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January-March 2004

FEATURES

Illustration by Laura Cunningham

Photo by J.W. Wall

Photo by Mike Wood

Where the Elk and the Antelope Played: Reflections on Bay Area Megafauna
by David Rains Wallace, art by Laura Cunningham
A million years ago, in a climate much like ours today, the land around an ancestral bay teemed with large animals: mammoths and saber-tooth cats; bears, horses, and peccaries. By 300 years ago, the mammoths were gone, but grizzlies, elk, condor, and pronghorn were abundant. European settlers wiped out many of those animals, but programs to reintroduce some of them are now under way. Which raises the question: What should a healthy, native megafauna look like now?
Megafauna Resources

BayBoards: Two Centuries in Seven Blocks on Fifth Street
by Robin Grossinger, Elise Brewster & Susan Schwartzenberg
In a span of just 150 years, a five-story sand dune has become a five-story parking garage, and a large tidal marsh has disappeared beneath a grid of city streets. Artwork installed on bus shelters and a billboard along San Francisco's Fifth Street help reveal the secrets of a recently buried landscape.

Out in the Tules: The Freshwater Marsh of Coyote Hills
by Joe Eaton
The rounded hills by the Bay are the first thing that catch your eye at Coyote Hills Regional Park. But the brackish and freshwater marshes behind the hills have a charm of their own. Remnant of a once-extensive mix of tidal and freshwater wetlands that sustained a thriving Ohlone community for several thousand years, the marsh is now home to marsh wrens, muskrats, and one of the East Bay's few remaining patches of tules.

DEPARTMENTS

Bay View
Letter from the editor

Ear to the Ground
News from the conservation community and the natural world
by Leah Messinger

MAD ABOUT MUSHROOMS
Signs of the Season: Finding the Fungi by Matthew Bettelheim
A good rain sends all manner of mushrooms pushing their way up from underground. Here are some of the places around the Bay Area where you can admire the beauty, diversity, and per-versity of these charismatic fungi.

Ask the Naturalist
Why do mushrooms come in so many shapes and colors? by Dr. Dennis E. Desjardin

Naturalist's Notebook: They Can Hide But They Can't Run
Tips on drawing and identifying mushrooms in the field.
by Jack Laws

Of Another Nature
Poem by Ruth L. Schwartz: Oakland Sky After a Week of Rain
Art by Lotus Green: Greys

Upcoming Events

Outdoor Classroom
A calendar of nature-related events around the Bay