Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
CALIFORNIANS ACCUSTOMED TO majestic redwood giants, lofty Sierra peaks,
and golden hills dotted with oaks took some coaching to appreciate the
beauty of a flat, wet swamp. But in the end, they voted to spend millions
reviving the bay's shallows and shores. In the process, they committed to
restoring a ring of wetlands around the bay roomy enough to ease wilder
inhabitants off the endangered species list.
Though the bay has lost almost 90 percent of its historic wetlands, the
tides are now being invited back onto half of them. Engineers who once
scraped eelgrass beds off harbor bottoms and buried creeks in culverts are
now reversing such disruptions. Where barbed wire once prevented access
to the shoreline, visitors will now find bike paths, flowering bushes, and
park benches.
Low tide reveals intricate drainage networks on baylands. (Invasive Spartina
Project)
The catch, of course, is that no modern wetland works the same way it
did 300 years ago. “No land can just manage itself anymore. We've changed
too much; we're a part of the system now. We can't go back to what once
was on the baylands,” says Christy Smith, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
refuge manager.
Smith is among the latest of several generations of land managers, sci-
entists, engineers, and activists who have been working to restore some of
the natural functions of bayland habitats for the last 50 years. This chapter
touches on the biggest milestones in local restoration history. It describes
how engineers and biologists have arrived at their restoration recipes and
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