It's Monday. Exploring what makes California the most biodiverse state in the nation. Plus, in Los Angeles, some children's birthday parties are so elaborate, and expensive, that they rival weddings. |
 | | Carrizo Plain National Monument in Santa Margarita.Mario Tama/Getty Images |
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With Earth Day coming up, here's a relevant superlative to add to California's résumé: It's the most biodiverse state in the nation. |
That means California has the largest variety of plants and animals of any state, including about 6,500 types of plants alone, roughly 40 percent of which are found only within its borders. The state also has the world's tallest, largest and oldest trees. |
This impressive plant and wildlife diversity exists because of California's size; its Mediterranean-type climate; and its wide range of habitats, including coastlines, mountains and deserts, which span both the lowest and highest elevations in the continental United States, according to Alison Young at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. The state's north-south orientation plays a part, too, she said, because California stretches across many climate-defining latitudes. |
"I don't think we'd be nearly as diverse if we were east-to-west long rather than north-to-south long," said Young, co-director of the Center for Biodiversity and Community Science at the academy. (Within the state, San Diego is the most biodiverse county, she told me.) |
But this distinction isn't all good news. California is one of 36 global biodiversity hot spots — places that are biologically rich but also deeply threatened, having lost at least 70 percent of their original native vegetation. The New York Times published a map last year showing that California had the most imperiled biodiversity of any state in the contiguous United States, with more than 30 percent of its species threatened with extinction. |
"We have this tremendous biodiversity, but we also have these major stressors, including that we built ourselves into the fifth-largest economy in the world with 40 million people," Wade Crowfoot, California's natural resources secretary, told my colleagues at the time. In 2019, California created an annual biodiversity day to encourage the protection of the state's living things. |
In a similar effort to raise awareness about the state's biodiversity, Young and her colleagues at the academy partnered with the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County in 2016 to start a friendly competition that they called the City Nature Challenge. The weeklong contest invited Bay Area and Los Angeles County residents to see which side could photograph and submit the most images of ladybugs, birds, worms, coyotes and other plant, animal and insect species spotted in their neighborhoods. |
"We figure we're rivals in so many other things, like baseball teams and housing costs and burritos, so let's make a competition about nature," Young told me. (Los Angeles County won that year with 1,601 distinct species documented, compared with the Bay Area's 1,551.) |
The City Nature Challenge has since expanded so that anyone can participate; it will be held this year from April 28 to May 1. Young said she hoped that the upcoming bioblitz event would not only help scientists better understand California's biodiversity, but would also inspire people to pay attention to the plants and animals living in their backyards — and to care about their conservation. |
"In the places that you know and you live, if you do take the time to really notice the things around you, you really do develop those personal ties to smaller things," she said. "I think we can form those connections." |
 | | Bob Lee, a tech executive, was fatally stabbed this month in Rincon Hill, an upscale neighborhood near the San Francisco waterfront.Jim Wilson/The New York Times |
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If you read one story, make it this |
 | | Wildflowers in Walker Canyon in Lake Elsinore in February.Daniel Dorsa for The New York Times |
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- $75,000 for a toddler party: Among the affluent in Los Angeles, it's apparently no longer sufficient to just get a table at a paint-your-own pottery place or to put a bounce castle in the backyard for your child's birthday.
- Light up the night: The city of San Diego plans to put $3.5 million in federal funding toward repairing and restoring nearly 6,000 broken streetlights, La Jolla Light reports.
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 | | Kate Sears for The New York Times. |
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"Amazing hiking and camping within San Diego County. Hiking here allowed us to go through multiple biomes all in the same day. As you went up, dry granite gravel turned to red soil as shrubs and poppies changed to towering trees." |
Tell us about your favorite places to visit in California. Email your suggestions to CAtoday@nytimes.com. We'll be sharing more in upcoming editions of the newsletter. |
After a rainy winter, spring has arrived in California. Tell us your favorite part of the season, whether it's road trips, festivals, sunny afternoons or wildflower sightings. |
 | | Zabriskie Point in Death Valley National Park.Roger Kisby for The New York Times |
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And before you go, some good news |
National Park Week kicks off on April 22, with entrance fees waived that day to encourage people to come out and enjoy America's parks. You can browse all of California's national park lands here, including Alcatraz Island, Lava Beds National Monument and the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. |
Thanks for reading. I'll be back tomorrow. — Soumya |
Briana Scalia, Shivani Gonzalez, Geordon Wollner and Bernard Mokam contributed to California Today. You can reach the team at CAtoday@nytimes.com. |
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