Today, the California Department of Food and Agriculture announced plans to stop light brown apple moth spraying altogether. While the spray was temporarily halted in April, it now looks like the use of the pesticide is officially off. Yay! The light brown apple moth, which feasts on crops, and the people of Santa Cruz county will no longer have to fear the toxic spray. City Attorney Dennis Herrera says that "the state's aerial spray......

Remember that terrorizing deer that killed a dog in Orinda? Breathe safe, ladies -- he's been rubbed out -- with one shot. The trapper making the town safe again works for the US Forest Service and had a license to shoot to kill from the California Fish and Game Department, got him last night around 7:30. This was the trapper's fifth visit to the area since the end of last month, and he'd seen a lot of deer -- but he knew he'd gotten the right one because this one had wounds consistent with a dog fight. The deer carcass was donated to the Walnut Creek Lindsay Wildlife Museum, and will be fed to the coyote and bobcat that live there. "Instead of just throwing the deer away, we decided it would be nice to donate the meat," said a spokesman from Fish and Game. Picture of WANTED poster from NBC-11...

Oh, the farmer and the merchant should be friends, the farmer and the merchant should be friends -- one man likes to push a plow the other one likes to shop -- and how! but that's no reason why they can't be friends. You'll have to go that much longer without accessible fresh fruits and vegetables in the Marina, now that the merchants of Scott Street have successfully blocked a Tuesdays' farmers market from setting up stands on their street. (There's a longer article about this in today's Examiner, but it's not online yet for some reason). All but four business and three tenants on Scott Street signed a petition against reopening the Marina Farmers' Market, claiming that all those bright, fresh-tasting leafy greens and tart apples interfered with parking and cut into their Tuesday profits. McGoldrick and Ma killed the request at the City Ops and Neighborhood Services meeting yesterday, and proposed to move the market to the Marina Middle School on Saturdays instead, to which (other) merchants complained that the same tomatoes and sugar snap peas would drive traffic away from Chestnut and onto Fillmore instead. The request is up for a full vote at today's Board of Supes meeting. Marina-ite folks should stick together -- Scott Street vendors should all be pals! Pluto's should dance with the farmers' daughters, farmers dance with the trendy bath products vendors' gals! Picture from the SF Center for Urban Education for Sustainable Agriculture...

In Defense of Animals, an animal rescue and advocacy organization based in Mill Valley, issued a news release on its website yesterday regarding our own UCSF....