Central Valley Water and Wetlands with Ellen Wehr

Ellen Wehr  0:00  
What we know is that there were extensive wetlands and floodplains throughout the whole valley. It's estimated there were 4 million acres of wetlands in the Central Valley. It was also a big seasonal floodplain, where streams and rivers would come down from the mountains carry their snow melt and seasonally inundate large areas huge areas of the valley.

Michelle Fullner  0:23  
Hello, and welcome to Golden State naturalist, a podcast for anyone who's ever wished they could peek back in time, a few 100 or 1000 or million years. I'm Michelle Fullner. And you just heard the voice of Elon we're describing what California's Central Valley was like a few 100 years ago because in this episode, we're going to dive deep into the watery history of the largest valley in the United States, including an ancient inland sea natural levees 10 foot tall grasses peat bogs 400 pound salmon, Tooley elk managed wetlands, grizzly bears, sinking cities and farmland, Aqua dogs, camels, bird migration places you can go to see something like what the Central Valley looked like prior to colonization. Why water in California is so controversial and how we can work together to provide water for communities agriculture and wildlife alike. If you're interested in this topic, or really anything to do with the natural world in California, and would like to help me create more episodes like it, it would mean so much to me if you consider supporting the show on Patreon for as little as $4 a month coming up in the next couple of months, I'm going to be traveling to a bunch of places including Humboldt County, the Sonoma Coast, the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and more. For a wide variety of interviews, I think you're gonna love your donation helps so much in covering travel costs, audio equipment, and necessary software for making the show but it also gets you access to all kinds of fun video and audio extras AMA's and more, you can find me on Patreon at www.patreon.com/michelle Fullner. That's Michelle with two L's and Fullner is fu ll en er, and if you're looking for a totally free way to help out the number one best thing you can do is share your favorite episode with any friend, family member or colleague who has ever pointed out a bird to you. Next, make sure you're following the show wherever you get your podcasts on Apple podcasts. You can do that by hitting the little plus sign in the top right hand corner of your screen. It'll look like a check mark if you've already done this. If you want to see what my face looks like or see my outdoor adventures you can find me at Golden State naturalist on both Instagram and Tiktok My website is www dot Golden State naturalist.com And I'm excited to announce that there is now merch for the show. If you want to get a t shirt sweatshirt or tanktop Head to www dot Golden State naturalist.com/store. But now let's get to the episode. Ellen Weir is general counsel for the grassland Water District in Merced County, which serves water to the grassland ecological area the largest remaining freshwater wetland complex in the western United States. She has practiced Water and Land Use law in Sacramento since 2007. Specializing in Central Valley Project water issues. Ellen serves on several boards of organizations focused on water and environmental conservation, including Ducks Unlimited Friends of the Inyo and the Los vaqueros reservoir joint powers authority. So without further ado, let's hear from Ellen. We're on Golden State naturalist.

This is my first interview in a conference room Yeah, we're

Ellen Wehr  3:52  
in a fancy conference room feel underdressed

Michelle Fullner  3:57  
or not wearing hiking boots? It's really weird. Okay, so genuinely I thought I was doing okay by going business casual to this interview and not like full hiking apparel. But then a bunch of people walked by in suits, and I wanted to become part of the carpet. And, Ellen, your background is in law, right? So yeah. Do you know about water stuff? What's the connection there? Well, I

Ellen Wehr  4:18  
did actually study Ecology and Sustainable Agriculture. When I was in undergrad, and I ended up going to law school to be an environmental lawyer cool. When I went to law school, they said what kind of environmental lawyer and I said, I don't know water. I love water. I've always loved water. I grew up by the water and then they asked me what kind of water law like water quality water rights and so I get more and more niched as my career went on and now I am a water rights lawyer who practices water law for wildlife refuges and wetlands in the Central Valley. Elena has

Michelle Fullner  4:53  
developed this understanding of water in the Central Valley in her now more than 15 years practicing water, law and sacrament. dump. And so when you say the central valley that encompasses and I'm gonna talk with my hands, but it encompasses this whole stretch of the whole middle of the state. So we've got the Sacramento Valley and the San Joaquin Valley. That's right. So tell me a little bit more about that. Sure. So

Ellen Wehr  5:13  
if you look on a map of California, you can see this huge bathtub shaped Valley. It's really kind of impressive, especially if you have a topographical map. The Central Valley was referred to once as the Great Central Valley. It is about 450 miles long, and it spans from Mount Shasta and the north all the way down to Kern County and Bakersfield and even further south. And it basically is a bathtub that was formed from unique processes. But that encompasses the river valleys of the Sacramento, which is California's largest river and the San Joaquin. Its second largest river and those two rivers come together in the Sacramento San Joaquin Delta, which is the largest estuary on the West Coast pretty neat place. National

Michelle Fullner  5:56  
Geographic defines an estuary as an area where a freshwater river or stream meets the ocean. In estuaries, the Salty Ocean mixes with a freshwater river resulting in brackish water. brackish water is somewhat salty, but not as salty as the ocean and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration points out the estuaries are often called the nurseries of the sea. Because numerous animal species rely on them for nesting and breeding. Most of the fish and shellfish eaten the United States, including salmon, herring and oysters complete at least part of their life cycles in estuaries. Now, if you're not familiar with the location of this particular estuary, I'm here to help. If you were in the city of San Francisco, and you had a boat, you would climb aboard on the eastern side of the peninsula sail up to the San Pablo Bay, which is to the northeast of the city, and then you'd keep going east through the much smaller Sassoon bay that would then lead you into the Delta, at which point if you were me, you would get very lost and confused by the sheer number of directions you could possibly go. There are nearly 200 islands in the Delta, not all of them named ranging in size bordered by wide or narrow channels of water sneaking in every conceivable direction. Okay, but let's zoom back out to see the whole Central Valley. And so is the delta kind of the splitting point of the two valleys if you're like, Okay, Central Valley is the whole thing. The northern part north of the Delta is the Sacramento and south of the Delta is the San Joaquin Valley is that that's what I thinking about it correctly. Okay. That's

Ellen Wehr  7:27  
right. And so it's often described that the Sacramento Valley gets a lot more precipitation and a lot more rainfall and snowmelt in the San Joaquin Valley gets a lot less water. And so the history of water in California is really about moving moving it around from areas where there's a lot of water to areas where there's not so much water. The formation of the Central Valley is really interesting. Basically, it used to be an inland sea that had a bay that went out to the ocean to the south, Bakersfield, that area, and it was connected to the ocean. It's kind of like I would think like a huge fjord or something like huge 400 pound salmon would swim up from the ocean until 100.

Michelle Fullner  8:11  
How many years ago were we talking?

