- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Gov. Jerry Brown asked Californians to cut water use by 20 percent a year ago. Officials at the State Water Resources Board announced in March that water users haven't come close to meeting the conservation goal. To help homeowners save water while maintaining a beautiful lawn, UC Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR) horticulture advisors recommend “grasscycling” turf at homes, schools, parks and businesses this spring and summer.
In short, grasscycling involves leaving grass clippings on the lawn, rather than collecting them in a bag and shipping them off to a...
- Author: Katherine E. Kerlin
Can't live with them, can't live without them — at least not at first when it comes to the relationship between some invasive and endangered species.
Efforts to eradicate invasive species increasingly occur side by side with programs focused on recovery of endangered ones. But what should resource managers do when the eradication of an invasive species threatens an endangered species?
In a recent study published in the journal Science, researchers at the UC Davis examine that conundrum now taking place in the San Francisco Bay. The California...
- Author: Brook Gamble
From the 13,400 monarch butterflies currently overwintering in Pacific Grove’s Monterey pine trees, to the salmon migrating upstream from the ocean to their natal river in our watersheds, to the western fence lizard doing pushups on your concrete curb, we are always surrounded by nature in this state. California is one of the most biologically diverse places on Earth, providing a home for over 30,000 species of insects, 63 freshwater fish, 46 amphibians, 96 reptiles, 563 birds, 190 mammals and more than 8,000 plants!
E.O. Wilson, conservation biologist, sociobiologist, and the world’s leading authority on ants says that “Nature holds the key to our aesthetic,...
- Author: Marissa Palin
California forests aren’t natural anymore. Over time, human impacts such as logging and fire suppression have left forests more prone to diseases, insects and wildfires. UC Cooperative Extension received a competitive grant from Cal Fire to launch a forest management training program for private landowners to help protect California’s forests.
There are approximately 33 million acres of forest in...
- Author: Ann Brody Guy
- Adapted from an article by: Sarah Yang
The competition between farmers and fish for precious water in California is intensifying in wine country, say biologists at the University of California, Berkeley.
A recently published study links higher death rates for threatened juvenile steelhead trout with low water levels in the summer and the amount of vineyard acreage upstream. Like salmon, steelhead trout migrate from freshwater streams to the ocean before returning to their birthplace to spawn. Steelhead trout in Southern California and the upper Columbia River are endangered, and several other populations, including those in Northern California, are...
