Photo:San Dimas Raptor Rescue Center/AP. Jackie the bald eagle at the San Dimas Raptor Rescue Center in San Dimas, California, on 18 July 2026.
Wild creatures do many of the same things people do — for instance, hunting down food, raising offspring. And they face daily challenges. Eagles, for example. Those who watch live streams of eagles often find themselves identifying or finding inspiration to persevere in tough times.
That’s why an eagle who lived in California lake was widely mourned when she died.
Dani Angulano writes at the Guardian, “The bald eagle Jackie made her home on the shore of southern California’s Big Bear Lake for most of her 14 years. But her death earlier this week drew international attention.
“The Los Angeles Times described her as ‘arguably the world’s most famous bald eagle.’ For years, millions of people tuned into a live stream of Jackie’s nest, watching her rearhereaglets, work out life with her mate, Shadow, and, perhaps most memorably, incubate her eggs while almost completely buried in snow.
“She developed a huge following of devoted fans who tuned in day after day. And she became a pioneer of non-profit fundraising, showing the conservation movement a new path to reaching the broader public and connecting people directly with nature.
“Following Jackie’s death [in August], Friends of Big Bear Valley, the environmental education non-profit that manages the live stream, received thousands of comments and emails from people sharing what the eagle meant to them, said Jenny Voisard, the group’s media manager. …
“Trisha Dale Green, a local wildlife photographer who has been observing eagles for nearly two decades, runs a Facebook page sharing her photos of the raptors to about 177,000 followers. … ‘These eagles have changed many people’s lives, including my own,’ she said.
“Gloria Ackman, a retired English teacher in southern Illinois, had occasionally tuned in for years. But after her husband was diagnosed with terminal cancer in February 2025, the couple began watching constantly. The cameras offered a glimpse of another world, she said.
“ ‘These magnificent eagles face so many challenges. Yet they stayed focused on each other, on their eaglets and on survival,’ Ackman said. ‘It was just so inspirational, their determination and resilience. I like to think that we embraced those qualities ourselves as we were dealing with the hardest thing we’ve ever had to. … It doesn’t matter what your politics are, what your religion is, what your country is – you can look at these eagles and just be awed by nature,’ she said. …
“Like P-22 with the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing, Jackie and Shadow inspired conservation efforts. Friends of Big Bear Valley raised $10m in funding this year, including a $5.5m donation from the OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman and his wife, Anna, to permanently conserve land on the lake.
“The group fundraised for months to buy a 63-acre (25-hectare) plot of land, known as Moon Camp, that serves as a key ecological corridor and included the ‘last undisturbed shoreline’ on the lake. …
“After the death of Ackman’s husband in December, she kept tuning into the live stream. She celebrated when Jackie and Shadow laid a second clutch after the first was eaten by ravens earlier this year. And, in Jackie’s absence, she has continued to watch Shadow carry on without his mate.
“ ‘Shadow is standing tall there on the pine, looking out over Big Bear, and seeing his big, beautiful world, and that gives me that inspiration to carry on and still see that beauty,’ she said.”
Photo: Shandra Back. Danny Chaparro at Bayer farm in Santa Rosa, California’s Roseland neighborhood where he hosts outdoor activities for young people through LandPaths.
A California organization is doing some great work with young people drawn to gangs.
Shandra Back writes at the Guardian about LandPaths, which “takes at-risk youth out of their concrete, urban environments and into the natural one, offering many their first encounters with the land.” She begins with one of the participants.
“Alejandro Elizarraraz stands in the middle of a grassy field with a saw in his hands. On a hillside overlooking the lush forests of northern California, the 18-year-old cuts back brush and branches as a way to help prevent wildfires.
“ ‘We’re going to give the tree a high fade cuz it’s 10 feet,’ he said, grinning. …
“Wiping rain and sweat from his brow, he leans into the last branch, hears a crack, and lets out a whoop as it falls to the ground. His black Nike Air Force squelch through mud as he carries the pieces to a large pile, which will later be burned to eliminate fuel for future wildfires.
“He grew up in the northern California city of Santa Rosa, nearly 60 miles north of San Francisco. While the surrounding region is best known as a destination for wine, redwoods and rugged coastline, the city also has high levels of gang activity.
“The city has also been touted for its innovative youth violence prevention work. Now, it’s pioneering a new strategy: outdoor youth violence‑prevention programs that use the natural beauty of the region as a way to mitigate gun violence.
“Working with the city, LandPaths, an environmental conservancy non-profit, takes at-risk youth out of their concrete, urban environments and into the natural one, where they hike, camp and explore the natural wonders of Sonoma county, offering many of them their first encounters with the land. …
Elizarraraz pulls back the hood of his poncho for a better view of the mist-filled hills. ‘Like, damn,’ he said. ‘I feel amazed when I see all of this.
“Ocean Song/Meyers preserve, the coastal prairie and oak woodland where LandPaths hosts some of its programming, is only a 45‑minute drive from the neighborhood Elizarraraz grew up in. But the high schooler, who started in the program last year, says he had never spent time outdoors before he started working with the group.
“ ‘I never had a personal connection with nature,’ he said. Most Saturdays he would stay inside and watch TV. Now, things are different. …
“Like many teens who come through LandPaths’s violence prevention program, Danny Chaparro grew up in Roseland, a predominantly Latino neighborhood in Santa Rosa with a long history of gang violence. For more than a decade he has worked in youth violence prevention, showing young people that a kid from Roseland who looks like them can grow up to lead a prosperous life. …
“As LandPaths’s new audiences manager, he oversees programs that bring underserved communities out into nature. Chaparro always knew he wanted to uplift the community he came from, but never imagined his job would be bringing at-risk youth into outdoor spaces he himself never explored. …
“ ‘If you look around,’ he said of Roseland, ‘everywhere that you see, there isn’t a mountain view in your sight.’
“But since the violence prevention program was created early last year, he’s already seeing the effects of connecting teens with the natural world. …
“During his work at other organizations, Chaparro said many young people would walk into the building, sit down and stay put the whole time. But LandPaths, he says, brings out a different side of them. ‘I’ve seen some of those same youths now through my time at LandPaths show up to a preserve and start running and climbing a tree and just being a kid.’ …
“Some of the students who came to LandPaths were so enthusiastic that after graduating from the program, Chaparro hired them for another initiative that teaches environmental stewardship skills. One of them was Elizarraraz. The Young Stewards program is a part-time outdoor program that has teens work on trail building, habitat restoration and land-stewardship projects in Sonoma county.
“Out of more than two dozen Saturday sessions, Elizarraraz has never missed a day. The consistency matters because Chaparro knows the struggles many young Latino kids are navigating outside these programs: the lack of a stable income, the influence of gangs, a parent who’s always working, easy access to guns. …
“Chaparro recalled a night-time walk when the students were getting rowdy and messing around. So he set them to a challenge: two minutes, no talking, just staring up at the stars. As the students settled in, staring up at the open sky, two minutes passed, then three, four, five. Chaparro stopped the timer and let the silence expand.
“Later, in a reflection circle, he asked them why they let the time stretch longer than the challenge. Many told him that ‘they’ve never felt that much peace.’ “
Photo: Salt Dance. Dancer and choreographer Alex Ketley is also a lecturer at Stanford University.
