Winged Migration Comes to the Slough
Stewardship Farming
Why Are These People Smiling?
Stewardship Circle Takes Off
Want to know more about...?
The Drive Towards Discovery
Slough Speak
J. Arthur Rodgers
Map: Farmed Acreage

Winged Migration Comes to the Slough

Some of the 20,000 shorebirds that visit Elkhorn Slough
during the peak of fall migration.

The images from the movie “Winged Migration” are unforgettable partly because we have never seen them before. You “fly” eyeball to eyeball with Great Cranes, Arctic Terns, and Trumpeter Swans. You hear the wind as their wings ceaselessly push them thousands of miles on their migrations to and from their breeding grounds.

Elkhorn Slough is a major stopover on the Pacific flyway – the great migration route from Alaska south to Mexico and beyond. At the peak of the fall and spring seasons, more than 20,000 migrating shorebirds use Elkhorn Slough, in addition to thousands of birds of other species.

The picture above was taken one sunny September day at the north end of the Slough. Our photographer, Greg Hofmann, accompanied Dr. Kerstin Wasson, the Reserve’s Research Coordinator, and three volunteer birders (Todd Newberry, Shirley Murphy, and Steve Legnard), on one of two migratory shorebird counts she conducts each fall. In the space of 90 minutes they counted more than 1300 birds. Most of them were Western Sandpipers. In the background of the top photo you can see some of the 100 Marbled Godwits counted that day.

A Semi-palmated Plover
scans the mudflats for food.

Both the birds and the bird counters were gathered at the North Marsh on the high tide because the main channel flats were submerged. The North Marsh was pretty much “the only restaurant open for business.” Later the same day, a class from Moss Landing Marine Labs surveyed the main channel at low tide, while three teams of Reserve volunteers monitored other tidal flats around the slough.

This variety of habitat is part of the slough’s attraction for migratory birds. Winged migration is a lot of work, and migrating birds need a lot of food to do it. Estuaries like Elkhorn Slough are important because of the reliable and abundant food supply accessible to the birds at low tide.

Burrowed in the mud is a vast array of invertebrate animals, and different mud supports different invertebrates. Near the slough mouth, tideflats are sandier and host larger sand-dwelling prey eaten by larger shorebirds. Further up the main channel, sediment is muddier, with more fine grained silt mixed with sand that supports the smaller invertebrates eaten by smaller shorebirds.

The numbers of shorebirds have remained pretty constant since the 1970s, but they are packed in more tightly as the mudflats are reduced by tidal erosion. “They have become too deep for short bird legs,” says Dr. Wasson. This makes permanently shallow lagoons, such as Moro Cojo Slough and the North Marsh, all the more valuable for migratory shorebirds.

The most exciting pictures in “Winged Migration” are those we have never seen before – the close-ups of birds in flight. But those birds must land to rest and feed – and saving those resting places is pretty exciting too.

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Stewardship Farming

Stewwardship farming isn’t a widely used term, but maybe it will be one day. It describes ESF’s approach to farming on its lands – farming that is both economically and environmentally viable and sustainable.

ESF now leases land to four farmers and one rancher (see map). Land Manager Kim Hayes is spending a lot of her time this fall working with these farmers. We have worked for a number of years with Kirk Schmidt of Quail Mt. Farms, who leases land on the Blohm and El Chamisal ranches. We’ve just begun working with Rosario Rodriquez and Ignacio Melgoza on Hambey Ranch.)

One important way to reduce soil erosion is by aligning crop furrows
across the slope rather than up and down it, as you see here
on Triple M Ranch.

ESF has been working for years with Jesús Calvillo. He’s farming 24 acres on Elzas Ranch, growing strawberries, squash, and beans – and another 8 acres on Brothers Ranch, where he is planting raspberries.

Calvillo is also working with us on restoring 40 acres of fallow farm land. Steep slopes made this land difficult to farm and led to excessive soil erosion. This fall Jesús is recontouring the land, removing furrows that led to erosion in the past and that would hinder restoration in the future. He’s seeding it with annual barley and mulching it with rice straw for immediate erosion control. Land Manager Kim Hayes says some native grasses will be mixed in this year, but all-native planting is too risky an investment for the first year of restoration – when heavy rains could wash away the expensive seeds.

Kim is also working, for the second year, with Bryan Largay, a hydrologist with the Resource Conservation District under contract with ESF. They’re developing comprehensive erosion control plans for all our upper slough ranches. “We’re looking at long-term sustainable farming practices,” Kim says, “that bring in revenue and are also good for the environment."