Ellen Wehr  8:12  
I'm talking like 5 million years.

Michelle Fullner  8:14  
Okay, so this is like, what megafauna is that what that's called megafauna. Yeah, that's right. In that era, okay. So they will probably like maybe giant sloths wandering the Earth at the same time,

Ellen Wehr  8:24  
just a few years ago, the East Bay Mud, which is the East Bay Municipal Utility District, they run a big water system that supplies a lot of the Eastern Bay Area, from the foothills all the way there, somebody discovered these fossils of camels, rhinoceros, Mastodon, California to test met for tests, mascots. I don't know how many tests they had, but they were like tiny little elephants that could definitely fit through the door of this conference room. There were large tortoises and everything like that. So those are the kind of animals that used to live by this huge inland sea. That then became the central valley and the salmon, the 400 pound salmon I mentioned they have these big teeth like these two teeth, and it was just a wild time I'm sure to be here. I would love to

Michelle Fullner  9:13  
like travel through time and see that. I mean, I also terrifying to and

Ellen Wehr  9:18  
you can see the pictures of the fossils on the East Bay MUD website, but it's pretty neat.

Michelle Fullner  9:22  
So this is wild. According to an article from The Guardian that I'll link in the show notes back in 2020. Water District Ranger Greg frantic I think it's pronounced was patrolling this area on the eastern edge of the Central Valley when he saw a rock that looked strangely like bark and it turned out to be petrified wood and there was so much more there than petrified wood. The article states soon, scientists were unearthing fossils from a whole zoo of prehistoric animals that existed in the time period known as the Miocene epoch. It was more than 50 million years after dinosaurs roamed the continent and it would be million of years before humans appeared, it was an age when the mastodons wondered North America, volcanic activity and shifting geologic plates had not yet formed this year in Nevada, and most of southern California was still underwater. And the types of fossils discovered at the site are exactly as Elon described. Here's how the Guardian sets the scene. Imagine a California with volcanoes erupting to the East End Los Angeles buried under the Pacific Ocean, giant camels, rhinoceros and for tusked miniature elephants graze on a lush landscape only to be preyed upon by bone crushing dogs. And I was super shocked by all of this at the time of the interview, because I hadn't yet recorded the episode on the La Brea Tar Pits, which released earlier in this season. So go check out that libreria episode if you want to learn more about these incredible animals and ice ages and all kinds of cool prehistoric stuff.

Ellen Wehr  10:53  
So then what happened what they think happened is that the you know, the Coast Range uplifted the San Andreas Fault and other faults, lifted up the coastal mountains to the south and closed off that Bay to the ocean. And so then what we had was a big lake that they called Lake Corcoran. And that lake they don't know exactly how extensive it was, but it definitely filled the San Joaquin Valley and probably extended up into the Sacramento Valley. Hundreds and hundreds of miles totally closed off from the oceans freshwater

Michelle Fullner  11:23  
or was it trapped saltwater from the

Ellen Wehr  11:27  
I think it was at that point a mixture of both right, so you had the Inland Sea that got closed off and then the melt the runoff, the snowmelt that came in for the rainwater. And they think that originally the lake would sometimes fill and spill out of Monterey Bay. And then at some point, whether by natural erosion or by some kind of catastrophic release of you know, glacial debris, the the lake emptied out at Carquinez Strait, which is that narrow strait that you cross over the bridge to to go to the Bay Area, okay. And that is now where the Delta started forming, it backed up there. So after the glaciers melted about 10,000 years ago, the sea level rose, and the sediments from the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers just started depositing because it didn't really have anywhere to go. And it built up the Delta. The Delta is where those two rivers come together and it formed this huge wetland, this huge estuary, deposited those sediments plant started growing their two leaves, which are, you know, the native reeds that grow here would die and grow and decay. And it formed a big peat bog peat is like, you know, decomposed organic matter. And so the whole Delta was this huge braided, big, huge islands of decomposed peat and everything. And that's, that's what we have now.

Michelle Fullner  12:48  
So cool. And so I guess kind of in more now, you've gotten us to more modern geologic times, right? And so thinking about geologically or in this to logic, age, things being the way that they are, but before European contact, I'm curious about what it would have been like in the Central Valley, either Sacramento or San Joaquin. During that time period. What was that like?

Ellen Wehr  13:11  
Well, I wasn't here. But I think what we what we know is that there were extensive wetlands and floodplains throughout the whole valley, it's estimated there were 4 million acres of wetlands in the Central Valley. And I tried to figure out how big that is. The closest I could come is that the entire Yosemite National Park is less than a million acres in size, and that's a really big national park. So this would be at least four or five times that extents of wetlands. It was also a big seasonal floodplain, where streams and rivers would come down from the mountains carry their snow melt and seasonally in a date, large areas, huge areas of the valley. In

Michelle Fullner  13:54  
order to visualize this, Elon sent me a Defenders of Wildlife page called the wetlands of California Central Valley. I'll link this in the show notes because it's packed with fantastic information. But one of the coolest things about it is it includes a map of California's wetlands that is both pre 1900s and 2016. And you can swipe a magic line across the map to reveal the wetlands of one time period or the other. I have to see that as cool as this is. It's also kind of heartbreaking because the pre 1900s map has large swaths of blue across both the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys representing the historic wetlands in those places. And the 2016 map has just these tiny little pinpricks of blue in just a few of the places the solid blue used to be. I can't help but look at this modern map and imagine myself as a bird flying along the Pacific Flyway, looking for food and rest and not finding a whole lot of options. At least not when compared with the near continuous Bed and Breakfast situation that pre 1900s era migratory birds would have found. Here's Elon describing in more detail what that would have looked like

