Magazine Features

Taking the Measure of Success at the South Bay Salt Ponds

It is two decades now since some 23 square miles of South Bay salt evaporation ponds became public property. Eighty-eight old impoundments were to be remade into habitat for birds and other creatures—and into a superior flood-control buffer for communities beside the rising Bay. Progress since then has been slow, and fast. Slow, because relatively small swathes of territory have been visibly, obviously changed. Slow, because a whole set of...
Ducks. Photo: Rick Lewis

Delta Restoration Baseline Revealed

When the Delta Stewardship Council amended its Delta Plan and established a goal of restoring 60,000 to 80,000 acres of wetland above a 2007 baseline by 2050, it raised some fundamental questions: How much of that goal has already been met, and where? A recent study, presented at the Delta Plan Interagency Implementation Committee Restoration Subcommittee’s first-ever Delta Restoration Forum in February, provides some answers. The amendments to Chapter Four...
Techniques used to add sediment to the Montezuma Wetlands included hosing it from a sediment laden barge. Photo: Darren Graffuis

More Mud Please for Novato Baylands

Imagine a complex of tidal wetlands skirting San Pablo Bay unbroken from China Camp to Mare Island, providing vital wildlife habitat and protecting inland communities from storm surge and sea-level rise. With stretches of this shoreline formerly diked and drained (or in Hamilton Wetlands’ case, converted to a military airfield), reconnecting it may have once seemed unlikely. Yet today just two gaps remain, one of which is included in a...
A freshly groomed bank far left. Some of the old revetment now forms riffles mid-river. Photo: Daniel McGlynn

Setbacks and Swallows for the Sacramento River

Adam Henderson spreads out an atlas with colorful pages on the closed trunk of his white sedan. It’s an early morning in February and the sun is just high enough to start burning off a blanket of fog that’s settled among the nearby willows and cottonwoods. Behind us, across a gravel parking lot, is a gate that’s an access point for the Sacramento River National Wildlife Refuge, controlled and maintained...
Treatment near Bair Island with airboat. Photo: Drew Kerr, ISP

The Battle for Native Cordgrass

Now in its 17th year of monitoring and treatment, the San Francisco Estuary Invasive Spartina Project remains a uniquely ambitious invasive plant removal effort: from its timeline (indefinite) and size (covering 70,000 acres with more than 150 landowners and managers) to its budget (about $50 million to date) and use of technology (genetic testing, GIS, airboats, helicopters). It’s been an effective one, too, reducing stands of invasive cordgrass in the...

VA Agreement Highlights Habitat Questions

Restoring marsh and wetland habitat can have significant benefits for dozens of species throughout the Bay and Delta—that’s beyond dispute. But when it comes to saving the Estuary’s most imperiled fish, how much habitat improvements can help in the absence of dramatically increased freshwater flows is a question that has dogged and divided scientists and policy makers for years. As the State Water Resources Control Board considers the latest proposal...
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ESTUARY News is the 30-year-old regional magazine of the San Francisco Estuary Partnership and its myriad partners around the Bay and Delta. Written by professional, independent journalists, it provides in-depth, silo-crossing coverage of the environmental, restoration.

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