"On May 7, Patrick Robinson took a boat out to Año Nuevo Island to survey the sea lions that come to birth on this rocky outcropping north of Monterey Bay. The shore was littered with dead pups — babies that looked as though they’d been delivered too early and therefore were too weak and small to nurse, or had been dead at birth."

"Jade Stevens stands at the edge of a snowy cliff and takes in the jaw-dropping panorama of the Sierra. Peaks reaching more than a mile high form the backdrop to Bear Valley, a kaleidoscope of green pastures mixed with ponderosa pines, firs, cedars and oak trees."

"California’s contentious and long-debated plan to replumb the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and pump more water south finally has a price tag: about $20 billion."

"An unusual surge in flu viruses detected at wastewater treatment plants in California and other parts of the country is raising concerns among some experts that H5N1 bird flu may be spreading farther and faster than health officers initially thought."

"Beyond a chain-link fence topped with spiraled barbed wire, swaying coastal grasses conceal a cache of buried radioactive waste and toxic pesticides from a bygone chemical plant."

"A coalition of Republican state attorneys general on Tuesday announced two lawsuits against the Biden administration and the state of California challenging emissions rules for trucks and other heavy-duty vehicles."

"State officials reported the presence of deadly chronic wasting disease in two wild California deer earlier this week. This is the first time the disease, which has plagued other areas of the nation for years, has appeared in the state’s deer or elk population."

"Scores of emaciated brown pelicans, too weak to fly, have been found on Southern California beaches in the last month and taken to an Orange County rescue center, according to its director."

"As legacy publications celebrated their Pulitzer Prize wins Monday, bottles of champagne were also uncorked at Lookout Santa Cruz, a fledgling 10-person newsroom based on the second floor of a former bank on Santa Cruz’s quiet, tree-lined Pacific Avenue."

"For several years now, one question has held the key to understanding just how much we should worry about the hundreds of tons of DDT that had been dumped off the coast of Los Angeles." "Now, in a highly anticipated study, researchers have identified tiny zooplankton and mid-to-deep-water fish as potential links between the contaminated sediment and the greater ecosystem."