Ellen Wehr  15:03  
you had Tulare Lake, which was a very large lake that formed in the San Joaquin Valley and the southern San Joaquin Valley. And it would swell in size every year. It was 80 miles long. Whoa, it was three times the size of Lake Tahoe in surface area, but it was very shallow for a lake so it would fill with all the runoff from the Kings River, and San Joaquin rivers and others and just swell up to the to be this extremely huge lake. In the Sacramento Valley. There were braided river channels and riparian forests everywhere. So there were hardwood riparian forests that lined all of these different channels. They say that some of the streams like Butte Creek, cache Creek puto Creek things we know about from living here that now make their way all the way to the Delta. They did not even reach the river because they would form these natural levees. So there actually were quite a few naturally formed levees all through the Sacramento Valley. They were up to 20 feet tall, they were up, they were miles wide and miles long. And they would hold water in basins. And so I think that the mosaic of the Sacramento Valley especially was lots of floodplain lots of different basins, a capture water and just tons of wetlands and riparian forests. And then a lot of natural grasslands that formed up around the edges like the uplands they called them that wetland grasses we call them wetland grasses are now what a lot of people would refer to as reeds. So the toolies were at least 10 feet tall at least. And they they encompassed a lot of the wetland areas in the Delta, especially the San Joaquin Valley, where I work in the grasslands, we call it the grasslands. And it's because it was this overflow, the San Joaquin Valley was a little different from the Sacramento Valley. Because of that the Tulare Lake and those other floodplain lakes, they would seep out into the San Joaquin River over the summer. And so you didn't have as much sediment because the lakes would settle out the settlement. So the San Joaquin River never really built a lot of those natural levees. It didn't deposit sediment as much as in the Sacramento. And so every winter, the water would flood and just spread out on the flat San Joaquin Valley, and form the seasonal marshes. And those marshes had grasses like toolies and others that water grass that would just cover and be so tall that you couldn't even see through them. I think then in the spring with the native grasslands, there would be this huge superbloom of flowers. So folks who came and settled here would look out at the San Joaquin Valley. I know John Muir described this as like the flower easiest place they had ever seen just this explosion of wildflowers. And you had a lot of herbivores, like large herbivores like pronghorn antelope, and truly elk that are native only to the Central Valley in California that would graze on all these grasses all summer long.

Michelle Fullner  18:01  
So there would be probably like, were there big herds of these animals just kind of running around?

Ellen Wehr  18:07  
Yeah, it's really hard to imagine that there were 1000s of antelope and elk, as well as other animals. A grizzly bear was here, the Puma was here.

Michelle Fullner  18:17  
I always think of bears as being in the mountains. Because here in California, if you're gonna see a bear, it's gonna probably be at Lake Tahoe or somewhere up in this year, as you know, and those are brown bears. I mean, black bears. It's so hard to imagine grizzly bears wandering around Sacramento Valley. It's almost impossible. Do you know of any other predators that were here?

Ellen Wehr  18:35  
There were wolves here. There were wolves, coyotes, Pumas or cougars. There's a story last year of a wolf who came from the Sierra and made it made his way all the way down to the San Joaquin Valley, and actually crossed the valley. He was radio collared and so they could track him. He made his way all the way to San Luis Obispo. I don't exactly know how he got through across all of the water canals and freeways that in line the valley now but pretty, pretty amazing feat. That is

Michelle Fullner  19:04  
remarkable. So they would have been wandering all over the place without having to worry about freeways or water canals. Yeah.

Ellen Wehr  19:09  
And of course they ate the rodents are so many native rodents that used to be here and and other species like the kangaroo rat, and others that were you know, populated all throughout ground squirrels, I'm sure all over the valley, as they still are.

Michelle Fullner  19:26  
Yes, yeah, ground squirrels have made it. They're still here. How deep did the floodwaters go when it was those seasonal floods? Was it like you're in what's now Old Town Sacramento and it's like 20 feet deep because it's so close to the river or is it like a shallow floodplain spread out really far.

Ellen Wehr  19:43  
I think most of it was shallow. And the reason I think that is because of all the waterfowl that migrated here and continue to migrate here. You know, there's estimates that there were 40 to 50 million waterfowl alone, not including all the show or birds and all of the land birds that migrate here on the Pacific Flyway. And those birds most of them are very adapted to pretty shallow water. Right, so they eat the invertebrate bugs that bloom beneath the the floodwater. They eat the grasses and seeds from the grasses and they really thrive, you know, depending on the species in water that that's only up to a few feet deep. There's estimates that Tulare Lake that huge 80 mile lake in the San Joaquin Valley was up to 40 feet deep, which is still pretty shallow for a lake but a seasonal lake that got shallower as you went out to the edges. And I did read that the big flood here in Sacramento that forced you know, lots of residents here out in 1862, that took months to recede afterward. It was 100 or 200 year flood that got to about up to 30 feet deep Wow, here in Sacramento. So I think it varied right, these basins would fill up and but a lot of it was just a vast floodplain of probably shallow water only a few feet.

Michelle Fullner  21:04  
If you're not familiar with that 1862 flood, it is very much worth going and looking up historic photos of it because you can see people navigating the Streets of Old Town Sacramento, which I guess at the time was just called Sacramento but in boats and there are even some buildings with ladders going up to the second storey so that people wouldn't have to go through the flooded bottom levels to get inside. Now I wasn't able to verify this next part. But I've heard that Leland Stanford had to travel by boat from the second story of his house to the state capitol for his inauguration on January 10 of 1862. And shortly after that date on January 23, the state capitol was temporarily moved from Sacramento to San Francisco due to the floods during which over 4000 people died and the property damage totaled $100 million, which is over $3 billion. In today's money. The indigenous people of Sacramento though knew better than to put themselves in this kind of situation. With such deep roots in the valley and stories passed down through the generations to guide them. They didn't make permanent settlements in areas that flooded seasonally. Instead, the nice and on people of what is now Sacramento would make seasonal Tooley houses in the summer and then head to upland areas and permanent structures during the rainy months. If you live in or around Sacramento, you can head to fer Nature Center to see examples of the seasonal tool we houses. I want to note that I'm using the past tense here because I'm talking about a time over 160 years ago when hydrology and technology in the state were completely different. But the nice anon people and other Central Valley tribes are still very much present today. If you get the chance, check out nice anon.org To learn more about their story in particular because this tribe that was once federally recognized actually had their recognition stripped and Rancher RIA terminated in 1963. And visibility and donations are both helpful as they seek to regain federal recognition. There's a lot more history here. So that's nice and on, and i s e n a n.org. To learn more. I'll also link it in the show notes. Okay, so far in this episode, we've traveled through 5 million years of Central Valley history, we've seen how the Inland Sea with its megafauna shifted to a vast system of wetlands all across the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys. Now we're going to head to a quick break. But when we get back, you'll hear how we got from those wetlands and riparian forests to the valley as it looks today. Stay tuned for that Ellen and I will be back soon.

