San Francisco Bay Conservation 2.0

Photograph: Old Salt Ponds at Eden Landing by Jaymi Heimbuch,  via Flickr

If I were to tell you one thing about the nature of the San Francisco Bay, it is this: The bay is strange. And it is getting stranger.

Get used to it, says Emma Marris. Not only that, she says: Embrace it. Celebrate it. Help create this new bay nature. Call it Bay Nature 2.0.

Marris is a whip-smart writer for the prestigious science journal Nature and the author of a new book, Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World, which is turning the conservation movement upside down.

Rather than struggling to restore nature to some impossible historical ideal, she says, we should work with the mixed-up world we've got to try to make it better. Rather than fighting invasive species, we ought to learn to live with them as part of the mix. Rather than fighting rearguard battles to preserve nature in ever-smaller enclaves, we need to go on the offensive and create beachheads for new forms of conservation everywhere.

Read the rest of Jon Christensen's story in the San Francisco Chronicle »