San Pablo Bay borders just a few square miles of Sonoma County, but its significance to locals is far greater than the area it covers.

It is part of our identity — after all, don’t we in Sonoma County refer to ourselves as the North Bay?

We rely on the Bay for recreation and the health of our economy. Its tidal wetlands sequester carbon, provide habitat for endangered and threatened species, filter bay waters, and protect us from sea level rise. The Bay is an extension of our open space — and as such, we at Sonoma Land Trust aim to protect it for future generations.

That is the motivation behind our Sears Point Restoration Project. After purchasing the property in 2005, Sonoma Land Trust began planning and fundraising to bring the tides back to 1,000 acres of former wetland at Sears Point, which neighbors the Sonoma Raceway and overlooks the Bay.
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The project took 10 years, $17.9 million and the efforts of our amazing partners. The land was diked to create farmland in the mid-1800s and remained dry until Oct. 25, 2015, when we joined our partners and supporters to look on as we breached the levee and the waters of San Pablo Bay came rushing into to fill the tidal basin.

​About two weeks ago, a group of scientists made a recommendation to the International Geological Congress to rename the current epoch to the Anthropocene, ending the Holocene epoch that began roughly 12,000 years ago. 
 
To declare a new geological epoch, there must first be a globally occurring signal that will be found in the deposits of the future geological record. In this case, it might be radioactive elements from nuclear bomb tests, which exploded into the stratosphere before gradually settling down to Earth. The proposal suggests that the Anthopocene — anthropo- meaning “human” and cene- meaning “new” — began in 1950. The term was first proposed in 2000 by Nobel prize-winning scientist Paul Crutzen, who in 2011 said, “This name change stresses the enormity of humanity’s responsibility as stewards of the Earth.”
 
Whether the name is ultimately adopted remains to be seen — but our responsibility for the earth is indisputable.  
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