This is the fourth part of Mongabay’s series on the expanding wolf population in California. Read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. A lone gray wolf (Canis lupus) named…
Following up on a tip to the state’s poaching hotline, game wardens in California rushed to a popular fishing spot, Clifton Court Forebay, in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. They’d…
This is the third part of Mongabay’s series on the expanding wolf population in California. Read the first and the second parts. In late October, wildlife authorities in the U.S.…
In October, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer at California's Otay Mesa border crossing noticed an odd bulge inside a man's pants. Jesse Agus Martinez, a U.S. citizen who…
Christopher C. Grinter has spent much of his life surrounded by insects, though not in the way most people imagine. As Senior Collection Manager of Entomology at the California Academy…
Some revolutions begin not with technology, but with a feeling. For Gregg Treinish, that feeling was guilt. He was spending years on long wilderness expeditions—crossing ranges, sleeping rough, watching the…
California has a way of exaggerating things—mountains, deserts, and egos. But its insects? They take excess to another level. Somewhere between the redwoods and the Salton Sea live perhaps 60,000,…
This is the second part of Mongabay’s series on the expanding wolf population in California. Read the first and the third parts. In May 2025, five counties in northern California…
Earlier this year, 350 endangered mountain yellow-legged frogs hopped into their new home in Bluff Lake in Southern California’s San Bernardino Mountains. It’s the latest step in a long-running battle…
In a world defined by extraction, Denica Riadini-Flesch is proving that creation can heal instead. The Indonesian economist-turned-entrepreneur has won UCLA’s 2025 Pritzker Emerging Environmental Genius Award for building a…
SAN DIEGO, U.S. — The bluff at La Jolla Cove in San Diego is covered with pelicans and cormorants; below, some two dozen sea lions lounge on a rocky ledge…
Tony Pritzker approaches environmental philanthropy like a patient strategist. A scion of one of America’s best-known business families, he has spent decades moving between boardrooms, laboratories, and community meetings, applying…
Jane Goodall, who revealed the intimate lives of chimpanzees and gave the modern world a language of hope, has died at the age of 91. Over the course of six…
This is the second installment of Mongabay’s coverage of beaver restoration in California. Read the first story. TÁSMAM KOYÓM, U.S. — “It’s a little wet!” Ben Cunningham shouted over his…
The small, bell-shaped flowers that dangle like gems in dazzling hues of yellow, maroon, purple, brown and white give jewelflowers their name. Yet these plants, from the genera Streptanthus and…
This is the first installment of Mongabay's coverage of beaver restoration in California. Read the second story. CHESTER, Calif. — The pictograph, an ochre-red outline with four paws and an…
FORT BRAGG, U.S. — In 2024, I was scuba diving in Northern California’s Casper Cove where the Watermen’s Alliance, a group of ex-abalone sports divers, has been culling purple urchins…
This is the first part of Mongabay’s series on the expanding wolf population in California. Read the second and third parts. With its enchanting eyes, powerful jaws, acute senses and…
In early springtime in the Mojave Desert, Joshua trees provide one of the few foods available to many of the wildlife species in this part of the southwestern U.S. Stretching…
In southern California’s Coachella Valley, pale sand dunes sprawl under the desert sun, shifting and re-forming in the wind. In dry years, lone shrubs dot the dunes. But the landscape…
KLAMATH, California — The Pacific Ocean fog hung densely over the narrow mouth of the Klamath River in this coastal rainforest in northern California. Redwood, Douglas fir and alder disappeared…
In northeastern California, the Upper Pit River undulates through evergreen forests, wet meadows and rugged mountains. It's part of the snow-fed headwaters of the Sacramento River, the largest river in…
Half a million barrels of toxic waste lurking beneath the waves just miles from California's coastline sounds like the plot of a Hollywood thriller. Yet this environmental catastrophe is real,…
As Esri nears its 60th anniversary, Jack Dangermond exemplifies how geographic information systems (GIS) have grown from a specialized field into a critical tool for modern planning, environmental management, and…
KLAMATH, CALIFORNIA—Brook M. Thompson was just 7 years old when she witnessed an apocalypse. "A day after our world renewal ceremony, we saw all these fish lined up on the…
Japan is at a crossroads in its controversial use of burning forest biomass to make electricity. While the government and private sector’s understanding of the fuel’s harmful environmental and climate…
Monitoring and keeping track of snakes is a cumbersome task. Jeff Lemm knows the inefficiencies all too well. The herpetologist has been studying red diamond rattlesnakes (Crotalus ruber) for years.…
In California’s Monterey Bay, where the vast Pacific Ocean meets lush kelp forests, sea otters, especially the females, are becoming more resourceful. These charismatic marine mammals, known for their playful…
The biomass energy industry centered in the U.S. Southeast is now seeking expansion to California, with U.K. wood pellet maker Drax joining a state-funded nonprofit to increase pellet exports to Asia — a plan forest advocates oppose.
Sea otters are slowing down the erosion of salt marshes, thanks to their rapacious appetite for crabs, according to new research. But it took some sleuthing to figure this out.…
TOLOWA DEE-NI' NATION, California — Three tribes along California's rugged northern coast made history in late September by designating the first Indigenous Marine Stewardship Area (IMSA) in the United States.…
Ports are considered lifelines of our economy, accounting for 75% of world trade (over 90% by tonnage), but generally not thought of as incubators to solve the climate crisis or…
