A young female mountain lion who spent the last five months at Sonoma County Wildlife Rescue in Petaluma is back in the wild, after state biologists walked her into a stretch of remote Northern California habitat earlier this month. She is eleven months old, weighs enough to make her own way, and is missing most…
Month: May 2026
Grand jury gives Sonoma’s open-space agency a clean review — and flags a 2031 cliff
A Sonoma County Civil Grand Jury report released Sunday May 10 says the agency that has spent 35 years buying up farmland and open space across the county is, by and large, doing the job voters paid it to do. The report’s title — “It’s On Their Website!” — is the jury’s broad answer to…
Hall Winery in Napa Valley. Roger Coryell/Wine Country Daily
Napa’s wine and farm workers can’t afford to live in Napa anymore. A new study puts a number on it.
Napa Valley runs on immigrants. Its wineries, restaurants, hotels and farms all do. What a new report makes plain is that more and more of those workers can no longer afford to live in the county where they work — and a growing share have left altogether. The Migration Policy Institute, a Washington research group,…
Where the misfits went: Sausalito’s last anchor-outs and the long retreat of bohemian North Bay
On October 15, Richardson Bay closes for keeps. After that date, no boat may stay anchored in the bay more than 72 hours. The Richardson Bay Regional Agency calls it a milestone, and on the agency’s own terms, it is one. From more than 200 illegally anchored vessels in 2018, the count is down to…
GM sold drivers’ location data for four years. Two North Bay DAs helped shut it down.
If you bought a GM truck anytime in the past decade — a Silverado in the vineyard rows, a Tahoe at the trailhead, a Sierra hauling firewood off the coast — your name, your home address, and a four-year record of where and how you drove most likely passed through a pipeline that ended at…
Courtesy Bodega Bay Fire
Bodega residents to get update Thursday on fire station lease talks
The nonprofit that owns Bodega’s fire station has called a special meeting Thursday night to brief local residents on lease talks with Gold Ridge Fire Protection District, the agency that staffs the station and runs calls in this rural coastal corner of Sonoma County. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. at McCaughey Hall in downtown Bodega….
Police review videos after Sonoma market fight sends two teens to hospital
SONOMA — Police are reviewing cellphone videos from a fight at Sonoma’s Tuesday Night Market after two teenagers went to the hospital and a woman was arrested during the first market night of the season. The fight broke out around 6:15 p.m. Tuesday at Sonoma Plaza, while the market was underway and a band was…
Lake County names public works director after merger and pay increase
LAKEPORT — Lake County supervisors merged two departments to save money, raised the salary range for the new director job and then appointed the man who had proposed the merger — after interviews held outside public view. County records show the Board of Supervisors changed the public works director classification from M67 to M75 on…
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Glen Ellen woman accused of $1M-plus contracting fraud across Northern California
A Glen Ellen woman who ran a residential contracting business under the names Lone Wolf Designs and LW Design Build despite never holding a state contractor’s license has been arrested and charged in Napa County in what investigators say is a scheme that has cost victims more than $1 million across Northern California. Christina Daniels…
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For Bodega Bay’s salmon fleet, the season is open. Whether the fishery is back is another question.
BODEGA BAY, CA., 5/5/26 — For the first time in three years, commercial salmon boats are pushing out of Spud Point Marina with king salmon as the target. But the season Sonoma County’s fleet returned to this month does not look much like the one it left behind in 2022. After three consecutive statewide closures,…