The California Central Valley is likely one of the best agricultural areas on this planet. In keeping with Wikipedia: “On lower than 1 % of the entire farmland in the USA, the Central Valley produces 8 % of the nation’s agricultural output by worth.”
Nevertheless, the agricultural productiveness of the area has resulted within the lack of roughly 95% of the historic wetlands within the valley. These wetlands supported hundreds of thousands of migratory birds – notably waterfowl and shorebirds – that transfer alongside the Pacific Flyway yearly.
A number of nationwide wildlife refuges lie inside the Central Valley however the general variety of protected acres is modest. In recent times, nonetheless, the Nature Conservancy and different non-profits developed a program referred to as BirdReturns, which pays farmers to flood their rice fields longer than they in any other case would. This ends in tens of 1000’s of acres of habitat to assist birds. (NPR’s Planet Cash podcast has 10-minute abstract.)
The essential points are location and timing, i.e., ensuring that habitat exists the place birds are and once they want it. Addressing these points required intensive analysis, together with evaluation of eBird checklists. This system prioritizes a very powerful instances and areas:
BirdReturns scientists use a mixture of satellite tv for pc imagery and on-the-ground observations from group scientists to find out when and the place birds will collect every season. We then pair the satellite tv for pc photographs and information from NASA sensors with the hundreds of thousands of observations uploaded month-to-month to eBird, a Cornell Lab of Ornithology program. Along with our long-time collaborator Level Blue Conservation Science, we’ve constructed a approach to analyze these information to find out when and the place birds are prone to land. The Migratory Chicken Conservation Partnership additionally makes use of satellite tv for pc imagery to confirm that the habitat promised by our farmer contractors is being delivered.
The outcomes seem very profitable, notably for shorebirds:
[S]urveys on the BirdReturns fields confirmed greater than 220,000 birds representing 57 species, together with each migratory shorebird species within the Central Valley. Recorded shorebird densities averaged effectively over 100 birds per acre in March, 10 instances the variety of shorebirds present in different areas outdoors the challenge
On a current vacation journey to California, I birded two nationwide wildlife refuges within the northern Central Valley, Colusa NWR and Sacramento NWR. Each assist massive numbers of wintering waterfowl. These pictures are from Sacramento NWR.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is ending a brand new headquarters and customer heart (pictures beneath) and the refuge has lengthy had a well-liked auto tour route (eBird hotspot). As soon as the landscaping grows in, the brand new constructing must be pretty and it’s nice that FWS is investing in these refuges.
In December there are enormous numbers of Snow Geese, but additionally quite a few different species of geese and geese. The video beneath illustrates the big variety of Snow Geese.
My eBird guidelines is right here and a visit report for your entire day (I visited three refuges) is right here. The eBird observe exhibiting the agricultural space surrounding Sacramento NWR is beneath.
Good birding in 2025!
Autor Jason Crotty
