NEWS
Opposition to herbicides gains ground
The grassroots campaign against the use of herbicides in a Tomales Bay State Park forest health and wildfire-mitigation plan is gaining force as Assemblyman Damon Connolly, Supervisor Dennis Rodoni, the Inverness Association, and the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin join the chorus of opposition. Meanwhile, the Tomales Bay Foundation, whose leaders expressed support for…
Roy’s burned for grassland restoration
A prescribed burn at Roy’s Redwoods late last month marked the first-ever controlled fire at the San Geronimo Valley open space preserve and the first fire management project executed by Marin County Parks in more than a decade. Organized by county parks and fire officials, the burn targeted invasive grasses to protect biodiversity and restore…
Vandals strike historic cabins
A historic Coast Miwok settlement on the western shore of Tomales Bay has again been vandalized, and the leading advocate for the site says the incidents underscore the need to restore and better interpret it. Theresa Harlan, a Vallejo resident who was adopted into the Coast Miwok family that lived at Lairds Landing for generations,…
Loose Joints Records spins into fifth year
Dylan Squires drops the needle onto side two of Albert King’s “Blues at Sunrise,” an album perched atop a small wooden shelf with hand-painted sky-blue lettering that reads: Playing Now. When customers are in his record store, he says, there is never any dead air. At Loose Joints Records, the Point Reyes Station shop he…
State Parks installs new swimming docks and buoys
New cedar-top floating docks appeared this summer off Heart’s Desire and Shell Beaches, the result of a collaboration between one volunteer and Tomales Bay State Park. The docks, installed in May and June, were years in the making. In 2022, Inverness resident Marshall Livingston began volunteering for the park and exploring how to replace the…
Community donations kept radio station afloat after major federal cut
Last July, Republicans in Congress eliminated federal funding for public broadcasting, cutting support to roughly 1,500 local radio and television stations across the country. Among them was West Marin’s KWMR, which lost a quarter of its operating budget overnight. One year later, the station is once more on solid ground, after it raised $100,000 in…
Creek swimming holes get poor marks for cleanliness
All West Marin beaches received top marks for water quality in a new report, but a few swimming holes on Lagunitas Creek were not so lucky. Heal The Bay, a Santa Monica environmental advocacy group, releases a beach report card, and three popular spots—at the Inkwells, White House Pool and the Green Bridge—received F and…
Mo unity in community
Since growing up in Bolinas, Garnett Silver-Hall has amassed a resume of achievements as a musician, a public speaker, and an athlete. Born with arthrogryposis, Mr. Silver-Hall discovered adaptive sports at a young age, and his athletic endeavors soon intertwined with his growing artistic identity. While at Mount Tamalpais High School, he competed in sled…
FEATURES & OPINIONS
A survey of substrates and their tracks
In the world of animal tracking, a substrate refers to the various kinds of surfaces on which an animal has left its tracks. Though landscapes are widely variable, the best tracks are found in dry sand, damp sand, mud, dust, snow, freshly dug soil, leafy forest debris, and grassy fields. Each one shows tracks in…
Nature Notebook, July 23, 2026
This month’s full moon rises Wednesday, July 29, and its brilliance will wash out the peak of the Delta Aquariids meteor shower that evening. This moon will continue the pattern of extra low sunrise tides; the corresponding high tides will not be as high as recent ones, only in the five-foot range. In Anglo Saxon…
