’s in Your Watershed: Black Sage
By Paula Urtecho In arriving at a subject for this month’s What’s in your Watershed article, some colleagues and I were talking about ways of healing following this awful year and someone mentioned burning sage, or “smudging”, as a means of cleansing and renewing. Sage is a plant material that is often used for smudging and it got me thinking about the Salvia species that are found in bay area watersheds. Black sage (Salvia mellifera) is one of the most widespread of the California Salvia species, ranging from the coastal ranges in the bay area to Baja California. It is a “keystone …
What is in your watershed -Golden Eagles
By Dan Kirk The feeling of an eagle is the feeling of power. Spiritually, this is true for me, though on June 20, 1782, an eagle also became the emblem of the United States of America. So, the eagle is also tied to authority, governmental power and “freedom”. What a dishonor to these raptors who have been glorified to symbolize capitalism, the very thing that threatens their livelihood. This is, of course, the bald eagle. The big bird with a pure white head. My guess is that most people would say that the bald eagle is the largest raptor in the U.S. This is only arguably true, as some other …
Let it rain! Support The Watershed Project with your year end gift
After a long dry spell, the state has been blessed with much-needed rain to recharge our aquifers and get our creeks flowing again. The Watershed Project is so grateful for our faithful supporters who help us do the work we do. We have already received over $5,500 in donations this month and our first ever online silent auction raised over $2,300~a big thank you to all who participated! But we still have a long way to go to achieve our goal of $30,000 by the end of the year. Each year we bring hundreds of students to regional parks and other areas around the Bay Area. Some of these …
