Some years ago, a young, hippyish couple knocked on my front door. They had noticed that I had fig trees in the yard, laden with summer fruit. If I wasn’t going to pick them all, they asked, could they harvest some figs? Since I was about to take a trip, I said: Sure, have at ’em. […]
The steelhead run on California’s American River is shaping up up to be a relatively good one, though nowhere near the record runs in the past when the hatchery reported trapping 3000 to 4000 adult steelhead in a season. By Dan Bacher “With four weeks of spawning completed, Nimbus already has counted more than 900 […]
Just before the California Department of Fish and Wildlife released a New Year’s Eve letter revealing that 2.6 percent of juvenile Chinook salmon had perished in lethally warm water conditions on the Sacramento River, a petition sponsored by Save California Salmon in opposition to the Sites Reservoir reached 50,000 signatures. By Dan Bacher This milestone also came […]
2021 was a very bad year for Delta smelt and other declining fish populations on the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. For the fourth year in a row, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife has caught zero Delta smelt in its Fall Midwater Trawl (FMWT) survey on the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. By Dan Bacher The […]
On summer evenings in the 1980s, the residents of a houseboat community in Sausalito, California would often have trouble sleeping. A bizarre and persistent humming noise would keep them awake, and although they investigated, neither the residents nor the local authorities could pinpoint the problem. They ruled out noise from generators, and even considered the possibility […]
The Coleman National Fish Hatchery hatched an additional two million juvenile fall-run Chinook salmon (fry) this past October, successfully releasing 600,000 fish this past week with the remainder scheduled to be released the first week of January, according to a press release issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. By Dan Bacher “The Golden State Salmon Association […]
Christmas Eve is almost here, and among the many treats of the season are chocolate and hot cocoa. While these traditions provide a hefty dose of sugar, there’s a bittersweet side to chocolate’s history, too. By Kelley Fanto Deetz, University of California, Berkeley The Conversation This year, at Stratford Hall Plantation in Westmoreland County, Virginia, […]
If you’ve pumped gas at a U.S. service station over the past decade, you’ve put biofuel in your tank. Thanks to the federal Renewable Fuel Standard, or RFS, almost all gasoline sold nationwide is required to contain 10% ethanol – a fuel made from plant sources, mainly corn. With the recent rise in pump prices, […]
A global coalition of food justice advocates are urging the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization to sever ties with CropLife International, a trade association representing agrochemical corporations. By Kenny Stancil Common Dreams In a letter addressed to FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu and attached to a petition signed by more than 187,300 people from 107 countries, nearly a dozen groups […]
Tribal activists, drinking water advocates and commercial and subsistence fishers are asking the public to stand with them in the fight for both the Trinity and Sacramento River salmon by supporting a California state process to restore flows in California’s largest rivers, and by fighting a proposal for a twenty square mile reservoir, the Sites […]
feast that symbolized an abiding pact between European colonists and Indigenous people to share the abundance of the land. But the reality of both historical and ongoing colonization, says Nephi Craig, White Mountain Apache, is that if you “want to attack a people and wipe them out—attack their food.” By Valerie Schloredt YES! magazine Consider […]
Thanksgiving in the Coronavirus Pandemic era is a completely different bird. If you’re anything like me, you’ve spent most of your life celebrating this most American of holidays in the traditional way – with a boatload of family, friends, and assorted hangers on. But not this year… this year, in order to prevent the further […]
It’s been a weird mixed bag of a year, but we still have a lot to be thankful for… And as we officially enter the season of holiday cheer, holiday shopping and holiday excess, can we all think about the planet, too? By Jeremy Bloom They say that green is the new black, but that […]
Please try to keep in mind as you shop this holiday season: Fair Trade doesn’t just apply to African villagers and Amazon tribes – it also applies to the folks who grow our food here at home. By Jeremy Bloom An interesting note from a farmer who tried switching from big-breasted flightless corporate turkeys to heritage birds: […]
Coming into COP26 in Glasgow, nature was expected to feature heavily at the summit – one-fourth of UK prime minister Boris Johnson’s mantra of “coal, cars, cash and trees”. Food systems – despite the growing recognition of their role as both a source of and solution to climate change – were not so prominently featured on […]