Pictorial Celebration of Wetlands Day: the Great Valley of California

Sunset at the San Joaquin River NWR near the Beckwith Road Viewing Platform

Before going any farther, please go over to Siera Nystrom's wonderful blog Natural History Journal for this excellent piece on World Wetlands Day, which is on February 2. She's delivered an excellent review about the meaning and value of wetlands to all of us.

Really! Go read it first!....okay, are you back now?

Snow and Ross's Geese taking flight at the San Joaquin River NWR

I wanted to add my own celebration of wetlands here at Geotripper because I happen to live adjacent to some of the most important wetlands in the world, and those wetlands are under attack. The Great Valley of California is to many a featureless plain 400 miles long that is covered by millions of acres of agricultural lands. That's true, but that reality obscures an even more important reality: the Great Valley is a critical and priceless link in the Pacific Migratory Flyway, and as such it provides shelter and food to millions upon millions of bird species who travel the region with the seasons.

Snow and Ross's Geese at the San Joaquin River NWR

95% of the original prairies and wetlands have been converted to agricultural development, but the 5% that remains includes critical habitat for these birds, preserved as a string of wildlife refuges and parks along the length of the valley. It's not enough, but over time as some farmlands are retired, the acreage for the birds slowly increases. There are a number of National Wildlife Refuges that I visit on a regular basis. The first, shown in the first four pictures above, is the San Joaquin River National Wildlife Refuge.

Aleutian Cackling Geese and Snow Geese at the Beckwith Road Viewing Platform

The refuge has two principle areas where observations and exploration are possible: a viewing platform at the western end of Beckwith Road about 7 miles west of the town of Modesto, and the Pelican Trail, a 4.5 mile long loop trail along the San Joaquin River south of Vernalis and Highway 132. The principle attraction during the winter are the huge flocks of Aleutian Cackling Geese (much or most of the world's population of the species), and tens of thousands of Sandhill Cranes, Snow Geese, Ross's Geese, and Greater White-fronted Geese. The diverse environments within the refuges support nearly 200 species of birds along with the mammals, reptiles, fish, and amphibians that form the complex web of life along the rivers and marshes.

Merced NWR at Sunset

The other main complex is the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge, which has several units along the San Joaquin River south of Turlock. The refuge includes the main San Luis refuge and Tule Elk Preserve, along with Bear Creek Unit and the Merced National Wildlife Refuge.

Sandhill Cranes at the Merced NWR

The Merced Unit is home to well over 200 species of birds, which in winter includes tens of thousands of Sandhill Cranes and Snow/Ross's Geese. There is a six mile auto tour that allows visitors to see vast numbers of birds in seasonal and permanent ponds. We were there on Friday for a few hours and recorded nearly fifty bird species, including my first decent pictures of a Common Yellowthroat (not so common for me!).

Common Yellowthroat at the Merced NWR

Along most of the tour visitors remain in their vehicles, which thus act as a sort of blind. Because of this, birds often remain close to the road and it is possible to get some extreme close-ups of some very colorful birds like those seen below. There are also three short hiking trails where one can stretch legs and get a chance to hear the quieter and more well-hidden bird species.

Gadwall at the Merced NWR

The main part of the San Luis NWR has two major auto-tours and an extensive new visitor center, along with a variety of hiking trails. A major attraction is the Tule Elk compound, a square mile area where the elk are free to roam about. Visitors can follow a road that completely surrounds the compound.

Tule Elk at the San Luis NWR

The Tule Elk have a tortured history in California. They are a distinct subspecies of the elk clan, native to the state. They were one of the most abundant large grazers on the California prairie prior to the arrival of European colonists, with numbers estimated at about 500,000. They were hunted literally to oblivion, and when hunting of the elk was outlawed in 1873 they were thought to be already extinct. A small number, either two or four according to the story, were found on Henry Miller's ranch in the south San Joaquin Valley, and Miller undertook to protect them. They hovered near extinction for the next several decades, but preserves have been established around the state and the herd has reached a population of more than 5,000 individuals. They are still threatened by lack of  genetic diversity, given that they are all descended from a single pair or two.

American Wigeon

The second auto-tour at the San Luis NWR, the Waterfowl Route, is a fascinating journey through a land that closely resembles the primeval appearance of the Great Valley, with stretches that include open prairie, marshes, and riparian (river) habitats. We see all manner of raptors such as Northern Harriers, White-tailed Kites, Red-tailed Hawks, and Great Horned Owls. There are thousands of geese, swans, ducks and coots in the ponds and marshes, and we've seen Muskrats, River Otters, Raccoons, Deer, and Coyotes.