And now, back to my conversation with Elon Weir. Okay, so I think kind of transitioning from what it used to be like to what it is like today, like how do we get from there to here because I've lived here for a few winters now, you know, and it hasn't been like several feet of water on the ground everywhere I go. I haven't had to take a boat to work. So what

Ellen Wehr  24:32  
happened? Well, a lot happened. I mean, the what we see today is the product of a lot of different activities and forces first, you know, colonization happened here. Agriculture happened here and the Gold Rush happened that brought a lot of people to California. I think as the Gold Rush kind of died down a lot of people then change to agriculture. And so you originally have this hydraulic Am I inning operations, especially in the Sacramento River tributaries like the Yuba and the American River, they blasted the hillsides and literally choked the rivers with millions of acre feet of material. And that altered and flooded even more down in Sacramento because it was just changing the whole hydrology of the valley. And I think those floods that happened that there was one in 1850 and 1862, especially here in Sacramento, they started building levees, so started building levees, and that that kicked off an extensive period of flood protection work. There was a federal law, it was called the Arkansas act in 1850. That said, we the federal government will give land to the state of California as long as they reclaim it and build levees and produce, you know, safe places for people to live and agriculture. The California legislature took it a step further than that act, they passed the green Act, which allowed for those levees to be built anywhere. So the the original Arkansas act said that the levees should be built along gnash natural water bodies, and California kind of loosened that up and allowed the levees to be built for convenience. You know, for traveling where it was great to settle. The stories say that as a lot of gold miners and others started settling the valleys to do agriculture, they, they started chopping down the riparian forests. And they would use that for fencing for lumber for fuel. They also used a lot of wood to fuel steam powered ships that would make their way up from the bay into the rivers. And that actually took up a lot of a lot of wood. And so those riparian forests, I think, very quickly disappeared. The levees that those natural levees that I mentioned that were formed by the action of the rivers and the deposition of sediment, those turned out to be very fertile. And so a lot of farming started to take place, levees were started to breaking down. And so yeah, we channelize the rivers, we reclaimed the islands, man, I say we, as you know, white, white colonizers. But, you know, we settled the islands by building levees around those natural wetland islands, those peat islands and using them for farming.

Michelle Fullner  27:13  
They were probably very good farmland with all that accumulated sediment and all of the nutrients that had Yeah,

Ellen Wehr  27:18  
they're for really rich, the San Joaquin, Sacramento valleys and the Delta are some of the richest farmland in the world. And we produce so much food here now that, you know, feeds the nation in the world. It's it's a really special place for agriculture. And it's also very, very different than what it looked like, even 150 years ago, right?

Michelle Fullner  27:38  
And because it doesn't experience that seasonal flooding anymore, with all the sediments coming in and everything. Does that mean that the soil is gradually getting depleted? As it's farmed, or? Yeah,

Ellen Wehr  27:49  
that that is especially happening in the Delta. The peat soils are fairly fragile. And when they are farmed and irrigated, they tend to sink, they compact, and they sink and the levees and the Delta now are at risk, because they are protecting farmland that is essentially below sea level. One of the islands was breached in a storm decades ago. And it's now just an open water body. And so there's a lot of work being done to address how we move forward in the Delta. What's the best balance between the natural forces and agriculture and flood protection? How can we, you know, bring that more into balance? But yeah, I think that's, you know, I don't think that the soils in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valley are being depleted in that same way. But of course, intensive agriculture is big here. So

Michelle Fullner  28:45  
right, right. Okay, I got us off track talking about soil. But let's get back to the story of how water used to move through the Central Valley and how it does today.

Ellen Wehr  28:55  
Starting in like the 1915 1920s. Navigation was becoming more difficult as a result of agricultural water diversions and those hydraulic mines and agriculture was expanding to new places in the southern San Joaquin Valley. Groundwater was being pumped but it was becoming depleted. And so a plan was developed for this the State Water Project, the California Water Project in about 1919 was developed. And one of the first ideas was to dam the Sacramento River for water storage because we don't get a lot of precipitation for agriculture. In the summer we can use that stored water to improve navigation and to irrigate and also to dam the San Joaquin River Friant dam. As

Michelle Fullner  29:39  
you hear about this complex system of dams and aqua ducks. One thing that might help put it all into context is what Elon was actually referring to just now, California has a Mediterranean climate, which means that we have hot, dry summers, but of course agriculture needs water during the summer. So a lot of the water history of California can be understood by remember During that we often need water in different places than the places where it fell either as rain or snow and at different times of the year than the time when it fell. So all of these structures, the dams and aqua ducks have been put into place to get the water where we want it when we want it there. Unfortunately, we can't alter the landscape, this drastically without consequences, which we'll talk more about soon. Okay, back to the history of the structures being built.

Ellen Wehr  30:26  
So the Red Bluff diversion dam went in, in 1937 that started backing up the Sacramento Valley and then Millerton dam was built in 1942. That's the Friant Millerton Lake Friant dam on the San Joaquin. So that dam, the two big rivers here and the these canals started to be built and pumped started to be put in to move water around the state like I was talking about. So the Friant current Canal and the Madera canal. They take water from the San Joaquin River and move it over 100 miles to farmlands and south and north and then as a replacement for the water that used to come down the San Joaquin River because the San Joaquin River was completely cut off by Friday. It was completely dried out for long stretches of the year and even now there are times when it is it goes completely dry were the actions are being taken to restore flows and restore salmon there now but when Friant dam was built, it completely cut off the river. And so in exchange, they built pumps in the Delta. And those pumps were to take water released from the Shasta Dam Red Bluff dam Sacramento River from the Delta and move that water through a series of very large canals to supply agriculture on the west side in the San Joaquin Valley, the northern San Joaquin Valley and also to start to carry water down to Los Angeles. So those two big Aqua decks the California Aqueduct, and the Delta Mendota canal. Those provide the replacement water to the west side and then the California Aqueduct takes the water and distributes it farther south successively, we built dams that are called they're called rim dams because they're kind of on the rim of this bathtub that is the Central Valley at Oroville Feather River at Folsom on the American River McCollum New River, the Stanislaus River all the way down. And there were a number of stories and controversies as you can imagine, you know, when that comes to mind that one of the last dams that were was built was on the Stanislaus River and that was in 1979. At the new malonis reservoir was created and that area of the river was really renowned for its whitewater rafting. There was a huge community of rafters that loved the river. My husband even went rafting there in the 70s. It was so beautiful and an activist from that community who opposed the dam, went up into the Stanislaus River area and chained himself to a boulder and would not reveal his location said that he had thrown away the key and prevented that dam from being completed temporarily. Right, but they looked for him for like a week just trying to oppose the damming of what was one of if not the only last free flowing river into the Central Valley at that time. So that was that was a controversy. Also when they were going back to the 30s and 40s when they were planning this huge state water project. Initially, there was an idea to build the pumps in the San Joaquin River and reverse the flow of the San Joaquin River so they would, you know, build Friant dam and dry it out, then build pumps to take water from the Delta and push water up the San Joaquin River. For deliveries for agriculture. My

Michelle Fullner  33:38  
eyes got so big you're listening to this you can't see it but I'm just like it's boggling my mind to think about that reversing the flow of a river

Ellen Wehr  33:45  
of the second largest river in California. I think the reason they didn't do is because the San Joaquin River is has so much gravel from you know millions of years of being a floodplain that it wouldn't hold water so to speak. Idea did not hold water.