Alex Ketley, the choreographer behind a confidence-building college class based on “bad dancing,” has a way of looking at things differently. For example, he befriended an unusual death-row inmate during Covid and later created a theater piece with him. More about that later.
First, Tracie White at Stanford Magazine has an article that explains the college class.
” ‘Welcome to bad dancing,’ says Alex Ketley, a professional choreographer and former member of the San Francisco Ballet who teaches Dance 123: Hot Mess & Deliberate Failure as Practice. Ketley, an advanced lecturer in the department of theater and performance studies and a former Guggenheim Fellow, says it’s his most popular course.
“About 20 undergraduates and graduate students have signed up for what the course catalog describes as ‘a dance class in how we become the worst dancer possible.’ …
“ ‘Run with absolute abandon,’ Ketley says. And, like kids at recess, the students swarm onto the floor at Roble Gym, prancing, leaping, and stumbling into one another. Next, ‘make crazy monster faces,’ Ketley instructs. Now, he says, ‘Repeat the phrase: “I’m alive and filled with watermelon.” ’
“After class, Ketley says that his objective is for students to challenge and expand their perception of what is beautiful by performing silly pantomimes and reacting to movement prompts that are virtually impossible to do well.
” ‘What happens,’ he asks, ‘if we accept failure as a creative virtue?’ By letting go of perfection, students might discover something unexpected a’obsessively’ explored movement. He designed the course after using chaos in his own process and watching thousands of other performers: ‘I noticed a type of brilliance when people relinquish control.’
“Why is dance the right medium? ‘It’s fun,’ he says. “So much of our dance training is claustrophobically serious. Happiness, in a repressive culture, is transgressive.’
“The class culminates in a group performance when, Ketley says, students discover how far they’ve come from feeling fearful and embarrassed to dancing in front of complete strangers. …
“Elijah Williams, ’26, took the course hoping it would be a confidence booster. Several weeks in, it’s become one of his favorite classes — a helpful lesson in how to break out of your shell. Plus, he says, ‘I feel more able to express myself through failure.’ ”
About the project with the prisoner: “Winner of a National Dance Project Award and generous multi-year funding from the Luger Family Trust, ‘An Approximation of Resilience’ was a portrait of Bill Clark, a 71 year old artist and writer who has spent the past 33 years confined to a 4ft x 10ft cell on California’s Death Row. Despite this, he has become an inspirational figure through his artwork and his educational outreach.
“In 2020, at the height of the pandemic, choreographer and Guggenheim Fellow Alex Ketley became increasingly worried about how the pandemic was affecting our incarcerated population. He went on a website called Write-A-Prisoner, and was struck by Bill’s profile, primarily that he said he experienced a crushing loneliness being nearly perpetually confined to his cell. Ketley wrote a one page letter saying hello, and two weeks later received a seven page handwritten letter back from Clark. This began a close friendship. After the quarantine lifted, Ketley visited Clark almost every week for five years.
” ‘An Approximation of Resilience’ was an hour long dance-theater installation, created with a stellar group of performers and artists, that takes the premise that beauty exists anywhere if it is given the opportunity to be seen and celebrated. … It premiered in the spring of 2025 at City Dance Studio in San Francisco and was performed across a four weekend run. …
“In 2026, Alex Ketley won an Isadora Duncan Award for Outstanding Achievement by a Bay Area Individual for his work on ‘An Approximation of Resilience.’ “
More at Stanford Magazine, here, and at Ketley’s website, here.
Photo: John Francis Peters/The Guardian. Easton Basjec and Melissa Parker, founders of Scisters Salon & Apothecary in San Diego, California, on 18 March 2026. Together, they’re showing how salons can help the environment rather than contribute to waste.
My hairdresser is very thoughtful in her daily life about health and the environment. Of course she knows that there are an awful lot of unhealthful chemicals in the salon business. I wonder if the owner of her workplace would be up for making a switch like the San Diego salon in today’s story did.
Michaela Haas writes at the Guardian, “The first thing you notice when you walk into Scisters Salon & Apothecary is what isn’t there. No wall of glossy plastic bottles. … No sharp chemical tang or aerosol haze. The only trash can is a tiny basket that mostly collects coffee cups and gum wrappers clients bring from home.
“Instead, the shelves of this southern California salon are lined with large refill containers of shampoo and conditioner, houseplants dot the space, hair clippings are swept away for compost, and the air carries a trace of bergamot and vanilla.
” ‘It’s the smell people comment on straight away,’ says co-founder Melissa Parker. ‘They walk in and say: “It smells good in here.” ‘ …
“Parker and her co-founder Easton Basjec opened Scisters 15 years ago in a strip mall in La Mesa, about 9 miles east of San Diego. Since then, they’ve built it into one of the region’s most prominent low-waste salons, diverting, they say, up to 99% of its refuse from landfills.
“The beauty sector is a dirty business. Salons in North America send an estimated 63,000 lbs of hair to landfills every day, along with hundreds of tons of used foil and leftover hair dyes, according to Green Circle Salons, a Canadian recycling and recovery organization. On top of that, many products used in salons contain chemicals like formaldehyde and lye that carry potential health risks.
“But Parker and Bajsec have staked their business on the idea that beauty doesn’t have to come at the expense of the planet – or the people in the salon.
“The two business partners, both native to San Diego’s East county, met while working at another salon before attending business school together at a local community college. In 2010, they opened their own seven-chair salon and named it Scisters in a nod to their close friendship.
“For years, the business – which has seven employees and serves up to 22 customers a day – operated much like any other boutique salon, carrying more than 150 products from a large corporate brand and offering the full range of services. …
“The turning point came several years later, after Bajsec watched a documentary about the zero-waste movement and began questioning the beauty industry’s environmental footprint. Around the same time, Parker developed serious health problems that her doctors linked to prolonged exposure to salon chemicals.
“Several studies have found that hairdressers’ exposure to harmful chemicals such as formaldehyde, ammonia and sulfates puts them at a higher risk of asthma, skin conditions, reproductive illnesses and cancer. Eventually, a naturopath warned Parker she might have to stop working as a hairstylist, a prospect she found ‘terrifying.’
“But rather than walk away from the beauty business altogether, Parker and Bajsec set out to transform their salon.
“First they took a hard look at the services they provided and products they carried. They stopped offering perms because the treatments release formaldehyde, a carcinogen. And they decided to move away from the big-name shampoos and conditioners they’d been selling. …
” ‘We knew that if we switched to products that didn’t perform as well, we risked losing clients,’ Parker says.
“The pair enrolled in online formulation design courses and developed their own line. The process took years, Bajsec says. ‘Stability testing, packaging, preservatives – we had no idea how complex it was.’