Ruddy Duck at the Merced NWR

There is a less traveled part of the San Luis NWR called the Bear Creek Unit, accessed off of Highway 165 south of Turlock and Hilmar. There is a short two-mile auto-tour and two trails, but birders have only made about 150 reports there compared to over 1,000 at the Waterfowl Route, and more than 2,000 at the Merced NWR.

Green-winged Teal at the Merced NWR

The ponds are often dry and the birding can be sparse, but when the ponds are full there are thousands of Red-winged Blackbirds, and it is the only reliable spot where I've found Yellow-headed Blackbirds. These birds are incredibly beautiful to photograph, but their call is not nearly so attractive. To me it sounds a lot like scraping metal!

Yellow-headed Blackbird at the Bear Creek Unit of the San Luis NWR

There are other areas throughout our region that I have not had a chance to explore yet, including the Great Valley Grasslands State Park, the Kesterson Unit of the San Luis NWR, the Los Banos Wildlife Management Area, and the Merced Vernal Pools and Grasslands Reserve. Life is so short!

American Avocet at the Merced NWR

Unfortunately, in the midst of a celebration of the diversity of life and an appreciation for the beauty to be found in our wetlands, there is a tragic reality: our government is in the hands of those who see protection of wetlands as an impediment to their quest for profits, and that government is actively seeking to destroy our precious remaining wetlands in the name of unconstrained development. They literally want to poison our water for the sake of monetary gain.

Great Horned Owl at the Merced NWR

You can read some of the details in this article, but here is the main takeaway...

This sickening gift to polluters will allow wetlands, streams and rivers across a vast stretch of America to be obliterated with pollution," ... "People and wildlife need clean water to thrive. Destroying half of our nation's streams and wetlands will be one of Trump's ugliest legacies. We'll absolutely be fighting it in court.

After so much that has been lost, especially here in California, and here in my home in the Great Valley, I am sickened at heart that men so craven have been allowed to destroy so much that is good. I hope you can appreciate the incredible legacy we have in our valley, and that you might become part of the fight to preserve the small parts that remain.

Sunset at the Bear Creek Unit of the San Luis NWR

The Hawai'i That Was: The Lost Wetlands of the Mana Plain on Kaua'i

The Hawai'i that was...

This blog series has been looking at the natural history and geology of the Hawaiian Islands against the backdrop of the changes brought about by colonization around a thousand years ago, and again around 200 years ago. The first wave of humans were the Polynesians, the second, the Europeans and Americans. The changes brought to the islands have been profound, even catastrophic. Dozens of birds species and other animals are extinct, and the landscape itself is much different than it was a thousand years ago.

Out on the west side of Kaua'i is one of the more interesting places that hardly anyone ever sees. This is in part because a large part of the coastal plain is the property of the U.S. military, a missile testing range. Much of the rest is owned by agricultural interests, and the property is closely watched because genetic testing and crop breeding is taking place, rather than simple crop production. A bumpy dirt road winds along between the properties, leading to a state park at Polihale Beach and Barking Dunes.

This is the Mana Plain, which historically was the second largest wetland complex in all the islands, covering an area of about 1,700 acres (nearly three square miles). As a rule flatlands are a rarity on the islands, so Mana really stands out. It developed when the sea was at a slightly higher level, and waves washed across the surface, eating away the base of the cliffs to the east (see the map below and the picture above). Such landscape features could be called a wave-cut bench or a coastal plain. Most of the Mana Plain lies at an elevation of less than 10 feet (3 meters).

The longest continuous sand beach in the Hawaiian Islands extends for 12-13 miles along the Mana Plains. Onshore winds picked up fragments of coral and blew them inland, forming scattered dunes across the plain. Groundwater would well up here and there, producing a number of ponds and wetlands. The region was once one of the most important bird habitats on the islands. That was then. That was the Hawai'i that was.

The Mana Plain in 1907. Source: http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-golden-plain.html

The Polynesian colonizers, the original Hawaiians, made use of the Mana Plain. It was a rich environment for fishing and bird hunting. The Hawaiians also built fish ponds and levees for the production of taro and sweet potatoes. Despite the various engineering projects, the Mana Plain retained much of its original character. The region was sacred to the native Hawaiians, as the cliff at the north end of the plain, Haelele, was a leina-a-ka-uhane (path-for-leaping-by-the-spirit). This was the place where departing spirits of the ancestors leapt into the sea to enter the realm of the dead beyond the setting sun.