Michelle Fullner  34:00  
Oh my goodness. And so back to those awkward apps is that what you see when you're driving? I five between kind of like Northern and Southern California you're doing a long drive down. Are you next to one of those awkward?

Ellen Wehr  34:11  
Yeah, that's right. You see the Delta Mendota Canal and the California Aqueduct there are two that parallel each other that delta Mendota canal provides water for agriculture and to wildlife refuges that I work for as well. And the California Aqueduct travels down to it branches off to provide irrigation water to Kern County, and then it travels over the it's pumped over the to hatch B mountains to Southern California and LA, originally, the state water project or the California Water Project was planned by the state and it was going to be funded by the state. The citizens in the 1930s passed a water bond, which we're familiar with seeing on the ballots now. And then the Great Depression hit and the state could not sell those bonds. They were unmarketable. And so they turned to the federal government of Swiss during kind of the The era of building big federal projects to the New Deal, and the federal government took over. And that's why you have the Central Valley Project now, which is run by the Bureau of Reclamation, the Federal Bureau of Reclamation. So the federal government runs the facilities that are on, you know, Shasta Dam, Folsom dam and Friant dam and new malonis, and a few others. And later, in 1940s, there was another huge population boom, a huge wave of folks moved to California, our water supply started to dwindle again. And the idea was revived the build the project out to its full extent. And that's when Orville dam went in on the Feather River, and other facilities like that the California Aqueduct was built down to Southern California. And those facilities are called the State Water Project. And those are run by the state department of water resources. So you have a federal project and a state project, all on the same systems that are delivering water to, you know, millions of people and millions of acres of farmland in California, but they are run in parallel, because of kind of what happened in the 30s and 40s.

Michelle Fullner  36:08  
So the absolute most simplified version of this I can come up with is that we built lots of dams, both large and small to keep water from seasonally flooding the Central Valley and to store it for dry months, added pumps to the Delta to bring some of that water to canals and started distributing the water to where it's needed when it's needed there long distances across the state. I asked Elon if he wanted to add anything about this period of dam and aqueduct construction as our conversation started to approach the present day.

Ellen Wehr  36:39  
Well, I will just say that, obviously rerouting the hydrology of California in that way created a lot of opportunity, but it also created a lot of controversy. Native peoples were displaced. The Winnemem Wintu tribe is an active tribe right now who is kind of fighting against the expansion of the Shasta Dam and the raise of the Shasta Dam because they were initially displaced from the original construction of Shasta Dam and the expansion of that dam would encroach further into their traditional territories. The wetlands that used to be here and were defended vigorously by cattle producers and also duck hunters who knew how important that habitat was for the migratory the Pacific Flyway migratory birds, and they fought tooth and nail to try and get mitigation for that. Also, over 90% of the salmon spawning habitat in the Central Valley in those upstream areas has been lost. And so there's an ongoing charge to try and restore and rehabilitate those anadromous fish populations that

Michelle Fullner  37:44  
were lost. If you've been listening for a while, you're probably sick of hearing me say this, but salmon are a keystone species, meaning that they support a lot of other species. And when they're removed from an ecosystem, it has serious negative impacts on the entire ecosystem. If you want to hear more about that there's two episodes on salmon from the first season. So go back and give those a listen. So

Ellen Wehr  38:06  
a lot was gained and a lot was lost.

Michelle Fullner  38:09  
Right? And it's such a tough balance now because I mean, how many people live in the Central Valley, right? Like millions of people live in the Central Valley? About 6,500,000 People live in the Central Valley. And so it's so hard to imagine, how do we you know, restore as much as possible? How do we conserve as much as possible, but we have millions of people living here.

Ellen Wehr  38:32  
Yeah, there's still so many challenges, but also, I think just so many new and innovative thinkers out there who are trying to bring balance and address all of those things. At the same time. You know, we may be facing a future period of sea level rise due to climate change, and also more extreme flooding events, more extreme heat events, different snowpack, diminished snowpack. So there's a lot of discussion about how best to to handle this going forward. California's population, although it's not growing right now, today remains very large. And a lot of people depend on the economy here in the water supply. So there are efforts to build even more storage water storage. Right now, the discussion is mostly off stream storage, right? So how can we get flood water off stream store it for when we need it in dry years, with potential sea level rise and the very real likelihood of catastrophic earthquakes that might affect the Delta pumps in the Delta? There's discussion of building a new intake, which is known as the tunnel project in the Delta, that would siphon more water or at least a dip in a different way through the Delta. Those projects are controversial, right? So there's a lot of people who are advocating for more water to be left in the streams to help support the native fish species that are in rapid decline. And then there's a lot of innovation going on about floodplain restoration and have Tell that can provide for both fish and birds that can kind of reconnect the riverine systems with the uplands that support it and provide nutrients to fish and birds and kind of bring back some of the riparian habitat that we've lost for reaching those levees in strategic locations to Riri. Reenact or reinvigorate the floodplain that was once here to try and support native species. But yeah, there's still a lot of challenges, right. And we're not even talking about groundwater and safe drinking water and communities that you know have popped up and grown throughout the central valley that have historically relied on water sources that might not be there in the coming decades.

Michelle Fullner  40:41  
One of the issues facing the Central Valley towns is that the ground itself is sinking due to the groundwater being depleted. According to an LA Times article on the topic, parts of the valley floor have collapsed about 20 feet over the last 65 years, including about 10 feet over the last 20 years. As repeated droughts have added to the strains on groundwater. The way this works is that the dropping water levels are leaving underground spaces in layers of gravel, sand and clay causing the ground to collapse in sync with water being pumped out for communities and agriculture and then not being restored by the seasonal flooding that would have historically taken place the groundwater is getting more and more depleted, wells are going dry. And in my mind, it raises the question who gets water and who doesn't. The older communities have the river rights typically is that kind of how it goes?

Ellen Wehr  41:34  
Yeah, California has a strange hybrid system of water rights, we have appropriative and riparian. So in the on the east coast of the United States where rainfall is plentiful during the summer, it's mostly riparian rights, which means if you live by a river or stream, you have a right to reasonably use water from it. In the West, where it was more about coal mining, hydraulic mining, building canals in the San Joaquin Valley, some of the earliest canals were dug 10s, if not hundreds of miles to carry water to farmland, a lot of Western states have the appropriate of water rights system, which is first in time first and right. If you get to a stream and you dig a canal or a diversion, and you take the proper measures to document that, then you have the senior water right. And you have a right to take that water to you know, to a different place and use it and divert it. So in California, we have a mix. So there's both appropriate of water rights those dates back to the 1800s. And there are riparian water rights which they still exist if you own property next to a stream or a river. And so because of that system, you have a lot of hierarchies of different water users with different abilities to use water in times of shortage, these water rights really, they're really most important in times of shortage like we're having today. There's a huge drought mega drought, they say most of the appropriate of water right holders or even the contractors of the Central Valley Project in the state water project to get water from those dams. They have been allocated zero water this year, whereas the some of the senior water rights holders are getting up to 75%. We also have pretty protective environmental standards here. So the managed wetlands that are still around to try and mimic the floodplain and provide habitat for birds and other wildlife. They get hopefully a reliable amount of water. And there are standards set to protect the temperature and the flows in the rivers to support fishery species to so yeah, there's there's a hierarchy of water rights. There's winners and losers in California water, you know, luckily, we have pretty robust markets where water is traded. So there are a lot of transfers and exchanges that happen in times of shortage where the senior water rights holders can make more water available to others who don't have any. But there's also a lot of talk about how unfair the whole system is, if you're just coming into it with fresh eyes, and you see the disparity of access to water.

