By JANE KAY, San Francisco Chronicle

Fluctuating ocean conditions may be depleting the food supply of young sea lions that are turning up skinny and ill on California beaches, mirroring the fate of Brandt's cormorants earlier this spring.

On a foggy day in Sausalito, Calif., young patients in a new hospital were quietly resting, building up strength to return home.
Any moment, a fish lunch was due. The youngsters, who all had been separated from their mothers at an early age, seemed excited over the prospect of food.

Prized king salmon -- that buttery, heart-healthy fish -- are vanishing from the rivers of northern California.
The smallest number of Pacific Ocean salmon ever recorded swam back to the Sacramento River via San Francisco Bay last fall, the latest evidence of the decline of the storied fish along the West Coast.

California's fiscal crisis has derailed 4,000 conservation projects across the state, from restoration of tidal marshes on San Francisco Bay to expansion of the coastal trail, and threatens major land acquisitions on the Sonoma, Big Sur and Mendocino coasts, state officials say.

Trucking company workers who have been regularly exposed to diesel exhaust from vehicles on highways, city streets and loading docks have a higher risk of lung cancer than other workers, according to a new national study.

For 40 years on clear mornings, avid shooters have turned out at the Petaluma Trap and Skeet Club for the sport of popping away at clay pigeons hurled into the air.

Ninety percent of the trash swirling in the world's oceans is plastic, and in some parts of the Pacific Ocean, plastic pellets used by manufacturers outnumber plankton. The trash we leave behind inevitably finds its way to our beaches and oceans.

If temperatures rise rapidly in California this century, up to two-thirds of the state's native plants might lose large swaths of suitable habitat, according to a new study.

SAN FRANCISCO -- The eggs of peregrine falcons living in California's big cities contain some of the highest levels ever found in wildlife of a flame retardant used in consumer products, a new study has found.

SAN FRANCISCO -- The state agriculture department plans to use airplanes at night this summer to spray a farm pesticide over urban San Francisco, Marin County and the East Bay, intending to eradicate a potentially destructive moth.