In the 1800s, the swamps and ponds began to be drained and sugar cane and other crops were planted in the newly available fields. By the 1920s, nearly all the wetlands had been drained. The military established their missile tracking facility. Little was left of the original environment, and the rare and endangered shorebirds of Hawai'i had lost a major percentage of their original habitat.

Then, a small thing happened. Sand was a valuable commodity, and several gravel pits were dug on a 35 acre plot in the midst of the plain. Groundwater flowed into the quarry, and some of the endangered shorebirds took up residence. Recognizing an opportunity, officials of the state of Hawai'i established a modest refuge, the Kawaiele Waterbird Sanctuary. Seven more acres were later added, and work is commencing on an even larger plot of 105 acres. It's nowhere near enough, but it's a start.

I didn't know any of these things as we explored the west end of the island on the very last day of our visit. We saw the sign along the highway and pulled off to have a look. The sun was already low in the sky, but we caught sight of several native birds. There was a Black-crowned Night Heron (Nycticorax nycticorax hoactli). The bird, known on the islands as 'Auku'u, is virtually identical to its cousins on the American mainland.

There were also several dozen Ae'o, Thousands of years ago, a few Black-necked Stilts from the American mainland were blown off course, and somehow survived a 2,000 mile journey to the Hawaiian Islands. In the isolation they found there, they evolved ever so slightly from their mainland cousins, and are now considered a subspecies (Himantopus mexicanus knudseni). With their favored habitat being in short supply on the islands, their numbers are not large, only about 2,000 individuals. They are considered highly endangered.

It's said that if the spirits of the deceased did not have family members in the sea to receive them, they would wander this landscape, attaching themselves to rocks and other features. I don't like the thought of being lost in eternity. I'd like to know that they found happiness somewhere in this place, perhaps among the birds of the refuge...

A Truly Great Valley: Ruminations on California's Most Valuable Resource

What is the most valuable mineral commodity in California, the so-called Golden State? Gold? Not hardly. We produced somewhere around 150 million ounces of the stuff over the last 160 years, netting riches for a few, and producing a sad heritage of scarred hillsides, fouled rivers and bays, and thousands of people (and their cultures) dead before their time.

So what is it? California has one of the largest ore bodies in the world of borate minerals, and we produce something like 50% of the world's supply of these important industrial chemicals. But their value pales in comparison to the most precious resource.

What about rare-earth elements?  For several decades California was the world's largest producer of these technologically important chemicals before being supplanted by China, which now produces around 95% of the world supply. Nope, it's not that one either.

There's oil, of course. We've been drilling it for more than a century, and currently produce around 200 million barrels a year. At current prices, maybe $15 billion a year. But that's not our most productive resource either.

No, our most valuable mineral resource is dirt. Or more specifically, soil. Our Great Valley is covered with it, and we produce incredible riches by converting the macronutrients stored on the surface of clay particles into carbohydrates, which are then consumed in large amounts by populations worldwide. In other words, we produce food. Lots and lots of food, more than 200 different kinds. For a variety of geological reasons, the soils in the Great Valley are among the richest, most productive on the planet. Our valley, comprising about 1% of the agricultural lands of the United States (about 15,000 sq. miles out of 1,500,000 sq. miles) produces about 25% of the country's table food.

I imagine that my description sounds a bit like a public relations campaign, but it's not. I was thinking about the valley, my home, as I traveled through the northern half of it on Thanksgiving weekend. For more than 200 miles, I passed one planted field after another pretty much without a break, other than a few widely spaced farm towns (Sacramento and Stockton being two huge urban exceptions). In that entire distance I could see but a view spots where the valley resembled anything like its natural condition, including the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge near Willows, and a  handful of river crossings. We have, I realized, treated our most valuable mineral resource the same way we dealt with gold when it was discovered: get as much out of it as possible, and damn any repercussions. We've tried to squeeze every last bit of profit from the rich soil, through the addition of fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and imported water until the natural ecosystem was in a shambles. Our valley is one of the most altered landscapes on the planet. The gold miners affected a few tens or hundreds of square miles with poisons and wastes. In the Great Valley we've affected around 15,000 square miles.

Of course, it couldn't be any other way. We have to eat, and the story of humans for the last 8,000 years or so is the development of agriculture leading to the development of cities and civilizations. We could not colonize a landscape like California without providing a source of food, shelter and water. The wistfulness in my thinking the other day is the fact that we did this thing with no planning, and no thought to sustainable development. The bounty of the valley was also sustaining millions of birds, grazing animals, amphibians, and fish, and we simply plowed over those habitats and many of the animals simply disappeared. It's only in the last few decades that we've started to recognize that we are truly part of a worldwide ecosystem, and that there is value in maintaining ecological diversity. We are finally setting aside some of the leftovers of our headlong development of the valley in an effort to provide for the millions of birds, fish and other animals that have depended on the valley for hundreds of thousands of years.