Michelle Fullner  44:03  
Wow. And so is that I have driven through the San Joaquin Valley many times on my way to Disneyland and seen the signs Congress created Dust Bowl. Is that what that's referring to? Is it kind of one of those? Is it a water rights conflict?

Ellen Wehr  44:18  
Well, a lot of that controversy in the San Joaquin Valley revolves around restrictions of how much water can be taken from the Delta. Okay, so the in the 80s and 90s, there was a collapse of the salmon species and other native fish species. There was also a small collapse of the migratory bird species as well. Some of those species were listed under the Endangered Species Act, the Federal law that protects species that are threatened and endangered. And so as a result, and also because of the need to just keep the Delta what we call fresh to keep enough fresh water flowing into the Delta to meet drinking water standards for exports to meet standards for agriculture. There are rules put in place by both the state and federal government that require a certain amount of outflow to happen through the delta that require a certain level of salinity to be maintained and freshwater to be maintained in the Delta. And that require a certain temperatures to be maintained, especially in the Sacramento River to support spawning salmon that are blocked from accessing their historic or cold water spawning grounds. I noticed as a result of all those rules, we have what's called biological opinions that govern those operations. They're basically approved by the fish and wildlife agencies. And they say this is how you need to operate these huge pumps, these dams releases everything. And that has resulted in a lot of restrictions on how much water can be pumped through the Delta Mendota Canal and the California Aqueduct to those users, especially the agricultural users. And so in certain years, there's just no water to be pumped, because a lot of it is, you know, dedicated to environmental uses, and the maintenance of water quality in the Delta. And so those those controversial signs are anger at the result of regulation, whether that regulation is good and bad. You know, I'm an environmentalist, I have seen the benefits to habitat of having very strong regulations for refuges to keep those habitats alive. So that's it's just an ongoing battle, we have a new set of biological opinions that's going to be developed in the next couple of years under this, this presidential administration. And so it will just continue to be almost a battle of science, right? What does the science show we should be doing to keep species alive. And there's a lot of differences of opinion about that. And also, it's over time, it's getting worse for the fish, it doesn't seem to be helping, and a lot of the recovery that was hoped for, has not occurred. And so I think on both sides of the fence, so to speak, whether you're a farmer, or you're a fisherman or a fish advocate, it's really frustrating. And it's difficult. And it's often very difficult to have those conversations about what is the best use of this precious resource that we have. It's

Michelle Fullner  47:04  
hard to live in a finite world, you know, and I think we have this mentality in our culture of abundance, you know, and kind of feeling like, I can get anything I want on Amazon, like, why can't I just like pump water out? Right. And, and it's hard, I think, sometimes to remember that we do live in this finite world, and that, when that happens, there's going to be conflicts over how to use it, and how to protect it. So the next, the next generation can use it as well. The problems we're facing with water in California are significant. And Elon will get into some of the possible ways to help both humans and wildlife thrive in the midst of these challenges in just a little bit. But now that we've discussed what the Central Valley used to look like, and then the policies and infrastructure that changed it, I wanted to hear more about what the valley looks like. Now, in comparison with the Central Valley of 150 to 200 years ago, how many areas are there that still flood and and how many areas that kind of would have been floodplains are now established cities like Sacramento that don't flood anymore? And so kind of, could you maybe point out what some of the differences are that we see today?

Ellen Wehr  48:09  
Yeah, so now there are an estimated 200 to 250,000 acres of wetlands remaining in the San Joaquin Valley. So we've lost or in the Central Valley, excuse me, we've lost about 90 to 95% of the wetlands that used to be here, the floodplains that used to be here, that's a huge change. The remaining wetlands that we have in the Central Valley are now called that many of them are now called Managed wetlands. And that's because we bring water into them to mimic what used to be here and we manage it very carefully, to flood and grow those grasses, those grasses that used to be here, as well as other food grasses and water grasses that feed migratory birds. And we draw that water down in the spring and let it dry out in the summer. And it really supports the migration of birds and other species, the primary surrogate habitat to replace a lot of what's lost is agriculture. So we have hundreds of 1000s of acres of winter flooded rice in the Sacramento Valley, which you can see if you fly in anywhere over the valley. And those the flooding is done to help decompose the rice straw after it grows. But it provides farmers learned that it provides enormous benefits to wildlife. And so that really along with agriculture in the San Joaquin Valley, like alfalfa, it really provides a surrogate habitat for a lot of birds, the giant garter snake, which is an endemic species to the Central Valley, it's a beautiful snake. Not all people like snakes, but that's now lives in irrigation canals and rice fields and rare wildlife refuges and it's holding on by a thread but that's kind of the remaining habitat. There are still remnant populations of truly elk. There's a enclosure in the San Louis national wildlife refuge where they keep captive captive herd that was the last herd of Tooley elk at one point, there were, I think less than 100 and they rounded them up and now that herd of elk has repopulated the Carrizo plains, point res, other places throughout the state where where we can hopefully, you know reestablish populations of elk, salmon and other species of fish like the Delta smelt, which was this estuary and fish. I mean, I think you could picture there just being little fish all over the place in the valley back then, right? There's little basins and rivulets and tiny fish and the smell thrive. They were once one of the most abundant little fish. And now they are on the verge of extinction. There's just not enough habitat for them to survive. So they have really suffered, like I said, with the loss of an enormous fish spawning habitat and that they've really taken a hit the migratory birds, some of them are still in decline. The shorebirds especially so shorebirds tend to pass through the valley in the spring, when the floodplains are really shallow, and their little legs can, you know, get in there and they are still in significant decline, unfortunately, but other waterbirds like waterfowl, so the geese, ducks cranes that make their way from Alaska and Canada, down through the Central Valley onto Mexico every year and back, they have stabilized. And I think that's because what I said there's pretty strong rules in place to protect water supplies for wildlife refuges, and there's a big effort to restore more wetlands and restore more floodplains. And so there used to be an estimated 40 to 50 million waterfowl that came through the valley. And now we're at about 8 million and that's up from two or 3 million and Okay, and so they've been recovered. So a little bit of a recovery there. Yeah. And those wetlands that

Michelle Fullner  51:53  
have been preserved, or are now managed wetlands, like you said, are those scattered pretty well across the entire Central Valley? So the birds have kind of various places to stop on their journey, or are they more concentrated in certain areas?

