Alastair Bland, a freelance environmental journalist in northern California, began publishing personal travel accounts in the early 2000s, including an online travel column for Smithsonian.com, and has since written about such topics as housing and sprawl, protecting Europe's brown bears, and food and agriculture. He currently reports on California water supply, rivers and salmon, and marine ecosystems. His work has appeared in TIME, The Atlantic, Bay Nature, Hakai, Yale Environment 360, the San Francisco Chronicle, CalMatters and NPR.