The California That Was: A Day in the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge

I've spent a good part of the last few months blogging about the "Hawai'i That Was", in which I have been exploring the bits and pieces of the original islands that existed before European/American incursion. I will even finish the series before long, but in the meantime I've been keeping up with the new semester (already a third of the way over), and the fall field trips. I had a break last Saturday and Mrs. Geotripper and I headed south to see if any of the migratory birds had arrived at our local refuges.

Tule Elk at the San Luis NWR

The first refuge, the Bear Creek unit of the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge was sort of a bust, as no water had been allocated to the pools there, but the Tule Elk autotour a little farther south afforded some neat photo opportunities. A huge Tule Elk buck rose out of the grassland, and I was suddenly reminded that there is a "California That Was" as well. I live in a huge prairie, the Great Valley of California, and even though most of it (95%) has been consumed by agricultural and urban development, there are still some pieces left here and there where one can be reminded of what a treasure this valley truly is (or was).

Can you see why I took this picture?

The prairie grasslands extended for four hundred miles from present day Bakersfield to Redding, and the valley averages forty or fifty miles across. Although it receives rainfall equivalent to a desert in the southern portion, rivers draining the Sierra Nevada provided plentiful water, so much so that a large part of the south valley was covered by shallow lakes (Buena Vista and Tulare). Those lakes disappeared during the last two centuries as streams were diverted for agricultural development.

The valley supported a rich ecosystem that included numerous grazing species such as the Tule Elk, deer, and pronghorn antelope, and predators that included wolves, coyotes, mountain lions, and Grizzly Bears. Many of them are gone, but we were privileged to see the Tule Elk herd and a well camouflaged deer that made its way to the Salt Slough for a drink.

Salt Slough in the San Luis NWR

More than anything else, the "California That Was" was bird country. Millions upon millions of migratory geese, cranes, and ducks called the valley home during the winter months when the northlands were covered with ice and snow. The lakes, rivers, and wetlands provided food and shelter for the tired migrants. Although far less land is available to them today, hundreds of thousands of birds still spend the winter here, and that's what we were looking for on Saturday. We heard that some Sandhill Cranes had already arrived and we wanted to have a look.

Egrets and Sandhill Cranes at the Merced NWR

Hundreds of them had indeed arrived, but we were surprised by the number of egrets present in the refuge. It's strange how such birds can be clumsy looking and graceful at the same time.

Great Egret at the Merced NWR

The California prairie is perhaps the most altered landscape on planet Earth. It's nice to know that there are dedicated groups of people working to maintain some small corners of the valley for the birds and other wildlife. It's a real privilege to have a chance to see what was once here.

Sandhill Crane at the Merced NWR

Traveling in the Way-Back Machine: The Great Valley as it could once again be...

I've written a couple of posts about my "backyard" discovery of the San Luis Wildlife Refuge Complex that preserves 26,000 acres of Great Valley prairie and wetlands environments. In the first, I referenced the "Way Back Machine" that Mr. Peabody the dog and his boy Sherman used to explore the past during the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show (actually the WABAC machine). I used the term in the sense of traveling back in time to the way the Great Valley once was before European settlers co-opted the valley for agricultural development.

The more I've learned about the refuge and what they've been trying to accomplish, I'm beginning to think of the "way-back" as being a return of at least a part of the valley to the conditions that allowed the natural wildlife and vegetation to co-exist with the human community. We are trying to put the rather tattered "web" of life back together.

The Tule Elk was an integral part of the valley ecosystem. They are a subspecies of the Wapiti endemic to California. They were major grazers of the valley floor along with pronghorn antelope and blacktail deer. They were preyed on by wolves and California Grizzly Bears. Before the settlement of the Great Valley by Spanish, the Mexicans, and the Americans, more than 500,000 were thought to exist in California. They made great eating, and good leather. They were already being slaughtered in the early 1800s, but the Gold Rush truly put an end to their existence. In 1873 the state legislature, with ironic timing, banned the hunting of the elk, but they were thought to be already extinct. In 1874 a single breeding pair was discovered on the shores of the now non-existent Buena Vista Lake, and the cattle baron Henry Miller placed them under his protection. He is credited with saving the species.

The elk had a tenuous existence in the years following. Despite building up some numbers, hunting and poaching reduced the population to 21 individuals in 1895. Efforts began to protect the species by establishing herds at several isolated locations, including the Owens Valley east of the Sierra Nevada. One of these herds was successfully started at San Luis in 1974, and is now stable at around 50 individuals living on 760 acres (a bit over a square mile). "Surplus" elk are transferred to other refuges to maintain grazing conditions. The restoration of the elk population has been a success, and there are around 4,000 of them around the state.

An auto tour at San Luis encircles the elk preserve, and we saw 30-35 of them on our drive the other day. Their enclosure is big enough to ensure good grazing conditions and to allow them some degree of privacy (lots of trees and riparian habitat to hide in).

To wrap up our exploration of the refuge, I'm including a few landscape photos to give you a feel for the place. Below is the edge of the elk enclosure and some of the dry grasslands. Not much to look at on this summer day, but you can be sure we'll be back in the spring after a few rainstorms. I expect there will be quite a flower display.

Salt Slough once drained part of the San Joaquin floodplain and hosted salmon runs and excellent wildlife habitat. Agricultural development and disruption of the riparian forest turned it into a muddy agricultural runoff channel contaminated with selenium and other toxins. Part of the efforts of the refuge managers has been to return the slough to a condition resembling its original environment. Fishing is already possible.

There is a viewing platform along Souza Marsh with a telescope. I'm glad I looked before focusing!

The marsh was pretty quiet on this summer day, but I imagine it will come to life in the migration season. We'll be back for sure!