Ellen Wehr  52:07  
Yeah, so I work a lot to defend what's called the Central Valley Project Improvement Act that applies to the federal project and that established water supplies for 19 habitat areas throughout the valley and they span from Kern County, the current National Wildlife Refuge and Pixley Wildlife Refuge all the way up to the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge in the northern Sacramento Valley, I would kind of call it like a string of pearls that's meant to help protect the remaining wetlands and the grasslands is one of the bigger ones. And ideally, migratory birds would have more habitat in the Salton Sea way to the south in the Central Valley than in the Klamath Basin, which is a very important area for migratory birds. But unfortunately, especially this year, what we're seeing is those areas are almost completely dried up. So the refuges this year will get less the Klamath refuges will get none in the Salton Sea is shrink, ever shrinking. And so we do see that string of habitat areas just to where birds can rest and feed and restore themselves and refuel. Those are starting to diminish. And we're working really hard to try and protect that flyway and and protect the, you know, the ability of the birds to keep to keep traveling along there.

Michelle Fullner  53:18  
Right, because you know, you lose one or two of those stops. And then if there's too far between that stop and the next one. Yeah, and you could lose, you could lose a lot of birds. Yeah,

Ellen Wehr  53:28  
they call it the body condition of a bird when it arrives, you know, how skinny is it? How much fat stores does it have? How tired is it how and that affects their ability to breed the next year. If there's not enough habitat, they get crowded into what little wetland habitat is there. And that can spread disease. As we're very familiar with, you know, proximity is a big deal. So, there have been outbreaks of avian cholera and botulism and things like that in those years when there's so little habitat that the birds are too crowded together.

Michelle Fullner  54:00  
This is just one of many reasons why restoration work is vitally important. Make sure to go back and check out the previous episode on ecological restoration if you haven't listened yet. Next, I wanted to know the direction we're going as a state when it comes to water. And I want to make a note that we recorded this interview all the way back in April of 2022. Well, before all of the recent atmospheric rivers hit California this January. And additionally, on the day that this episode releases, there's either rain or snow in the forecast for much of the state, including in Sacramento where I live. But despite all of that water, we're unfortunately still in a drought. And we're expected to see the cycle of extreme dry years mixed with inundations continue with climate change. So even though we're not currently in a dry year, everything else that Ellen's about to say still stands.

Ellen Wehr  54:53  
There's a lot happening in California water right now. It doesn't help that it's one of the driest years ever recorded. Right. But there's, I think three main things that are happening. One is the update of our water quality standards at a state level for the delta. And for those rivers that feed into the delta that is being run by the State Water Resources Control Board. And that process has resulted in a tentative agreement called the voluntary agreements where some of the big water users and the state and federal agencies have come together and said, Okay, we agree we're going to leave more water in the stream for fish. But we're also going to restore a lot of floodplain habitat and put money toward reconnecting the floodplains to see if that will help revive the fish. It's controversial, the environmental community and tribal communities don't think it's going far enough to leave water in the rivers that's needed. But that is a huge thing that's going to be on the radar. And in the newspapers, probably for the next five years. You have the revamp of his biological opinions, that is going to take a look at what the federal and state water projects can better do to manage their temperatures flows exports from the Delta, and put new requirements on, I think those two things will come together at some point. And frankly, I think they should, right, because you've got the state and federal efforts, just like we've had in California for almost 100 years trying to manage things separately. And we need to really work to come together on what's needed for the species. And then you have what's called the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, or sigma, which requires most of the basins within the Central Valley to come up with a 20 year plan to achieve groundwater sustainability, to stop pumping more groundwater than we are replenishing on a long term basis. And that I think, is going to lead to a lot of retirement of farmland, it's going to lead to some new projects to try and supplement with surface water or better spread water around the state like we were talking about, or like, you know, a lot of people have been trying to do for a lot a lot of time. And I think you will hear a lot about sigma in the coming 510 years as these local growers and cities and communities and ecosystem managers really try to grapple with what does sustainability mean? And what do we have to do to achieve it from a groundwater perspective, because groundwater and surface water, they really are interlinked in California. And for hundreds of years, we've pumped groundwater in times of drought, and we've we've used floodwater in times of plenty. And so we just need to we need to balance that better.

Michelle Fullner  57:23  
When you talked about off stream storage. Could you say a little bit more about that, too? What does that look like? What does that mean? Yeah, so

Ellen Wehr  57:31  
there's there's a big project that's proposed, called the site's reservoir in Sacramento Valley. Again, it's controversial, I hate to keep saying that, but it's it's a huge reservoir that would essentially try to take water during those wet times and put it in storage, and then release it in times that could both help hopefully help with some fish habitat, refuge, habitat, and irrigation take pressure off of some of the other big reservoirs that could then hopefully store more water, the Hupa tribe on the Trinity River is very concerned about increased exports of water from the Trinity River into the Central Valley. That's one thing I didn't mention is that the Trinity River does not naturally flow into the Central Valley. And during that big engineering boom, a tunnel was built to bring water into the Sacramento from the Trinity. And so there's not I don't think there's a connection between these new storage projects and the Trinity River. But there's always efforts to restore the flow of the Trinity River to provide for more habitat and support the salmon fishing lifestyle of the Hupa and other tribes. So going back to the off stream storage, the site's reservoir would be like I said, a way to take water in times of plenty and use it in times of less, there's smaller, less controversial reservoirs being proposed, like the Los vaqueros reservoir expansion project in the East Bay, that project would raise an existing upstream reservoir and it would take water when there's excess flow through the Delta, it would take water and store it and then deliver about half of the water to wildlife refuges and half of the water to cities in the Bay Area that could store it for an emergency, store it for a drought, that project will also support some agriculture in the San Joaquin Valley. And so that's an example of a great partnership of different interests who are coming together to build a smaller scale off stream reservoir that will provide multiple benefits. So was that one less controversial? i Yeah, to my knowledge, it does not have any organized opposition to it, and it's moving forward at a good clip. I should disclose I sit on the board of the joint powers authority for that reservoir. I'm like the green well, then

Michelle Fullner  59:38  
you would you would know if there were people opposing it. That's great. With the larger project, why what makes it so controversial? Who's for it and who's against it? What's going on there? Yeah, I mean, the the big