The Great Valley is a gigantic geological anomaly in the normally mountainous American west. It's incredibly flat, flatter maybe even than Florida or Louisiana. 400 miles long and around 30-40 miles wide, it is a vast trough that has been collecting sediments for around 140 million years, first as a seaway formed between a subduction zone and the coastline (a forearc basin), and later as a series of river floodplains and deltas. In places like Bakersfield, the thickness of the sediments approaches 10 miles. In my neck of the woods, they reach half that, a mere 25,000 feet or so (sort of an upside down Mt. Everest).

The "primeval" valley was mostly a dry savanna or short-grass prairie, more desert-like in the south, more oak woodland in the north. Dozens of rivers flowed out of the Sierra Nevada, providing hundreds of miles of riparian habitat. The rivers at the south end of the valley ended in huge ephemeral lakes, the now dry Buena Vista and Tulare lakes. Until 11,000 or 12,000 years ago, the valley teemed with horses, camels, antelope, bison, mammoths, mastodons, sloths, bears, sabertooth cats, lions, and dire wolves. After the great extinction at the end of the last ice age, the valley still had vast herds of pronghorn antelope, deer, and tule elk who were hunted by wolves, coyotes, grizzly bears, and mountain lions, and the new arrivals, the humans.

For birds, the valley was paradise. Sure, when the weather got hot billions of them migrated far to the Arctic north where they could consume the trillions of bugs and breed, but when the winter came, they migrated back to the snow-free Great Valley and fed on the marsh grasses, berries, fish, amphibians and bugs that lived along the rivers, marshes, lakes and other wetlands in the verdant valley.

So it was that I was visiting one of the few spots in the valley where one could imagine the way things once were before the agricultural revolution. The Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge is one of a series of reclaimed farmlands and marshes that serve as a winter home of hundreds of thousands of geese, ducks, cranes, and other migratory fowl, as well as the yearlong resident birds and other animals. It is, in fact, a highly regulated landscape, with square plots that are flooded some years, dry in others, managed in such a way as to provide as much forage for the birds as possible. But it recalls the primeval environment. Driving along the auto loop, we were quietly amazed at the sheer numbers of birds. There were thousands of Snow Geese, and at one point literally all of them took flight. The rush of thousands of flapping wings was like the sound of a jet plane.

A lot of us kind of take the Great Valley for granted. It's actually not the nicest place in the world to live, with foul air, dust and heat in the summer, cold tule fogs in the winter, high unemployment rates, and crushing poverty in many areas. But it is we who feed the rest of the state, and much of the rest of the country. We've made a kind of devil's bargain with the land, wresting as much nutrition as we can from the soil, and leaving a bit of the leftovers for the others who inhabit the planet with us. But if you can, give our valley a look, especially on a clear winter's day. I suggest a stop at a place like the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge just off Interstate 5 near Willows, or the Merced National Wildlife Refuge near Merced and Los Banos. You will be truly astounded to realize that we have our own small version of the Serengeti right here in the middle of the tilled fields.

A Cat in the Bird House? It haz no 'egrets, but I do!

The other day I posted about our discovery of a nearby treasure, a bit of the California Prairie being returned to a "pre-European" condition with the purpose of preserving a viable part of the migratory flyway for birds in the midst of their journeys between the Arctic and the Equator. It's the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge Complex, a fascinating combination of riparian habitats, marshlands, wetlands and grasslands that is both a permanent home for many birds and other animals, and a stopping place for millions of others.

The other day we just followed a short auto trail, but some research told us that the refuge had much more to offer. The park recently added an excellent visitor center, and offers a number of other auto tours and hiking trails. It's not the prime part of the year to see the migratory birds, but there were plenty of other interesting things to do.

The visitor center was quite interesting with lots of interactive displays, including Lucky the resident cat. She was a feral member of the refuge who was hanging out around the visitor center while it was being constructed. When it was finished, the staff seems to have adopted her, and she has a free run of the exhibits. As the staff points out, that as an indoor kitty she has a huge playground, can't eat the native birds, and won't get eaten by one of the resident carnivores.She is quite friendly...

The building has other interesting aspects. It is a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Platinum building, with a carbon neutral footprint. Solar panels provide 100% of the energy used in the building, and it uses less than half the water of similar sized complexes.

