"Their beards have grown full. Their hair, greased with sweat and brushed only with mountain air, stands on end. Their fingers, raw and ragged from grasping at sharp crevasses in the stone, are bandaged and bleeding."

"Environmental advocates will lose an ally in Congress when Barbara Boxer leaves the Senate at the end of her term in 2016 after more than three decades in office."

"California broke ground Tuesday on its $68 billion high-speed rail system, promising to combat global warming while whisking travelers between Los Angeles and San Francisco in less than three hours."

"In an inaugural address drawing on his family's deep roots in California, Gov. Jerry Brown called for expansive new environmental regulations that would protect the state for future generations."

"A judge ordered Safeway to pay nearly $10 million to 41 California counties and cities for illegally disposing of household chemicals and medicines from its stores and distribution centers over a seven-year span."

"In the pesticide-laden Salinas Valley, the new year brings a new requirement for schools and licensed child care centers."

"An effort to kill California's first-in-the-nation state ban on single-use plastic grocery bags advanced this week after bag makers spent several million dollars on a campaign to gather signatures for a proposed ballot initiative to overturn it."

"Loggers cutting down forests burned in wildfires could bring about the extinction of California spotted owls, wildlife advocates said Tuesday as they sought protection for the birds under the federal Endangered Species Act."

"LOS GATOS, Calif. — Three punishing years of drought have parched California streams, rivers and wetlands. One animal has the potential to restore these dry landscapes."

"Federal officials acted properly when they curtailed water extraction from California's Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to protect fish and orca species at the expense of farmers and other water users in central California, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Monday."