Ellen Wehr  59:49  
controversy is if you take a lot of water off the stream, how much are you required to leave in the stream? Right. So we have a lot would argue that we have over allocated our water resource versus already? And yes, there are times when we have so much water we don't know what to do with when things flood when it's a big water year. But in those years when it's not the biggest water year ever, you know how much water do you need to leave in the stream to support downstream communities, fish and others, other water users. And so they have scaled back the size of the site's reservoir quite a bit to address that issue. But that's the main controversy there. I think there's a lot of effort to maybe store water in the ground through groundwater recharge and floodplain projects that would spread water out when you know, it would have historically flooded in the valley and spread out sinking into the ground, and then be able to pump it later in dry years. And so those projects are getting a lot of traction right now. There's also projects to build more regional reliability. So in each watershed, what can you do to better utilize your local water resources through water recycling, desalination of seawater, which is expensive and controversial as well. But, you know, what could you do to better spread water out on the floodplains or re operate some reservoirs to better provide and thereby not require the import of water from outside your watershed? There's a lot being done in Southern California, especially on stormwater recapture, and just efficiency, right? How do we as city dwellers better use our water resources? How can agriculture better use its water resources which they have become evermore efficient over the last few decades? So there are a lot of movements and with the Delta pumping, you know, how can we maybe rethink those pumps? Are there ways to build just pumps that are down below the water that just gravity feed instead of suck the water into into what was you know, once the San Joaquin, so more

Michelle Fullner  1:01:47  
so harder? Deleting almost, if the waters higher than they're getting more? Yeah, a little

Ellen Wehr  1:01:51  
bit more more gentle, right? So instead of using pumps and dams, you know, is there a way we can spread and store and reconnect water in a way that is working with nature instead of against it? You know, I don't think that will solve all our problems. But there's a lot of innovation going on. That's great.

Michelle Fullner  1:02:11  
I was really excited to hear about the thinking being done for water solutions. And I wanted to know more about what an environmentally conscious Californian might want to see going forward. I

Ellen Wehr  1:02:23  
think there's a balance to be made. So I won't go out too far. You know, I think some people would love to see all the rim dams come down and the whole central valley become a big floodplain again, and you know, for fish to thrive and people to move on. And you know, I get that. But I think that ideally, we will find places where we can start breaching those levees and allowing water to flow back like it used to across the landscape. Ideally, we will restore and maybe take out some of the smaller dams on the tributaries that could really provide that upstream spawning habitat. Ideally, we would protect and preserve the refuge water supplies we have now and then expand our floodplain habitat to also support and improve the migratory birds. And ideally, I think we would figure out a limit on how much acreage of irrigated agriculture our system can support. And we will follow some of that land and restore it to some of the upland habitat and native grasslands that used to be here. And that's that would be my vision.

Michelle Fullner  1:03:28  
Yeah, just kind of finding the most practical the most forward thinking sort of ways of meeting all of the needs as much as possible.

Ellen Wehr  1:03:37  
Yeah, basically, yeah. While supporting the communities that that live here now, and really thinking about the fact that we are connected as a state as much as a Northern California might not like the fact that someone in Los Angeles depends on water from their watershed to survive. That is the way of our state. And I think the more connected we can feel to each other and understand where each other is coming from the better because, you know, we all need water, animals need water fish into our people need water. And we have to, I think we have to put ourselves in each other's shoes a little bit more as Californians to come up with the best solutions.

Michelle Fullner  1:04:12  
Okay, take out your notes app, or your trusty pad of sticky notes, because Ellen's about to tell you some very cool places you can go visit

Ellen Wehr  1:04:20  
if you want to see some of what it used to be like, there are still places you can go to do that. Yeah. So the chorizo plains that I mentioned, which has been restored with antelope and truly elk and still has that super bloom of flowers that used to cover the the San Joaquin Valley, you can still go see that.

Michelle Fullner  1:04:39  
What time of year is the super bloom like spring spring? Yeah, you

Ellen Wehr  1:04:43  
can go see that occurred at the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge and also take a drive around the wetlands. To see the migratory birds you can go to the Nimbus Fish Hatchery and see the salmon running in the American River and there are other refuges in the Sacramento Valley They were in the winter like December January. If you go at sunset, you will see the most amazing display of birds flying around that. It's it's amazing to witness so the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge and the gray lodge National Wildlife Refuge both have driving auto tours with a couple stops, you can get out and you know, maybe bring some cheese and crackers and wait for sunset and just enjoy that show. Sounds amazing. The Merced National Wildlife Refuge has a huge population of cranes of Sandhill cranes. And if you go at sunset in the winter, you will see the cranes fly into the refuge to bed down for the night. And it feels like you're in that primordial forest Marsh that used to have been

Michelle Fullner  1:05:44  
around for the giant salmon and the giant sloths and stuff.

Ellen Wehr  1:05:49  
And if you want to see examples of the riparian forest that used to be here, you know, go take a bike ride on the American River Parkway, or go down to the San Joaquin River National Wildlife Refuge where there's still these intact riparian forests that are a little bit of what used to be covering the whole valley. That's

Michelle Fullner  1:06:06  
perfect. I think that people will find lots of wonderful places to go and look at So Ellen, thank you so much for meeting up with me and making time for this and doing so much homework to figure out all of this history. So

Ellen Wehr  1:06:18  
of course, I'm not a technical naturalist. So if I made any mistakes, please forgive me. But it was great talking to you and very excited about your podcast. Michelle,

Michelle Fullner  1:06:27  
there is still so much we need to figure out about water in the Central Valley. And in California in general. As Elon pointed out, a lot of it is highly controversial, and I knew it won't be easy to make sure that we can help human communities and wildlife coexist and thrive. But I find it incredibly encouraging that so many people are working together to find real solutions to these problems and that projects exist where a wide variety of interests are coming together to move forward and ensure that we can continue to live on and form a deeper relationship with this beautiful land and the many species who also call it home for many generations to come. I want to give a big thank you to Ellen Weir for making the time to meet up with me and finding a quiet place to talk in the middle of a city which is not an easy feat. And for just being so thoughtful to the point of sending me information about great places to visit on an upcoming family trip. That is way above and beyond Elon, thank you. And for the second episode in a row. I want to thank my friend Eric de Kock this time, because he actually introduced me to Elon and made this episode possible. So thank you, Eric. I learned so much and I'm so grateful for your help. Something interesting from my week is that I procrastinated really bad on making this episode. So now it's 1102 and I haven't taken a shower yet today. So just be thankful that this isn't alive in person, podcast event. Okay, that's all for today. Thanks for sticking around to the very end of the episode. I'll see you next time on Golden State naturalist bye.