The fourth and most recent San Diego Bay Book is of the conservation stories around the Bay. This is a book about the coexistence of humanity and wildlife that is creatively woven together with original research, novel science, historical investigations, interviews and colorful graphics. The focus is San Diego Bay and its surrounding regions which have the unique combination of rapid urbanization, high biodiversity, and large numbers of rare and unique species. However, the theme of finding a balance between economic growth and biological conservation is becoming universal.

San Diego Bay: A Call for Conservation achieves a perfect balance of
warning, encouragement, lament and celebration. The authors
unflinchingly detail the errors of their elders, but give plenty of
ink to their successes, equally valuable as lessons. This brilliant,
elegant volume is at once a source for our present and a prescription for our future--a future which, thankfully, is in the hands of the authors themselves and young earth advocates like them.

Ted Williams, Editor-at-Large, Audubon magazine

This fourth book on San Diego Bay by the students of Gary and
Jerri-Ann Jacobs High Tech High is a worthy follow-up to its highly
acclaimed predecessors. This inspiring work takes an even more
in-depth look at the astounding range of biodiversity that makes up
San Diego Bay, and the intricate conservation challenges facing this
vulnerable ecosystem. Through careful research and a series of
thoughtful interviews, students explore causes of decline and propose solutions for the recovery of a number of threatened and endangered species. Part history, part politics, part biology, part artistic reflection, and all heart, this compilation is a remarkable testament to the power of project-based learning in a complex and changing world.

Allison Alberts, Director of Conservation and Research, Zoological Society of San Diego

If all politics is local, so ultimately is conservation. This superb compendium by the students of the Gary and Jerri-Ann Jacobs High Tech High, San Diego Bay: A Call for Conservation, is at every level a testament to that proposition.

The book has the advantage of addressing one of the most beautiful and biologically richest environments in America. From the nearby desert and river to shoreline, bay, and ocean, its diverse fauna and flora are the self-supporting matrix within which the people of San Diego enjoy a high quality of life. Each of the species celebrated in these essays is worthy of a book by itself. Each is ancient—tens of thousands to millions of years old—and exquisitely well adapted to the environment of the Californian and northern Mexican coasts.

This collection of natural history and environment essays has a special importance for science education. It illustrates one point of entry to modern biology that now is opening wide. To an increasing degree environmental biology and biodiversity studies are joining molecular and cell biology in the most important ranks of science. There is no better introduction to them than hands-on field studies, combined with theoretical studies and data analysis.

The celebration and close study of individual species in their natural habitat is also the best way to achieve conservation. People may understand the urgency of preserving the Amazon rainforest or the life of Asian rivers, but nothing approaches the motivation for saving life forms with which you are personally familiar. Their intimately enjoyed beauty and perceived value make them treasures we will not allow to be destroyed.