“Element, which they launched in 2019, is made in a California lab and sold in refillable glass and aluminum containers. It boasts recognizable ingredients such as organic aloe, wheat protein and castor oil. Parker and Bajsec encourage customers to use the salon’s ‘jar library’ – a collection of donated and sanitized pasta sauce or salsa jars – to purchase refills. …
“ ‘I spoke with the local waste company and convinced them to accept hair scraps for composting,’ Bajsec says. … She and Parker started washing and recycling foils rather than sending them to the dump. Instead of waxing, Scisters began to offer sugaring – a hair-removal technique using a compostable paste made from sugar, water and lemon. … In the bathroom, customers use washable cloths rather than paper towels to dry their hands. Parker and Bajsec also rethought their energy use, switching to LED lights and installing Ecoheads sprayers for their shampoo bowls. …
“They found that some compromises are unavoidable. Scisters still offers hair bleaching, which releases ammonia, a chemical linked to respiratory and gastrointestinal irritation. … They mitigate the fume’s potential harms with ‘industrial air filtration, open doors, and air-purifying plants such as snake plants. …
“Parker and Bajsec ship the plastic waste they do produce – about two boxes a year, they say – along with excess hair dyes and broken stylist tools, to Green Circle Salons for specialized processing. Bajsec said they pay Green Circle $200 per box of waste – which she said she’s happy to do for the peace of mind knowing they’re not going straight to the dump.
“Though the transition to reducing their waste – namely developing the Element line – required an initial upfront investment, Parker says it has paid off. ‘Overall, it’s actually less expensive….
” ‘Going green has been the greatest thing we’ve done for our business financially,’ Parker says. ‘We accidentally created a point of differentiation.’
“Denise Baden, a professor of sustainable business at the University of Southampton … who has been working with salon owners for more than a decade to help them incorporate sustainable practices, says hairdressers are uniquely positioned to influence their communities. ‘The practices they model in the salon and the message they give to their clients about how to adopt ‘greener’ hair practice in their homes have the potential to make a world of difference.’ ”
It’s a big step, and probably one that needs the whole staff on board, but I imagine that there are customers who would seek out such salons.
Photo: Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images. Baby sea otter Sunny, left, and Rey, her adoptive mother, eat at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, California.
I was very near the site of today’s story in late April but didn’t know about it at the time. In any case, my trip to California was short and focused on my brother and his health.
In other circumstance, I know I would have enjoyed meeting the sea otters in today’s article, an orphaned pup called Sunny and her adoptive mother, Rey.
Happy Mother’s Day, Rey!
“Before last month, a young southern sea otter named Rey would never have imagined she would be a mother. That changed when she met Sunny, a pup – about two weeks old – found orphaned and alone on Asilomar state beach on the central coast of California in February. The pairing went off without a hitch.
“The two otters now live as mother and daughter at the Aquarium of the Pacific. They arrived at the facility last month, paired together as part of the facility’s surrogacy program that it runs alongside the Monterey Bay Aquarium. The program, created by the Monterey Bay Aquarium in the 1990s, was launched in Long Beach in 2024. It pairs maternal-age female otters with young, motherless pups who would otherwise not survive on their own in the wild. …
“The aquarium can handle 11 otters at a time, with up to seven in the main tank with rehabilitation pools that can each house two otters. The facility currently has five otters, including two other females that are preparing for surrogate motherhood.
“But Sunny and Rey cannot be released into the wild. Experts say both are already too used to being around people and lack the survival instincts to make it on their own in the ocean. … For Rey, Sunny will be the first pup she raises into adulthood. It’s a full-circle moment for her: about two and a half years old, Rey herself was found stranded. She spent a couple of years at another facility before moving to Long Beach.
“ ‘Ray has far surpassed my expectations of what I thought was gonna happen,’ [Megan Smylie, the sea otter program manager] said. … As a surrogate mom, she is teaching her adopted baby everything she needs to know to fend for herself, regardless of her inability to return to the wild.
“The two were seen manipulating an imitation crab shell and foraging for food. Young otters, because of the thickness and buoyancy of their fur, don’t have the strength to get their furry bodies to the bottom of the water tank. Otters have the thickest coat of any mammal, with as many as a million hairs per square inch. The hairs trap air, which acts as insulation and helps keep the otters buoyant.
“In time, she may teach the pup how to use tools. Sea otters are known to be crafty creatures, able to use rocks to crack clamshells, take nuts off bolts and open doors on their own.
“When it’s time to calm down, she will groom the pup, and when it’s time for a nap, Rey will pull Sunny to her chest and roll on to her back. … Experts say this quick-forming connection, between that of surrogate-raised otters and their wild-born offspring, has played a significant role in growing the population found along California’s central coast.
“The animals, which once boasted a population of more than 300,000 along the northern Pacific Rim from Japan to Baja California, were prized for their fur and hunted down to about 2,000 by the early 19th century. Officials say they were thought to have been exterminated until a colony of otters was discovered nearly a decade later.
“Now a federally threatened species, California’s southern sea otter population has rebounded to about 3,000. Despite efforts to aid their comeback, the species faces a low survival rate for pups and constant threats of parasites, shark attacks and human-caused catastrophes.
“This makes the work of every mothering otter like Rey all the more important, as she is tasked with not only providing pups the childhood she never had but ensuring the preservation of her species. And while Sunny may never see the ocean again, aquarium staff hope she can grow into a mom herself, giving the next generation of young pups another shot at life.”
Photo: David Becker/Zuma Press Wire/Shutterstock. A field of blooming desert sunflowers or desert gold wildflowers are seen as the sun sets on rugged mountains inside Death Valley national park.
Having recently recently returned to Massachusetts from California, dazzled by the exotic flora there, I find that today’s story about a superbloom in the desert is just what I need to keep feeding my sense of wonder.
“Death Valley’s Badwater Basin is the point of lowest elevation in North America, at 282 feet (86 m) below sea level. … On the afternoon hours of July 10, 1913, the United States Weather Bureau recorded a temperature of 134 °F (56.7 °C) at Furnace Creek in Death Valley, which stands as the highest ambient air temperature ever recorded on the surface of the Earth. However, this reading and several others taken in that period are disputed by some modern experts.
“Death Valley is home to the Timbisha tribe of Native Americans, formerly known as the Panamint Shoshone. They have inhabited the valley for at least the past millennium. Their name for Death Valley is Tümpisa, meaning ‘rock paint.’ This refers to the presence of red ochre in the valley.
“The valley got the name Death Valley in the winter of 1849–1850 when a group of American pioneers were traveling through on their way to the California gold rush. The Death Valley 49ers got lost in the valley and feared that they would all perish there. They did eventually make their way out after suffering the loss of just one of the group.”
Now that I’ve filled you with dread, let me turn to the story by Sara Braun at the Guardian about the rare and thrilling superbloom in Death Valley this year.
“After a winter of record rainfall, a superbloom has erupted in Death Valley, covering the famously arid desert in a blanket of vibrant pink, purple and yellow flowers. As travelers from around the world make their way to the desert, they can expect to be greeted by fragrant air and a quilt of delicate hues.
“While there is no official definition for a superbloom, the National Park Service uses the term to ‘describe conditions when so many flowers are present that they appear as swaths of color across the landscape, rather than isolated plants, especially striking at low elevations where the ground is typically sand, gravel and rock.’
“The park last experienced a superbloom in 2016, which can only occur in ‘perfect conditions,’ with ‘well-spaced rainfall’ and mild temperatures.
“The National Park Service said that low-elevation flowers would continue blooming until mid- to late March, depending on the weather.
