Coastal Restoration

Ecologists restoring parts of San Francisco Bay are guided by tattered maps, old snapshots, even paintings of a vanished world.

Everyone loves Kelly Slater. Everyone loves Will Ferrell. And everyone loves Robert Redford, especially your Mom. Ol' Sundance is trying to reconnect the

When it comes to a battered environment, few places can match Ken Malloy Harbor Regional Park, an empire of weeds, trash and vagrant encampments surrounding a polluted lake crawling with nonnative snails as big as baseballs, voracious water snakes and snapping turtles.

Visit http://sustainableman.org/ to explore the world of sustainability. For more from George Monbiot, visit http://www.monbiot.com/ and for more on "rewildi...

CaSochi — Just outside the Olympic Park in Sochi, where the Winter Games open on Friday, is a green space with benches, artificial ponds and a couple of hides. "Ornithological Park", the sign declares.

Residents weigh in on the Los Angeles City Council's proposal to bring bring duck boats tours to the LA River. Louisa Hodge reports.

The deep-blue Ten Mile River snakes down from the mountains through redwood forests and coastal wetlands near Fort Bragg before it flows past rolling sand dunes into the sea. "What we are doing is undoing a 100-year legacy of forestry damage," said Jason Pelletier, director of the Nature Conservancy's North and Central Coast regions, as he stood next to the river where it winds over flatlands before emptying out at the fog-shrouded beach at MacKerricher State Park. A significant watershedThe project is important because a third of all the coho along the Mendocino coast breed in the Ten Mile River, which got its name because it was 10 miles north of the mill on the Noyo River in Fort Bragg, where the ancient redwood forests of the Coast Range were turned into lumber. Coho, also known as silver salmon, once swam in huge numbers up North Coast rivers, providing ample food for American Indians and grizzly bears. Detecting ancient wetlandsDan Porter, the North Coast ecologist for the conservancy, said sophisticated airborne laser and light sensing technology called Lidar was used to detect ancient imprints along the river and develop a high-resolution topographic map of the former wetlands. Conservation easementIn June, the Nature Conservancy, with help from the Conservation Fund, the State Coastal Conservancy and Wildlife Conservation Board, paid $3.8 million for a conservation easement on the 872-acre Smith Ranch. The conservancy, in turn, will be able to do wetlands and fish habitat restoration work on 2 miles of the river's south fork. The Hawthorne Timber Co. has been working with Trout Unlimited over the past decade on fisheries restoration at the headwaters, Pelletier said, meaning the entire river from the ocean to the forested mountaintop soon could be returned to a more natural condition that supports a vibrant salmon population. The entire project is being monitored by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which are trying to develop technical standards and protocol for salmon recovery efforts across 300 miles of coastal watershed lands from San Francisco Bay to the Oregon border.

Salmonid Restoration Federation is a non-profit organization dedicated to the protection and restoration of California's salmon, steelhead, and trout populations and their habitat. SRF educates individuals, organizations, and agencies about innovative techniques for salmonid restoration by sponsoring an annual conference in California and operating technical field schools. SRF is devoted to educating the community on the ecology and economy of restoring natural resources for future generations of fish and people. We are interested in building a sustainable economy in rural areas so people in the restoration field can make a living wage while restoring the natural environment.

While a permanent rec zone is being planned for Glendale Narrows, other parts of the L.A. River are slowly making progress.