A recently returned Cali girl, I am becoming acquainted with the abundant natural trails and beaches in the Monterey Bay region. One such traipse, through the Forest of Nisene Marks State Park, led me along the Old Growth Loop Trail where towering redwoods scrape the sky and soft ferns and leaves shush human sounds below. The park website extols it as “a forest in a perpetual state of becoming.”

Just south of Elkhorn Slough, the Castroville Slough Treatment Wetland showcases the potential of multi-benefit land repurposing initiatives

One of the impacts of climate change is increasingly frequent and extended periods of drought punctuated by intense storms and wet...