Higher elevations will experience blooms in April through June.
“Time is of the essence to catch a glimpse of the superbloom, so if tourists can get there in time, they should keep an eye out for some of the most commonly occurring (and eye-catching) flowers: desert gold, brown-eyed evening primrose, golden evening primrose, phacelia and mojave poppy, to name a few.”
More at the Guardian, here. See also Wikipedia, here.
Somehow, the idea that a barren desert can turn lush and fragrant after a ten-year dry spell makes me feel encouraged about the possibility of change in other realms.
Photos: John and Suzanne’s Mom. I wish my bird-of-paradise house plant looked like this, but I know there’s no chance!
It’s not that I haven’t been to California before — quite a few times, in fact. For weddings, work conferences, friends. But now, visiting the brother who’s been dealing with some health challenges, I’m astonished all over again by how exotic and foreign it feels to this East Coast person. How amazing that both Massachusetts and California are part of the same country!
I’m not here for sightseeing and haven’t been taking walks in any of California’s beautiful parks, but I’m astonished by the loved and cared-for plants in all the parking lots around here. My plant-identification app is getting a workout.
Seriously. Imagine an otherwise ordinary parking lot that smells as sweet as the star jasmine below, perfuming the Trader Joe’s shopping center where we ate too much at a Mexican restaurant last night!
One thing I’m still hoping to photograph is something my sister-in-law mentioned — the flurry of little green parrots she often sees at dusk. Parrots! Really? Where I live, you could maybe see one lonely parrot if it had escaped from a cage.
Climbing beside the entrance to my hotel, is a charming fuzzy thing that my app tells me is a brush cherry. Who knew?
Photos: Suzanne and John’s Mom. My California brother and sister-in-law moved recently to a gorgeous apartment at Westmont assisted living in Cypress, California.
We don’t travel much these days. There are always going to be hassles, and if you don’t have to do it, why would you? Suzanne’s son makes persuasive arguments about why getting someplace cool is worth the hassles, but we remained unpersuaded even when his family spent five months in Stockholm, sending us frequent invitations.
But there are exceptions to everything.
My California brother has been having a rum time the last six months or so — a series of falls followed by two brain operations. Having not seen him in person for several years, I decided FaceTime was not enough. So here I am.
Suzanne, the veteran traveler, dealt with the logistics, and so far I have been almost hassle free.
Of course, there would have to be one technical thing, but I do try to embrace the occasional technical thing as a cognitive challenge for the aging brain. I managed to convince my fraud-anxious bank lady, despite all the background racket at Logan airport, that I had indeed reserved an Uber in distant California. I talked her down before the flight left Boston, so fortunately there was a car waiting when I got to Los Angeles. (The long flight with no real food was made bearable thanks to a nice Icelandic murder mystery.)
Although I don’t normally use a wheelchair, Suzanne made sure I got one in both airports. It’s a great way to travel as you skip a lot of lines and, even better, the attendants actually know where you’re supposed to go next. I’m sure I’d still be looking for my Uber at LAX if not for the wheelchair lady. Although I do walk fine, I am indeed an old gal who is known to get dizzy — and I look it.
So you may be hearing a bit about Southern California the next few days, where I’m having a lovely time and feeling dazzled by all the exotic foliage. Fingers crossed that my luck holds vis-à-vis hassles. I did forget to bring something, but I do that at home, too, so it doesn’t count.
The app says that this long hedge along a busy highway is cape honeysuckle.
Photo: Jack Persons, Friends of Sunset Dunes. Once a four-lane highway threatened by flooding, Sunset Dunes Park now welcomes visitors who fancy recreation along the Pacific coast.
Many of us have had a chance to enjoy the elevated park in New York City known as the High Line. Once it was a highway. Now I’m learning about a similar conversion in California.
There’s an interesting story about it at the environmental radio show Living on Earth,
Jenni Doering “The four-lane Great Highway used to run along the Pacific Ocean on the west side of San Francisco. But in April 2025, this pavement became a little slice of paradise. Now visitors to Sunset Dunes Park can bike, walk, skate, and play next to the water. Zach Lipton is a volunteer with the nonprofit Friends of Sunset Dunes and he joins us now to talk about this highway’s transformation. … For someone who’s maybe never been to San Francisco or to Sunset Dunes Park … what is it like?
Zach Lipton “Sunset Dunes is a 50 acre park at the edge of San Francisco along the Pacific coast. It used to be a four lane highway and has been converted into a recreational space for people to walk and bike and sit by the ocean, have a bite to eat and just enjoy our Pacific coast. So we brought in eleven local artists to paint murals. … The city has installed benches made out of logs that have fallen in recent storms from the park … a bike park and a skate area. … And of course, just the Pacific Ocean View is the star of the show. …
“[There’s a sculpture] called Spinning Rock. It’s a 20,000 pound rock that is on a spinner. And just the look of delight when kids and adults, when everyone realizes you can just push this rock and start spinning it around. It’s a lot of fun. We have a giant octopus the kids love to climb on, some giraffes down by the zoo. [The park] is a perfectly flat space, which is great for people, especially riding bikes. I know folks who have come out, learned to ride a bike there during the pandemic as an adult, using Sunset Dunes. …
Doering “Going from a four lane roadway to a coastal park, how exactly did we get here?
Lipton “So let’s go back all the way to just give you the long version of the history. The entire western side of San Francisco originally was just sand dunes, and in the 1800s some folks started creating a coastal path back when a road really was a recreational facility. This was a place to go ride your horse along the ocean. In time, that road was paved, but it always, for over a century, has been part of the city’s Recreation and Parks Department, even though gradually, it kept shifting from a recreational use to really just transportation. … Then during the pandemic, there was a huge need in San Francisco for socially distanced outdoor recreation, and the city converted a couple of streets to recreational facilities, including what was the Great Highway. …
“Ultimately, we ran a campaign, a ballot measure last November for the city to vote on its future. 55% of the city voted that they wanted it to be a full time park. And then we worked quickly with the city, with the California Coastal Commission, to make that vision a reality and start its transformation. …
“The park sells itself more than we can ever explain its benefits to people. And this is something where if a few years ago, you said, ‘y”Yeah, let’s turn the Great Highway into a park,’ people would look at you like you were crazy. But having tried it during the pandemic, and having just had the chance for people to experience it, all of a sudden, it makes a lot more sense. And I think there’s a spirit of experimentation there that cities can embrace, whether it’s this or other environmental efforts, that it’s okay to just try things and see how they go.”
Can you think of other pandemic experiments that have lasted? I’m going to be thinking about that.
Photo: California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Matteo Paz with Caltech President Thomas F. Rosenbaum after winning the Regeneron Science Talent Search award.
Today I’m thinking about competitions, particularly academic competitions and what they can do for young people. Did you ever enter one? Perhaps encouraged by a teacher?
I’ve known people who not only won money but launched a career that way, but if a teacher ever asked me to try, I shied away. Scared? Lazy? It takes a certain kind of optimism, perhaps. Optimism and the stamina to bounce back if hopes repeatedly fall apart. Do share your own experience with competition. How much does the money matter? How much did a mentor matter?
