At the Water Board meetings in
late 2018, it was clear that it is not just
fishermen and environmentalists
working to figure out the science and
technology that can restore the once-
great fishery. Many municipal water
districts up and down the state, as
well as farmers big and small, appear
to have decided it is in their best inter-
est to save the Delta too. Stakeholders
working within the voluntary agree-
ments framework are hoping inter-
ventions such as habitat restoration
projects will take pressure off threat-
ened fish populations — and decrease
the need for severe water restrictions.
Fish on rice
Roger Cornwell, manager of
River Garden Farms in Knights
Landing, uses zooplankton
to fatten the thousands of
salmon small fry that lived
for six weeks in his 120 acres
of flooded fields. PHOTO BY ROB
MCALLISTER/FRANKLIN PICTURES
route known as the Pacific Flyway,
which stretches from Alaska to Pata-
gonia. Audubon started meeting with
rice growers and the California Rice
Commission. They explained that dif-
ferent species require different depths
of water on the landscape at different
times of year, and the growers de-
veloped new management practices.
Audubon was able to get language
in the Farm Bill to put up half the
money for the program, and the farms
covered the rest. Over the past 10
years, $23 million has been spent, and
almost 500,000 acres of habitat has
been created for shorebirds.
California Trout is now at work on
a very similar program for salmon and
trout. Again working with rice farmers,
the organization is flooding fields to
create surrogate habitat. Hertel says the
effort is likely to succeed. “Birds and
fish evolved at the same time in the Val-
ley, so, in theory, they should need the
same types of things at the same time.”
In ecosystem management, timing
is everything. Just as sandhill cranes
need a certain depth of water when
they arrive in the fields near the
conf luence of the Cosumnes and San
Joaquin rivers in the fall and different
depths later in the year, chinook have
specific needs that vary from season
to season and month to month. The
life cycle of the California chinook —
which are born in mountain streams
and spend 2-6 years at sea before
returning to their spawning grounds
— is complex, and the two chinook
runs each year in the Sacramento Riv-
er Basin require specific conditions at
different times.
Roger Cornwell, manager of River
Garden Farms in Knights Ferry, stands
on a levee in early March survey-
ing 120 acres of f looded fields that
were recently home to thousands of
salmon small fry. Cornwell, who has
partnered seven years with Audubon
California, is working on the Nigiri
Project, a collaboration of the UC
Davis Center for Watershed Sciences,
the California Department of Water
Resources and California Trout, and
named for the Japanese fish-on-rice
delicacy. This scenario, involving a
large agricultural operator, a major
conservation group and state agen-
cies, is precisely the kind of thing Gov.
Newsom is hoping will result from the
voluntary agreements process.
The Nigiri Project reimagines Cal-
ifornia’s rice farms as de facto refuges,
where fish can feed, just as their ances-
tors fed in the floodplains and wetlands
that were here before the land was given
over to agriculture. Cornwell built the
levee he’s standing on, which encloses
a pond that a week earlier contained
fish in pens and some free-swimmers.
In a dozen or so fish baskets, the small
fry fattened up on what Cornwell calls
“zoop” — zooplankton — which, in
turn, feed off rice stalks. Another 50 or
so now-empty baskets line an irrigation
canal that runs alongside the flooded
field. The fish that lived in those baskets
are on their way to the ocean.
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