Last modified Tuesday, March 9, 2004 11:28 PM PST

Bird population soars as waterfowl habitat fully floods

By: Associated Press

DELANO -- Record numbers of ducks, ibises, egrets and other waterfowl are wintering in a wildlife refuge in the southern San Joaquin Valley, thriving in restored wetlands that have been fully flooded for the first time since the refuge's creation four decades ago.

Covering the Kern National Wildlife Refuge's 6,500 acres of wetlands in water after decades of only having enough resources to water a third of the area has turned the marsh into "an oasis in the desert," said Ducks Unlimited biologist Chris Hildebrandt.

A federal act passed in 1992 and gradually implemented over the last decade has mandated that Central Valley refuges receive a reliable supply of water. To the wildlife at Kern -- a wetlands refuge created without its own water supply in the middle of thirsty grape and cotton farms -- the Central Valley Project Improvement Act has made all the difference.

Thick green tufts of bulrushes, wild millet and other native grasses dot the lush marshland, providing food and shelter for familiar birds like mallard ducks, the little white-billed black coots and the common moorehen, but also attracting more than 6,000 white-faced ibises, a bird hardly seen in the Central Valley 10 years ago, and birds that are rare in the area, like tri-colored blackbirds. Clusters of cottonwood trees are weighed down by dozens of great blue herons in their nests. The majestic bird lives on the frogs and fish it catches in the surrounding marsh.

"If you worked at it, you could spot 150 species out here in a day," said refuge manager David Hardt.

The refuge now gets its water through canals, but it was once part of the Tulare lake basin, a vast marshland complex made up of shallow pools and rivulets covering nearly 800,000 acres. Until the 1850s, it was the most important wetlands west of the Mississippi, and served the migrating birds that traveled north and south along the Pacific Flyway.

Today, the perfectly straight lines of laser-leveled vineyards and the soft green carpet of the year's new crops show where the water of the Kern, Kings and Tulare rivers go now that they no longer feed wetlands.

By 1950, a century of draining the swamp and replacing it with the neat rows of carrots, citrus or grapes had turned a duck's paradise into some of the world's most productive farmland, generating more than $2.5 billion dollars per year in Kern County alone. But the enterprise left migratory birds without a winter home or a place to feed and rest.

The plowed soil, cleared of weeds and oozing muck, doesn't give birds the seeds and the juicy insect larvae they live on while they build their winter nests and wait for their offspring to hatch in the spring.

The 10,618-acre refuge was created in 1960 to bring back to life a portion of that lost ecosystem. It also includes natural Valley grasslands that are home to endangered mammals like the San Joaquin kit fox and the Tipton kangaroo rat.

But at its inception, the Kern refuge didn't have enough water and conveyance facilities to flood the wetland habitat, and had to rely on well water at a prohibitive cost. For decades, Hardt said, the refuge could pay up to $250,000 for water, and flood only 2,200 acres.

In 1992, a federal act -- the Central Valley Project Improvement Act -- directed the Bureau of Reclamation to secure a reliable water source and build waterways to supply eight federal refuges like Kern and five state wildlife areas and duck clubs within Merced County.

The act, which Hildebrandt calls "the greatest thing to happen to Central Valley wetlands in 200 years" was to be implemented in increments, with each year bringing a little more water to the habitats.

Although all of the refuge's units have been flooded this year, using up 25,000 acre-feet of water, it will take some time for the newly watered areas to grow the types of marsh grasses that waterfowl appreciate, like the red-stemmed Ammania and the swamp timothy that choke up the longer-standing wetlands, said Hardt. But the transition will be faster with some help from refuge workers.

"We try to manage this place like a farm, except we encourage the weedy plants most farmers hate, like the water grass that creates problems in an irrigation ditch," Hardt said. "For us, it's water fowl food."

This year, the partnership finally ensured enough water to flood Kern's entire habitat, with some districts, like the Buena Vista Water Storage District and the Westside Mutual Water district, selling as much as 10,000 acre-feet of water to the refuge.

"Kern had the greatest deficit, they had the least reliable water supply of the 13 beneficiaries of the act," said Dave Paullin, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife refuge supervisor for California. "It was in the worst shape, so it had the greatest potential to show benefits. The change has been very dramatic."

The Bureau of Reclamation pays the market price for the water, which comes from water districts that have more than they need. The funds for the purchase come from the bureau and from other water consumers, who pay a surcharge on their purchase.

"We can't live without agriculture, but a lot of us can't live without this either," said Hardt, watching a peregrine falcon.

Kern refuge is 18 miles west of Delano, and visitors can take a 6.5 self-guided tour to spot some of the hundreds of birds it houses. Water fowl is best observed October through March, though songbirds start coming into the refuge in March and remain through the summer. Half of the refuge is also open for waterfowl hunting October through January.

On the Net: Kern National Wildlife refuge

http://natureali.org/KNWR.htm