Meanwhile, here’s a great story about a young science and computer whiz from California.
Margherita Bassiwrites at the Smithsonian, “In a leap forward for astronomy, a researcher has developed an artificial intelligence algorithm and discovered more than one million objects in space by parsing through understudied data from a NASA telescope.
“The breakthrough is detailed in a study published in November in The Astronomical Journal. What the study doesn’t detail, however, is that the paper’s sole author is 18 years old.
“Matteo Paz from Pasadena, California, recently won the first place prize of $250,000 in the 2025 Regeneron Science Talent Search for combining machine learning with astronomy. Self-described as the nation’s ‘oldest and most prestigious science and math competition for high school seniors,’ the contest recognized Paz for developing his A.I. algorithm. The young scientist’s tool processed 200 billion data entries from NASA’s now-retired Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) telescope. His model revealed 1.5 million previously unknown potential celestial bodies.
“ ‘I was just happy to have had the privilege. Not only placing in the top ten, but winning first place, came as a visceral surprise,’ the teenager tells Forbes’ Kevin Anderton. ‘It still hasn’t fully sunk in.’
“Paz’s interest in astronomy turned into real research when he participated in the Planet Finder Academy at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in summer 2022. There, he studied astronomy and computer science under the guidance of his mentor, Davy Kirkpatrick, an astronomer and senior scientist at the university’s Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC).
“Kirkpatrick had been working with data from the NEOWISE infrared telescope, which NASA launched in 2009 with the aim of searching for near-Earth asteroids and comets. The telescope’s survey, however, also collected data on the shifting heat of variable objects: rare phenomena that emit flashing, changing or otherwise dynamic light, such as exploding stars. It was Kirkpatrick’s idea to look for these elusive objects in NEOWISE’s understudied data. …
“Paz, however, had no intention of doing it by hand. Instead, he worked on an A.I. model that sorted through the raw data in search of tiny changes in infrared radiation, which could indicate the presence of variable objects. Paz and Kirkpatrick continued working together after the summer to perfect the model, which ultimately flagged 1.5 million potential new objects, including supernovas and black holes.
“ ‘Prior to Matteo’s work, no one had tried to use the entire (200-billion-row) table to identify and classify all of the significant variability that was there,’ Kirkpatrick tells Business Insider’s Morgan McFall-Johnsen in an email. He adds that Caltech researchers are already making use of Paz’s catalog of potential variable objects, called VarWISE, to study binary star systems.
“The variable candidates that he’s uncovered will be widely studied,’ says Amy Mainzer, NEOWISE’s principal investigator for NASA, to Business Insider.
“As for the A.I. model, Paz explains that it might be applicable to ‘anything else that comes in a temporal format,’ such as stock market chart analysis and atmospheric effects like pollution, according to the statement. It’s no surprise the teenager is interested in the climate—as fires burned in L.A. earlier this year, the Eaton Fire forced him and his family to evacuate their home, Forbes reports.
“Other teenage scientists recognized by the contest studied mosquito control, drug-resistant fungus, the human genome and mathematics.”
Photo: Danielle Duran Zecca/Amiga Amore. Danielle Duran Zecca, co-owner of Amiga Amore in Highland Park, Los Angeles.
Well, in one way, this is a time of great opportunity. There are endless opportunities in the US to meet the growing needs. Endless opportunities to practice charity in daily life.
A chef in Los Angeles knew opportunity as soon as she saw it. The revealing moment took the form of government officers in masks snatching people off the streets.
“When Danielle Duran Zecca saw military-style immigration raids and people being snatched off the streets and put into unmarked vehicles in her native Los Angeles earlier this summer, she was in disbelief. …
“Duran Zecca, a James Beard Award nominated chef and co-owner of Amiga Amore in Highland Park, a historically Latino neighborhood in north-east LA [said] ‘I didn’t know what to do, but I knew how to feed people and love on people because that is exactly how I was brought up in my family.’
“When several of Duran Zecca’s workers expressed fear about coming into the restaurant, the chef had a realization.
“ ‘If they didn’t want to leave their homes, how many others were like this and how many weren’t eating,’ she said. Earlier in the year, Amiga Amore received donations that allowed the Mexican-Italian restaurant to give meals away to those affected by the LA wildfires, but this time she would need a different approach, one that made people feel safe.
“Duran Zecca began personally delivering free meals to 25 to 30 people every other Sunday in nearby Boyle Heights. …
“Since ICE began to infiltrate LA in June, once-bustling neighborhoods have become quiet. Vendors locked up stalls in the flower district. Popular taco stands and fruit carts are closed and some restaurants sit empty. Although it is unknown exactly how many people are staying home due to Ice’s aggressive arrests, immigration sweeps at restaurants, farms, Home Depots and even car washes have created a chilling effect on businesses that rely on immigrant labor.
Restaurants such as Amiga Amore and other groups from the food and hospitality industry are stepping in to help people in their community who have nowhere to turn – even while their own businesses are suffering economically. …
” ‘Latinos are not only the backbone to our industry, they are the industry,’ said Duran Zecca. ‘Behind every chef are Latino line cooks ready to make magic happen. All they want to do is work, make a living and feed their families.’
“To make her deliveries twice every month, Duran Zecca receives logistical support from her good friend Damián Diaz, the co-founder of No Us Without You, an LA-based non-profit that provides food security for undocumented people, including back of the house staff from bars and restaurants.
“ ‘The administration has been doubling down on making it much more difficult for the families in the community and also small grassroots organizations like us to really be impactful,’ said Diaz. In the past, No Us Without You had drive-through lines for food distribution, but stepped-up enforcement made that impossible, so they pivoted to working with a coalition of restaurants to serve up to 40 families every fortnight so they can shelter at home.
“ ‘This environment of fear in light of increased enforcement, and really excessive enforcement, is causing folks to miss out on some very key necessities such as doctor’s appointments and going to the grocery store,’ said Rita Fernández director of immigration policy project at UnidosUS, a Latino non-profit advocacy organization. …
“This summer, Congress allocated $170.7bn in additional funding for immigration and border enforcement … creating what some critics call a ‘deportation-industrial complex.’ …
“That’s why many others in the restaurant and non-profit industry have also been mobilizing to bring groceries to immigrants who are in hiding. The Oaxacan-Mediterranean restaurant X’tiosu in Boyle Heights, one of the US’s most heavily Latino-populated neighborhoods, packed 150 bags of fresh produce, dried pasta and other goods that were delivered to people in need by local Oaxacan youth in June and they have continued to support undocumented families. The student-led group, Raíces Con Voz, coordinated food and care package deliveries to more than 200 families, and Aquí Para La Comunidad, which operates throughout southern California, has a growing waitlist.
“Vanny Arias decided to host an impromptu food drive in front of the Offbeat Bar in Highland Park, where she’s a bartender, after realizing people staying home were likely in need of groceries. … Arias organized with other community activists and volunteers to start dispensing basics.
“Once she launched an Instagram account, she started hearing directly from desperate families. ‘People said: “My husband got arrested” or “We’re afraid to leave the house and my kids haven’t eaten in days,” ‘ said Arias. ‘When you’re on the ground you see the hurt and pain in their eyes and hear it in their voices.’
