The recent Los Padres fire exemplifies a growing trend: Mexican drug cartels setting up shop in California wilderness and parkland.

"In a long-awaited move designed to protect people from cancer, California officials on Thursday proposed a new health goal for chromium 6 in drinking water that is thousands of times lower than the amount contaminating some water supplies."

Lake Tahoe is being invaded by an exotic Asian clam that some fear could litter beaches with sharp shells and turn some sections of the lake a murky green.

"Despite regulations and laws to protect children, Fresno County authorities say school buses are still being exposed to pesticide clouds once or twice a year."

Firefighters have largely contained many of the major fires that forced thousands of residents in various parts of California to flee their homes. Some are already returning.

"A Sacramento judge sided with the styrene industry and against state environmental officials on Wednesday in ruling that the chemical doesn't have to be listed under Proposition 65 as a cause of cancer."

The new Sierra Suntower in Southern California's Antelope Valley uses 24,000 mirrors to concentrate light onto a tower that generates steam -- and enough electricty to power 4,000 local homes.

"As California entered a severe drought, many of the city of Sacramento's biggest water users increased their watering dramatically."

"There might be a scientific reason that the old-growth trees in Yosemite National Park don't seem quite as big or as plentiful as those in your grandfather's early snapshots of the park."

Biologists have found in San Francisco Bay a kelp used in miso soup which is on the list of 100 worst invasive alien species.

"Californians’ eagerness to battle global warming seems to be cooling a bit: The latest survey on the state’s environmental attitudes, released on Wednesday, showed that 47 percent consider the threat of global warming very serious, a decline of seven percentage points from two years ago."

"The United Farm Workers union sued California’s occupational health and safety agency on Thursday, accusing it of doing too little to prevent farm laborers’ deaths from heat illness."

"State officials who lead California's war on global warming often travel abroad on trips supported by the major greenhouse gas polluters they regulate, a Bee investigation has found. Industry lobbyists and executives routinely join them."

"Sewage spills that have contributed to water pollution in San Francisco Bay will be reduced under two settlements reached last week between the nonprofit San Francisco Baykeeper and the Town of Hillsborough and the neighborhood of Burlingame Hills."

A massive sweep by drug enforcement agents in Fresno County offered new evidence of how illegal marijuana plantations on public lands are scarring the Sierra landscape.