After our visit with Lucky (oh, and the exhibits), we set out on the waterfowl auto tour. Being the height of summer we didn't expect to see many animals. We were the only visitors on the road (and there should be more). As it turned out, we saw a fair number of interesting birds, almost all of them egrets.

I took the picture above without noticing the herd of elk in the distance! The thing about the egrets is that they were wary of our presence and tended to take off quickly, so we tended to point quickly and shoot before they flew off. Like below...

Zoom lenses were handy, which explains the fuzzy look to some of the pictures. That also happened because we dispensed with tripods. There was never enough time to set up before they took off.

Oh, there's another one flying away!

Does a geological connection seem to be missing? I actually do write about other things sometimes, but I'm coming to realize that a place like the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge complex is very geological in nature. It's not just a layer of sediment. The four environments in the complex (riparian, marsh, vernal pools, and grassland) are all related to activity along the ancestral floodplain system of the San Joaquin River, which has recently started to flow through the refuge again due to legal agreements designed to maximize conditions for the migratory birds and to restore the salmon fishery. There was once a complex intermixing of these environments that was destroyed by the diversion of water for irrigation, and plowing for agricultural development. Groundwater conditions changed radically. It is taking a concerted effort at understanding the dynamics of streamflow and groundwater distribution that is making it possible to restore this complex prairie and riparian environment. It's a multi-decade project, with clear progress in many areas. I was impressed with what I saw!

To my local friends who teach: this refuge is just a few miles from Modesto, Turlock, Los Banos, and Merced, and is a perfect destination for class field trips. Kids will be fascinated with the place, both indoors and out.

Next, the big mammals that live on the complex...

Traveling in the Way-Back Machine: The Great Valley as it once was...

Sometimes the interesting revelations just happen. I haven't kept up with the America's Never Never because I was out of town doing something really strange: relaxing. As you might guess from the previous post, we spent a couple of days on the Big Sur coastline simply reveling in the cool air and enjoying a couple of beaches we had never visited before (more on them in later posts). The big surprise happened as we were leaving town: we got caught in a time machine and were transported a few hundred years into the past.

California's Great Valley is one of the most important agricultural regions on the planet. I've lamented a few times on the dreariness of living in the dust, the chemical pesticides, the fertilizers, and the horrible economic conditions (we still have poverty and unemployment at perhaps twice the national rate). But most of all I lament at how much we have changed the landscape, and co-opted the native environment and bent it to our own needs and desires. The California Prairie-lands barely exist anymore. When I've written on them in the past, I've explored the edges, the Sierra Nevada foothills where the soils are poor and therefore undeveloped except as grazing lands. In the interior parts of the valley, though, little of the original landscape remains, less than 5%.

 On our way to the coast, we discovered that it isn't all gone yet. Our route, Highway 165 south of Turlock, took us through the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge. The preserve covers 26,000 acres of San Joaquin River wetlands, grasslands, and vernal pools. We've always been in a hurry before, but not on Sunday. We saw a sign for an auto-tour route through part of the refuge, and we pulled off.

It truly was taking a time machine into the pre-European invasion of the Great Valley. The scene was peaceful, where the cacophony of bird calls almost drowned out the distant noise of highway traffic. One could look past the grasslands to the distant Coast Ranges and get a feel, if only for a moment, of how the valley once was. We actually stopped at the refuge twice, at mid-day on Sunday, and at sunset on Tuesday.

It would not be correct to say that we were standing in the middle of a pristine wilderness. Much of the land we were exploring was probably used for grazing and planting in the past. Many of the grasses are no doubt invasive species. And the water flows are managed. The administration of the wildlife refuge is attempting to maintain the wetlands and increase their area to reclaim a portion of the vast migratory flyway of California that has been co-opted in so many other parts of California. They are trying to restore some semblance of balance to the local ecosystem, because it has influences that stretch for thousands of miles from Central America to the Arctic. Untold millions of birds (and numerous other species in the ecosystem) are affected by our choices.

The heart of restoring this landscape is the San Joaquin River. For decades, long stretches of the river on the floor of the Great Valley were dry because of upstream diversions for irrigation. The last few years have seen a restoration of minimum flows of the river through the refuge, in part to reclaim wetland environments, and an effort to restore salmon habitat. It was good to see a river at work again for something besides an agricultural baron.

We'll be back. There are several other auto tours, including one that offers possible views of a tule elk herd, and a number of hiking trails. It's always a pleasure making new discoveries in one's back yard!