“Since July, Arias’s Nela Food Distribution has grown to deliver free groceries to 150 people in and around Highland Park with the help of community donations, two local food warehouses, a bakery and a team of volunteers. ‘We’re a bunch of people who love their community,’ said Arias. ‘I don’t care what color you are, we’re freaking humans and I’m here for you. You’re not alone.’ ”
More at the Guardian, here. The Guardian is free, but please consider donating to them.
Photo: Dani Anguiano. Haleigh Holgate, seed collection manager at Heritage Growers, inspects a seed in the San Luis national wildlife refuge complex on March 2025. Only the correct species will do.
I have blogged about seed banks in various countries (search on “seed bank”), and particularly about the global one that will keep seeds safe forever — if it stays frozen.
Today we learn what’s going on in California, where Heritage Growers is focused on local flora.
Dani Anguiano reported at the Guardian, “Deep in California’s agricultural heartland, Haleigh Holgate marched through the expansive wildflower-dotted plains of the San Luis national wildlife refuge complex in search of something precious.
“She surveyed the native grasses and flowering plants that painted the Central valley landscape in almost blinding swaths of yellow. Her objective on that sweltering spring day was to gather materials pivotal to California’s ambitious environmental agenda – seeds. …
“As a seed collection manager with the non-profit Heritage Growers native seed supplier, Holgate is tasked with traveling to the state’s wildlands to collect native seeds crucial for habitat restoration projects.
“The need has become particularly acute as California aims to conserve 30% of its land by 2030, with the governor pledging to restore ‘degraded landscapes’ and expand ‘nature-based solutions’ to fight the climate crisis. …
“But the rising demand for seeds far outpaces the available supply. California faces an ‘urgent and growing need’ to coordinate efforts to increase the availability of native seeds, according to a 2023 report from the California Native Plant Society. There simply isn’t enough wildland seed available to restore the land at the rate the state has set out to, Holgate said.
“Bridging the gap starts with people like Holgate, who spends five days a week, eight months of the year, traveling with colleagues to remote spots across the state collecting seeds – an endeavor that could shape California’s landscape for years.
“That fact is not lost on the 26-year-old. It’s something she tries to remind her team during long, grueling, hot days in the oilfields of Kern county or the San Joaquin valley. …
“Seeds play a vital role in landscape recovery. When fires move through forests, decimating native species and leaving the earth a charred sea of grey ash, or when farmlands come out of production, land managers use native seeds to help return the land to something closer to its original form. They have been an essential part of restoring the Klamath River after the largest dam removal project in US history, covering the banks of the ailing river in milkweeds that attract bees and other pollinators, andLemmon’s needlegrass, which produces seeds that feed birds and small mammals.
“California has emphasized the importance of increasing native seed production to protect the state’s biodiversity. … Three-quarters of native vegetation in the state has been altered in the last 200 years, including more than 90% of California wetlands, much of them here in the Central valley.
“For the state to implement its plans, it needs a massive quantity of native seeds. … Enter Heritage Growers, the northern California-based non-profit founded by experts with the non-profit River Partners, which works to restore river corridors in the state and create wildlife habitat.
“The organization takes seed that Holgate and others collect and amplifies them at its Colusa farm, a 2,088-acre (845-hectare) property located an hour from the state capital. (The ethical harvesting rules Heritage Growers adhere to mean that they can take no more than 20% of seeds available the day of collection.) …
“Currently, the farm is producing more than 30,000 lbs of seeds each year and has more than 200 native plant varieties.
“The goal, general manager Pat Reynolds said, is to produce source-identified native seed and get as much of it out in the environment as possible to restore habitat at scale. …
“The benefit of restoring California’s wildlands extends far beyond the environment, said Austin Stevenot, a member of the Northern Sierra Mewuk Tribe and the director of tribal engagement for River Partners.
“ ‘It’s more than just work on the landscape, because you’re restoring places where people have been removed and by inviting those people back in these places we can have cultural restoration,’ Stevenot said. ‘Our languages, our cultures, are all tied to the landscape. … It’s giving the space back to people to freely do what we would like for the landscape and for our culture,’ he said. …
“The mission is worthwhile, Holgate said. The seeds she collects are expensive, but if they can be amplified and expanded, native seeds will become more abundant and restoration projects can happen more quickly.
“ ‘We can restore California faster,’ she said. … ‘I know that when I’m dreaming about a certain species, I should go check that population and see what’s happening. And normally there’s something going on where it’s like grasshoppers came in and ate all the seed, or the seed is ripe and ready, and I gotta call in a crew,’ she said. ‘I’ve really put my whole heart into this job.’ “
More at the Guardian, here. No firewall at this outstanding news site, but please support it.
Photo: Magdalena Wosinska for the New York Times. Ian White, an artist, against a burned house across from the park named for his celebrated father, the painter Charles White.
The outside world never knew much about the generations of Black artists enriching life in Altadena — not until after the town burned down.
As Sam Lubell wrote in February at the New York Times, “Before the Eaton fire raced across Altadena, destroying more than 9,000 of its buildings, many, even in nearby Los Angeles, barely knew of the place’s existence. This sleepy 42,000-person hamlet hugging the glowing foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains is not part of that city but an unincorporated community of Los Angeles County, and just far enough off the beaten track to blissfully avoid notice.
“Once typified by its bucolic quirkiness, tight-knit neighborhoods and generations-old churches and businesses, Altadena now consists of row after row of twisted, charred building remains, scorched car chassis, blinking or broken stoplights and the occasional khaki National Guard Humvee. The future, for now, is filled with toxic cleanup, insurance adjustments and conflicting visions for rebuilding.
“Yet the past has gained newfound prominence. With so much gone, Altadena’s histories are being unearthed, by residents, scholars and preservationists who say they may hold a key to making this a special place once again, and provide anchors for those weighing whether to stay.
“One of the most profound of Altadena’s legacies — its spectacular story of Black creative culture — had been buried not only under its seclusion, but also under layers of racial and institutional apathy, the loose accounting of informal memory, and the absence of formal plaques and other preservation markers. The fire has spurred calls for a more rigorous approach to remembrance.
“ ‘Sometimes it takes a tragedy for people to mark history,’ said Brandon Lamar, president of the N.A.A.C.P.’s Pasadena branch, whose own home was destroyed, as was his school, his grandparents’ home and their church. But that destruction, he noted, ‘does not mean that we can’t create public memories in spaces now, so that people can remember this information for generations to come.’
“Starting in the 1950s and ’60s, the west side of Altadena (and parts of neighboring northwest Pasadena not bulldozed for the 210 and 134 Freeways) drew middle-class Black families eager to buy homes.
“Many came because the redlining — discriminatory lending by banks — was less severe here, and some of the schools had been integrated comparatively early. The area became a magnet not just for Black teachers and social workers but also for Black artists from around the country, drawn to its affordability, inventive vibe, gorgeous mountain backdrop and general spirit of permissiveness.
“ ‘It had this energy of bohemian California,’ said Solomon Salim Moore, assistant curator of collections at the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College. ‘You could have a little less scrutiny and a little more room to do your projects.’
