Bay Area Nature & Science Blog

As the San Francisco Bay Area Network coho and steelhead monitoring crew wraps up the 2024-2025 spawner season, we are looking back at one of the busiest winters since the beginning of this monitoring program! We observed increased coho spawning in all three creeks we monitor—Olema, Pine Gulch, and Redwood Creeks. Olema took the cake with the strongest cohort of all.

For two weeks in October 2024, the San Francisco Bay Area Network fish crew travelled daily to Lake Sonoma’s Warm Springs Hatchery. There, we marked approximately 3,000 juvenile coho for release into Redwood Creek. This effort was time well spent, as these fish present unique research opportunities—as well as a chance to increase the future viability of the small wild population in Redwood Creek.

Work on the Montara Prairie Renewal Project began in Fall 2024. The restoration project aims to protect and enhance coastal grasslands in the Montara Parcel of Rancho Corral de Tierra. We have already completed pre-restoration monitoring, and removal of several acres of invasive shrubs and conifers within historic grassland footprints.

Meet Justin Jang and Val Kostelnik, Watershed Stewards Program corpsmembers who recently began 10.5-month terms with the salmonids monitoring team based at Point Reyes National Seashore.

Each summer, the San Francisco Bay Area Network fisheries crew spends a majority of its time in three Marin County, CA streams, Olema Creek, Pine Gulch Creek, and Redwood Creek, monitoring juvenile coho and steelhead populations. After completing this season's surveys, we found that 2024 was a decent year for juvenile coho!

Leaf-cutter ants may get all the nature documentary attention, but have you ever seen a leaf-cutter bee? They are no less amazing, tidily snipping pieces of leaves or petals and using them, sometimes along with tree resin, to build their uniquely shaped burrows. The Bay Area is home to an endemic leaf-cutter bee species—the San Francisco leaf-cutter bee. But no one had recorded this special status species since 1980—until now!

California condors, known for their nearly 10-foot wingspan and near extinction in the 1980s, nest in caves on cliffs or sometimes in large redwood cavities. The iconic rocks of Pinnacles National Park, forged by volcanic activity, provide great nesting sites for condors. Currently, there are nine condor nestlings in central California, three of which are in nests inside the park.

The falcon monitoring team at Pinnacles National Park began their field season in January. They started off noting which pairs of prairie and peregrine falcons were staking out which cliff faces as nesting territories. Now, after recording all of the season’s small dramas, they’ve watched the newest generation of falcons take to the skies. It’s on the small side, but a bit bigger than last year’s.

This year, the San Francisco Bay Area Inventory & Monitoring Network’s Botany Team has been confronted by a tenacious trio of problematic species collectively referred to as “broom”.

On July 8th, National Park Service monitoring volunteer Wanda Bonneville started her first breeding western snowy plover survey on Drakes Spit. She didn't expect to find any signs of nesting, or even any adult snowy plovers. Neither did park snowy plover biologists. Researchers haven’t seen any nesting activity on Drakes Spit since the late 1980s. Well, not only did Bonneville find a snowy plover nest, she found one that was in the midst of hatching!

This elephant seal breeding season, the single-day cow count peaked at 1,159 on 1/27, which is similar to last year’s peak count of 1,165. Pup counts were higher than the five-year average this season. This is likely due to the lack of strong storms this winter and thus high pup survival.

Federally endangered coho salmon and threatened steelhead trout are large, charismatic fish that play crucial roles in both stream and ocean ecosystems. The National Park Service Inventory and Monitoring Program and its partners began monitoring coho and steelhead in Golden Gate National Recreation Area and Point Reyes National Seashore in 1998.

Many Americans are reluctant to talk with one another about climate change. This may have a chilling effect on addressing its impacts in and outside national parks. Online information and storytelling could encourage meaningful dialogue.

This page discusses geology at Muir Woods.

Buried in debris for decades, Drakes Estero is now one of the few remaining undeveloped estuaries on the U.S. Pacific coast. After a massive cleanup, scientists tracked the regrowth of an eelgrass community there—and found it transformed.

National Park Service and Marin County Parks staff and volunteers counted 682 harbor seal pups in 2024, well below the long-term average of 1,052 pups. And just like during the breeding season, the molt season count of all seals was the lowest on record. Only 1,788 seals hauled out to molt during the summer of 2024. That's about a 50 percent decline from the long-term average of 3,366 molting seals. Reasons for the declines remain largely mysterious.

Visitors to Muir Woods National Monument may be lucky enough to catch a glimpse of endangered coho salmon in Redwood Creek. Read on for the answers to several frequently asked questions about these fascinating fish.

The northern spotted owl been declining in vast parts of its range. Marin County, California, is an exception. As a result, Marin is an area of particular conservation interest. But successful conservation requires understanding the threats species face, and how those threats might change over time. So researchers recently did a vulnerability assessment of Marin's spotted owls to get answers about their exposure and sensitivity to threats.

The National Park Service Youth and Young Adult Programs Division co-hosted the virtual event “Then/Now/Tomorrow: Empowering Our Future Conservation and Climate Stewards” on April 24, 2024, for National Park Week, alongside The Corps Network, the National Park Foundation, and AmeriCorps. A panel of six current and former corps members shared their experiences working and serving on public lands.

Blanca A. Stransky was awarded a Regional Cultural Resource Award for skillfully integrating cultural resource concerns into the broader planning efforts at the park. In 2023, she led a whole-park effort to address safety concerns in Bear Gulch, where park housing, offices, and the museum collection are threatened by wildfire.