Park Stories

Early last month, dog walker Debra Wood came across an extremely rare sight at Calera Creek in Pacifica: coast garter snakes (Thamnophis elegans terrestris) massing near the creek! Read on to learn more about this amazing natural phenomenon.

The Institute at the Golden Gate has had the privilege of hosting many fellows and interns throughout the past four years of driving positive environmental change. This month, we’re honoring the many people who have left their mark on the Institute’s work.

The kids are antsy and the beginning of the school year is weeks and weeks and weeks away. Not to fear—the Golden Gate National Parks are here and near! Here are 10 fun and affordable ways to get the kids outside, in nature, and happily exhausted by the end of each endless summer day.

It’s summer time and that means trails throughout our parks will be bustling with families. Did you know that Crissy Field Center also uses trails for educational purposes? Learn how Camping at the Presidio utilizes the Batteries to Bluffs Trail in their new program “Are We There Yet?”

Parks Conservancy internships launch scientific careers! Chris Briggs was a banding intern with the GGRO in 2000. A dozen years of raptor research later, Dr. Briggs returns to the GGRO as the Banding Program Manager to take over when Buzz Hull retires.

In early June 2012, the Institute at the Golden Gate and the East Bay Regional Parks District, with the support of the National Park Service, hosted a convening of Bay Area park and health professionals to discuss the current state and potential future of the Park Prescriptions initiative and the Healthy Parks Healthy People (HPHP) movement in the region. How will this movement affect parks and people locally?

Some have asked: Why don’t we just buy plants from our local nurseries to restore the park? In short, the Parks Conservancy grows native plants from seed because such a practice increases the chances of the plants’ survival.

A bright flash passes by, triggering someone to yell “BLUE!” Team members nimbly make their way through a mosaic of summer lupines at Oakwood Valley. Quickly but carefully, one person follows the butterfly until it lands. “It’s a mission blue, male, resting on a lupine.” Read on to learn more.

Trail Mix. Scroggin. Gorp. Studentenfutter. Schmogle. Great names for a great snack! Try one of our specially formulated blends on your next park outing. Read on for some of our favorite recipes.

We’ve all hosted parties. But what happens when the party spans a weekend, your guest list includes 250,000 people, and it takes an army to get ready? You enlist volunteers! Find out from one Parks volunteer what it was like to be part of San Francisco’s biggest party of the quarter-century: the Golden Gate Festival.

To build excitement for National Trails Day on June 2, 2012, we are putting you to the (trail) test. Flex your brain muscles to identify the park and the trail in the photos below and discover what type of trail aficionado (or not!) you are.

In the 21st century, Bald Eagles have become a more common than rare sighting in the Bay Area, mostly seen in the wintertime near a supply of ducks or fish.