Episode 22: Nurturing Nature

The driest year California has experienced since the 1970s will have wide-ranging impacts in the West.

In the Sacramento Valley, a reduced water supply will lead to about a 20 percent reduction in rice plantings.

The loss of about 100,000 acres of rice fields has implications well beyond the farm level. The reduced plantings will impact rural communities that depend on agriculture as their foundation. It’s also a concern for wildlife, which greatly depend on rice fields for their habitat.

Fortunately, rice growers are collaborating with conservation groups to get the most out of what’s available.

“Over the last 150 years, over 90 percent of the wetlands that used to be in the Central Valley have gone,” remarked Julia Barfield, Project Manager with The Nature Conservancy. “They've been lost to development and agriculture, and there's a shortage of habitat that birds migrating along the Pacific flyway need. And that is wetland habitat, specifically shallow wetlands for migratory shorebirds, which is a group of species that have declined precipitously in the last 50 years. And we are working hard to make sure there's enough habitat, especially in years like this that are really dry -- and there's not going to be much habitat on the landscape when they're migrating this fall.”

The Nature Conservancy has spearheaded two key rice conservation programs, BirdReturns and Bid4Birds, which have helped during past droughts.

“What we've found in the last drought,2013 to 2015, which was a critical period, was that the incentive programs, such as BirdReturns, provided 35 percent of the habitat that was out there on the landscape and up to 60 percent in the fall period during certain days,” said Greg Golet, a scientist at The Nature Conservancy who has spent years working to maintain and enhance shorebird habitat in Sacramento Valley rice fields.

This cooperation wouldn’t be possible without rice growers being willing participants. For decades, rice fields have provided a vital link to the massive Pacific Flyway migration of millions of birds.

“I've been doing this for 40 years now, every farmer that I know is an environmentalist at some level,” said rice grower John Brennan, who works at several places in the valley, including Davis Ranches in Colusa. “We're the ones that are out there in the environment. We're the ones that get to enjoy the birds. We're the ones that get to see habitat and all the excitement that it brings to the landscape. But on the other side of it, we need to make sure that rice stays relevant in the state of California. And so, we're not going to be able to maintain this habitat, as habitat. There's not enough money in the state of California to do that. We need to come up with a farming program that does both, that provides food and provides habitat.”

As summer approaches, the value of rice field habitat – especially during drought -- will grow right along with America’s next crop of sushi rice.

The rice fields, complete with their diverse ecosystem, are a welcome sight to Assemblymember Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, who has worked on several fronts to bolster such conservation.

“It makes me feel relieved,” she said. “It makes me feel like there's hope. It makes me feel like there's the beauty that we have all around us in Northern California -- and then to appreciate every sin