San Francisco Baykeeper is a nonprofit environmental advocacy organization that works to protect, preserve, and enhance the health of the ecosystems and communities that depend upon the San Francisco Bay. For seventeen years, Baykeeper has stood guard over the waters of the San Francisco Bay-Delta Estuary and its watershed. These waters, in addition to their recreational value and biological productivity, also provide drinking water for more than 23 million people and serve as the cornerstone of California's $7 billion economy. Beginning in the high reaches of the Sierra Nevada and Cascade Mountains, the Bay-Delta watershed encompasses the entire Bay Area and the Great Central Valley of California. This vast watershed includes virtually all of the state's remaining coastal wetlands and provides rare and fragile habitat for marine mammals, migrating birds, and California's few remaining endangered salmon runs.
Baykeeper was founded in 1989 by Michael Herz on the principle that California's waterways are common property, owned by all who use and enjoy them. Baykeeper works to rehabilitate natural environments and promote new strategies and policies to protect the water quality of the Bay-Delta Estuary.
Baykeeper currently operates local chapters for the San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. It was founded in 1989 as the fourth "waterkeeper" organization in the nation and the first on the West Coast of the United States. Baykeeper is part of the Waterkeeper Alliance, the national and international network of "keeper" organizations.