“On Feb. 22, as part the Frieze Los Angeles art fair, a discussion called ‘Land Memories’ will feature artists’ recollections of this unique legacy. The talk will be co-hosted by the Black Trustee Alliance for Art Museums, which will also share oral histories recorded from Altadena artists and residents, and collect new histories.
“Moore, who is also an artist, grew up in Altadena and said that its nonconformist spirit has endured to the present, even as prices have climbed and the Black population has fallen, according to the U.C.L.A. Bunche Center for African American Studies, to about 18 percent from 43 percent in 1980. Artists here, he said, loved that they could set up informal studios or even family compounds, or that they could enjoy little freedoms like hosting parties without friends worrying about permit parking.
“Sometimes creative people need to step away because you need to get out of the light to see,” said Ian White, an artist, teacher and the son of Charles White, the renowned painter and printmaker whose haunting depictions of African Americans, their struggles and dignity, inspired generations of artists. He spent the last 20 years of his life in Altadena and is buried at the community’s Mountain View Cemetery. Ian lives in a house next to his father’s modest home (which he also owns) in the Meadows, a district along Altadena’s west edge that in the 1950s and ’60s became one of the first here to integrate. Virtually all of the Meadows survived the fire.
“Also living west of Lake Avenue (then the unofficial dividing line between white Altadena and Black Altadena) was John Outterbridge, the noted assemblage artist and longtime director of the Watts Towers Arts Center. His home on Fair Oaks Avenue was destroyed, along with much of his archive and family memorabilia, according to his daughter, Tami. The famed enamel artist Curtis Tann lived within walking distance, while the prolific sculptor Nathaniel Bustion, known as Sonny, lived near White in the Meadows. Betye Saar, 98, known for repurposing everyday objects into mystical collages, grew up in a home on northwest Pasadena’s Pepper Street, just blocks from Altadena’s west side.
Sidney Poitier, a good friend of White’s from New York, and the first Black actor to win an Academy Award, rented a home in west Altadena before moving to Beverly Hills.
“Ivan Dixon, the actor and trailblazing director, lived on Marengo Avenue, and the science fiction writer Octavia Butler on Morada Place.
“Later generations of Black artists continued to thrive here, including Mark Steven Greenfield, Yvonne Cole Meo, Senga Nengudi and Michael Chukes, and dozens of others holding down day jobs and creating whenever they could in this secret Eden.
“Charles White, already an established figure when he moved from New York in 1959 for health reasons — he had respiratory problems and was advised to live in a milder climate — would become the glue holding this arts community together. His home and studio, still standing, was a gathering place, with many artists competing for the honor of driving White to or from one place or another. (He didn’t drive.)
“Ian still refers to Dixon, Poitier and Charles’s good friend Harry Belafonte as his ‘fictive uncles.’ He recalled how his father set up the sculptor Richmond Barthé, a cornerstone of the Harlem Renaissance, with an apartment, and how his mother, a social worker named Frances Barrett, was his caregiver until the end.”
Photo: BLM. “The US California Condor Recovery Program, initiated in the 1970s, represented an enormous change in the strategy of species conservation,” writes Knowable Magazine.
They are not as appealing as, say, hummingbirds, but the California condors had a lot of environmentalists worried in the 1970s, including a young boy I knew who grew up to be a respected biologist and scientific photographer.
I remember him talking a lot about condors when we were carpooling. And I thought, “Well, condors. An odd obsession for a child.”
Thank goodness people get obsessed about the least beautiful denizens of our planet.
Iván Carrillo tells the condor story at Knowable Magazine via the Tucson Sentinel.
“The spring morning is cool and bright in the Sierra de San Pedro Mártir National Park in Baja California, Mexico, as a bird takes to the skies. Its 9.8-foot wingspan casts a looming silhouette against the sunlight; the sound of its flight is like that of a light aircraft cutting through the wind. In this forest thick with trees up to 600 years old lives the southernmost population of the California condor (Gymnogyps californianus), the only one outside the United States. Dozens of the scavenging birds have been reintroduced here, to live and breed once again in the wild.
“Their return has been captained for more than 20 years by biologist Juan Vargas Velasco and his partner María Catalina Porras Peña, a couple who long ago moved away from the comforts of the city to endure extreme winters living in a tent or small trailer, to manage the lives of the 48 condors known to fly over Mexican territory. Together — she as coordinator of the California Condor Conservation Program, and he as field manager — they are the guardians of a project whose origins go back to condor recovery efforts that began in the 1980s in the United States, when populations were decimated, mainly from eating the meat of animals shot by hunters’ lead bullets.
“In Mexico, the species disappeared even earlier, in the late 1930s. Its historic return — the first captive-bred condors were released into Mexican territory in 2002 — is the result of close binational collaboration among zoos and other institutions in the United States and Mexico.
“Beyond the number on the wing that identifies each individual, Porras Peña knows perfectly the history and behavior of the condors under her care. … She captures her knowledge in an Excel log: a database including information such as origin, ID tag, name, sex, age, date of birth, date of arrival, first release and number in the Studbook (an international registry used to track the ancestry and offspring of each individual of a species through a unique number). Also noted is wildlife status, happily marked for most birds with a single word: ‘Free.’ …
“The California condor, North America’s largest bird, has taken flight again. It’s a feat made possible by well-established collaborations between the US and Mexico, economic investment, the dedication of many people and, above all, the scientific understanding of the species — from the decoding of its genome and knowledge of its diseases and reproductive habits to the use of technologies that can closely follow each individual bird.
“But many challenges remain for the California condor, which 10,000 years ago dominated the skies over the Pacific coast of the Americas, from southern Canada to northern Mexico. Researchers need to assemble wild populations that are capable of breeding without human assistance, and with the confidence that more birds are hatched than die. It is a tough battle against extinction, waged day in and day out by teams in California, Arizona and Utah in the United States, and Mexico City and Baja California in Mexico.
“The US California Condor Recovery Program, initiated in the 1970s, represented an enormous change in the strategy of species conservation. After unsuccessful habitat preservation attempts, and as a last-ditch attempt to try to save the scavenger bird from extinction, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the California Fish and Game Commission advocated for a decision as bold as it was controversial: to capture the last condors alive in the wild and commit to breeding them in captivity. …
“On April 19, 1987, the last condor was captured, marking a critical moment for the species: On that day, the California condor became officially extinct in the wild.
“At the same time, a captive breeding program was launched, offering a ray of hope for a species that, beyond its own magnificence, plays an important role in the health of ecosystems — efficiently eliminating the remains of dead animals, thus preventing the proliferation of diseases and environmental pollution.
“This is what is defined as a refaunation project, says Rodolfo Dirzo, a Stanford University biologist. … Refaunation, Dirzo says, involves reintroducing individuals of a species into areas where they once lived but no longer do. He believes that both the term and the practice should be more common. …
“The California Condor Recovery Program produced its first results in a short time. In 1988, just one year after the collection of the last wild condors, researchers at the San Diego Zoo announced the first captive birth of a California condor chick.
