Sierra Garcia

“Seeing how much just a foot of water can really do and how much it can flood…is kind of scary.” In the first days of 2022, thousands of people took to the California shore to catch a live preview of sea-level rise in the coming decades. They were not disappointed. Cars entering the freeway ramp in Mill Valley whizzed through hundreds of yards of ankle-deep seawater. Next to the San Francisco International Airport runway, baywater burbled up to the road from a storm drain. And in Pacifica on t

Los automóviles que ingresaban a la rampa de la autopista en Mill Valley se derrapaban a través de una sección de cientos de metros de agua salada que les llegaba hasta los tobillos. Junto a la pista del Aeropuerto Internacional de San Francisco, el agua de la bahía brotaba hasta la calle desde un desagüe pluvial. Y en Pacifica, en la costa del condado de San Mateo, cientos de cangrejeros esperanzados en el muelle ignoraron las olas que rompían sobre la acera, y hasta a la carretera junto a la entrada del muelle.

One bright morning not long after the new year, I woke up early to photograph the sea burying my favourite local beach. On warm summer afternoons, Sunny Cove fills with hundreds of people—children toddling along the waterline, boogie boarders, skimboarders, families picnicking, dogs chasing balls into the surf, teens puffing on joints—all enjoying the narrow beach nestled between two small, sandy cliff faces. I would normally clamber down the rough cliffside stairs to join their ranks. But that Saturday morning the neighborhood slumbered, and the beach was gone. The waves had swallowed it whole.

Perhaps the most complex factor reinforcing the continued cycle of poaching is the relationship between wildlife reserves and local communities. Communities on the fringes of parks and reserves rarely see economic benefits from either the trade of rhino horn or from the lucrative and white-dominated tourism industry. High unemployment rates and lack of access to basic necessities create a high economic incentive for would-be poachers. Conversely, local community members often don’t...