Tag Archives: california department of fish and wildlife

Occasionally warm and sunny, but more often cool and shrouded in a layer of fog, the Point Arena headland is a uniquely beautiful and ecologically important site on California’s northern coast. Located five miles north of its namesake town and 150 miles north of San Francisco, the waters off Point Arena are part of a […]

Portuguese Ledge State Marine Conservation Area (SMCA) lies four miles offshore of the Monterey peninsula in central California. The SMCA was established following the passage of the Marine Life Protection Act in 1999, which mandated the redesign of California’s marine protected area (MPA) system into a cohesive network. Currently, only 14 of the 124 state […]

Año Nuevo’s unique environment led to the establishment of a land-based state park in 1985 and a marine protected area (MPA) in the adjacent ocean in 2007. Año Nuevo State Park is comprised of wetland marshes, rolling sand dunes, chaparral, coastal scrub and terrace prairie. Año Nuevo State Marine Reserve (SMR), the most recently established MPA (established […]

You sometimes see the phrase “All drains lead to the ocean” painted on the pavement near drainage grates in city streets, but this saying also holds true for watersheds across California. The Russian River is no exception. The river’s headwaters are located near the inland city of Willits in Mendocino County, where it begins its […]

This is Part Two of a special installment of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife series, Exploring California’s Marine Protected Areas. Part One of the installment investigated what makes this bit of estuary special and the protections that are in place to safeguard it. This final installment takes an inside look at recent research documenting the current […]