“The technique of double or triple clutching followed, to greater success. Condors are monogamous and usually have a single brood every two years, explains Fernando Gual, who until October 2024 was director general of zoos and wildlife conservation in Mexico City. But if for some reason they lose an egg at the beginning of the breeding season — either because it breaks or falls out of the nest, which is usually on a cliff — the pair produces a second egg. If this one is also lost or damaged, they may lay a third. The researchers learned that if they removed the first egg and incubated it under carefully controlled conditions, the condor pair would lay a second egg, which was also removed for care, leaving a third egg for the pair to incubate and rear naturally.
“This innovation was followed by the development of artificial incubation techniques to increase egg survival, as well as puppet rearing, using replicas of adult condors to feed and care for the chicks born in captivity. That way, the birds would not imprint on humans, reducing the difficulties the birds might face when integrating into the wild population.
“Xewe (female) and Chocuyens (male) were the first condors to triumphantly return to the wild. The year was 1992, and the pair returned to freedom accompanied by a pair of Andean condors, natural inhabitants of the Andes Mountains in South America. Andean condors live from Venezuela to Tierra del Fuego and have a wingspan about 12 inches larger than that of California condors. Their mission here was to help to consolidate a social group and aid the birds in adapting to the habitat. The event took place at the Sespe Condor Sanctuary in the Los Padres National Forest in California. In a tiny, tentative way, the California condor had returned.
“By the end of the 1990s, there were other breeding centers, such as the Los Angeles Zoo, the Oregon Zoo, the World Center for Birds of Prey in Boise, Idaho, the San Diego Zoo and the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. Then, in 1999, the first collaboration agreements were established between the United States and Mexico for the reintroduction of the California condor in the Sierra de San Pedro Mártir National Park. The number of existing California condors increased from just over two dozen in 1983 to more than 100 in 1995, some of which had been returned to the wild in the United States. By 2000, there were 172 condors and by 2011, 396.
“By 2023, the global population of California condors reached 561 individuals, 344 of them living in the wild.” Lots more at Knowable Magazine via the Tucson Sentinel, here.
I salute the cleverness and devotion of scientists. May they live long and prosper!
Photo: Vishal Subramanyan/California Academy of Sciences. “High up in the Sierra Nevada,” writes the Smithsonian,“the tiny Mount Lyell shrew has been shying away from cameras since it was first identified almost 100 years ago. Then three undergraduates hit the jackpot.
I’m not sure if I regard today’s update as more about a threatened mammal or about achieving something important when you’re still an undergraduate.
Here are two takes on the story of a rarely studied shrew that is threatened by climate change. First, an interview at National Public Radio (NPR).
“Juana Summers, Host “For more than 100 years, scientists have known about a shrew living in the mountains around Yosemite National Park. California designated it a ‘species of special concern,’ but nobody had seen it.
“Vishal Subramanyan “There’s never actually been even a confirmed sighting of the shrew alive, just because they’re almost always found dead.
“Sacha Pfeiffer, Host “Vishal Subramanyan is a wildlife photographer and a recent graduate of the University of California, Berkeley. Back in the fall, he and two other undergraduate student researchers, Harper Forbes and Prakrit Jain, decided to find a Mount Lyell shrew. … So they set off into the Sierra Nevada mountains with a lot of plastic cups to set traps in the ground to try to catch this elusive creature.
“Prakrit Jain “Shrews are quite fast and not very personable, at least at first. They’re always running away. If you try to pick them up, sometimes they might try to bite.
“Summers “Prakrit Jain is still a student at Berkeley, and he says, before you can even think about the taming of the shrew, you’ve first got to catch one alive. …
“Pfeiffer “Once you catch one, you have to act quickly because this shrew has a very fast metabolism. That means if they don’t eat every few hours, they can die in the traps.
“Subramanyan “It was pretty much just go, go, go, and we never really slept for more than two hours at a time. And throughout the course of the three nights and four days, we probably never slept for more than eight hours ’cause we were just constantly trapping, photographing, then trapping again.
“Summers “Their traps caught a lot of shrews — several different species, actually — but the researchers suspected that at least five of them were the ones they were actually looking for.
“Pfeiffer “This month, genetic testing confirmed that these undergraduate students had indeed taken the first known photographs of the Mount Lyell shrew.
“Summers “It may seem like a lot of work to snap a photo, but Subramanyan says it’s actually really important for the world to see these furry little animals. He points to studies that show how other small mammals in the region are at risk with their habitat rapidly warming. And this shrew and its long snout help put a face to the impacts of climate change on biodiversity.
“Subramanyan “A majority of species that are disappearing aren’t these, you know, traditionally charismatic species you hear about like lions and wolves. But it’s often these smaller, often overlooked animals that are disappearing completely under the radar with no public awareness or attention.
“Pfeiffer “These researchers say that they dream of exploring far off and distant places. But they realize that the breakthrough they made in what was already a well-studied part of the world shows there’s still a lot to learn closer to home.”
At the Smithsonian there’s a roundup of other interviews.
“Subramanyan, who graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, last year, is a wildlife photographer. Jain and Forbes, undergraduate students at UC Berkeley and the University of Arizona, respectively, made headlines in 2022 for discovering two new scorpion species. After receiving permits from California’s Department of Fish and Wildlife, the trio headed to the Eastern Sierra. They set up 150 pitfall traps near stream and wetland habitats and checked in on them every two hours. …
“They got set up, then they waited.
“ ‘I would love to say we spent three days waiting, and the shrew finally appeared at the last second,’ says Subramanyan to Astrid Kane at the San Francisco Standard. ‘But we got the Mount Lyell within the first two hours.’
“ ‘It just shows that it’s generally an underappreciated species in an underappreciated ecosystem, that people haven’t spent the time and been able to actually bring dedicated focus to the shrews,’ he adds to Issy Ronald at CNN.
“To photograph the shrews, the team had to work quickly. They continued to trap more of the animals, following their planned sleep schedule during the nights, when temperatures dropped to 15 degrees Fahrenheit. The researchers set up a white background and a terrarium for the imaging. ‘You trap some shrews, you photograph them, you release them, and by that time there are more shrews. So it was pretty nonstop,’ Subramanyan says to SFGATE’s Timothy Karoff.
“The animals run around a lot — and bite — making it especially hard to get good photos of them. ‘For every photo that we got in focus, we must have 10 or 20 photos where the shrew is running out of the frame,’ says Jain to Sabrina Imbler at Defector. …
‘The students hope their work will increase public recognition for shrews and other less charismatic animals. ‘Many, many species of shrew are known from only a single specimen, or only known from a single locality, or have not been seen in decades,’ says Jain to Katharine Gammon at the Guardian. ‘So if we struggle to find a shrew in a place like California — one of the best studied places in the world — you can only imagine how the shrew diversity of places like southeast Asia and central Africa, for instance, can just be so under-appreciated.’
“Mount Lyell shrews are also extremely threatened by climate change — 89 percent of the animal’s habitat is projected to be lost by the 2080s, according to a statement from the University of California, Berkeley. …
“ ‘If we look at the extinction crisis and the types of animals it’s impacting, a lot of animals are disappearing without any documentation,’ Subramanyan says to the Guardian. ‘An animal like the Mount Lyell shrew, if it was not photographed or researched, could have just quietly disappeared due to climate change, and we’d have no idea about it at all.’ ”
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