ESF land Manager Kim Hayes with farmer Jesús Calvillo
and hydrologist Bryan Largay on Elzas Ranch.
This steeply sloped field has been taken out of production,
and restoration work on it began this fall.

This fall we are paying increasing attention to furrow alignment. Furrows that run up and down a slope dramatically increase erosion; those which run across the slope’s contour reduce erosion. Rosario Rodriquez, farming on Hambey Ranch, attended a furrow alignment workshop run by the Natural Resources Conservation Service and is implementing these simple conservation practices in the fields.

Kim’s enthusiastic descriptions of our farming stewardship work make clear the vast web of interconnection that is Nature’s way – and the equally web-like array of human connections, arrangements, and working relationships that help us care for the land. Jesus Calvillo’s work restoring land he used to farm, for example, applies to his lease on land he still cultivates. We use Sycamore Farm’s goats for weed abatement in exchange for letting them store hay in our barn at the Brothers Ranch.

As we go to press, Kim has just ordered over one thousand bales of rice straw. It is being spread on roads and hillsides before the rainy season gets underway. That will literally keep tons of soil on the land and that, as Kim and the farmers she works with know, is a big part of stewardship farming.

Why Are These People Smiling?

The pictures below are of ESF’s Executive Director Mark Silberstein with people who have just sold us their land.

It’s a guarantee that those who sell us land are happy, because no one is forcing them to sell. As a nonprofit, community-supported land trust, ESF cannot – and does not want to – force sales. We can work only with willing sellers and succeed only when we can construct mutually satisfying deals. Willing sellers have a variety of motivations. Some are moving on, some are retiring, some want to preserve land they love. Most of them want a number of things, and we reach a deal when they get them.

ESF's Mark Silberstein with Dr. Donald and Shirley Hambey.

Another reason the people in this picture are smiling is that they are finally at the end of what can be a long and exhausting process. For ESF the process begins, as all our work does, with the Watershed Conservation Plan we developed in 1999.

Kevin Contreras, ESF’s Acquisition Coordinator, says the Conservation Plan “established the priorities” for our acquisitions. The plan identifies the critical resources we are protecting and the threats to them. This plan was the key to assembling a sizable Acquisition Fund from groups like the Packard Foundation, the California Coastal Conservancy, and others.

“What’s been amazing,” says Contreras, “is that most of the landowners approached us about potential transactions.” Both Jeff Brothers and Juan Tapia approached ESF about buying their lands. Some have come to us, not to sell their land, but to donate it. In 1986 the Sandholdt family donated 15 acres of land along Moro Cojo Slough and another 15 acres in Moss Landing in 1992. In 2001, the Porter family donated the Porter Ranch. Earlier this year the Sale family donated five acres along Carneros Creek.

Juan Tapia at close of escrow.

In the case of the Hambey Ranch, ESF approached Dr. Donald Hambey. “It was the largest single-ownership parcel in the Elkhorn Highlands,” Contreras says. “It is the critical link from Long Valley to the Carneros Creek ridge we have already protected.” Kevin describes a long “courtship” between ESF and the Hambeys that ended in the happy handshake you see here.

The end product of the courtship is a purchase agreement and the beginning of due diligence – a process than can take up to several months. Kevin ticks off the due diligence requirements: make sure the title is clear, deal with encumbrances (like easements or back taxes), complete an appraisal, conduct an environmental review, and assess structures and boundaries.

The staff’s favorite part of due diligence is called field mapping. For most of us, it is the first time we get to see the land, and for everyone it is always a pleasure to walk the land and be explorers. We gather with our maps and aerial photos and fan out, observing everything – wells, fences, potential trash and debris piles, a nice stand of native plants, a worrisome batch of invasive plants. We didn’t need to walk Hambey Ranch to see the biggest impact. The aerial photographs show two large dirt tracks looping around two small valleys. This portion of the ranch had become an unofficial race track for motorbike enthusiasts, leading to severe erosion of the sandy hills.

All this work costs money, of course. Appraisals, environmental investigations, attorney fees – it adds up. Kevin estimates we’ve spent more than $80,000 on acquisition-related expenses this year, not counting staff time.

And still, we’re smiling in the photos here and in all the photos to come. We’re doing what we set out to do 21 years ago – conserving and restoring Elkhorn Slough and its watershed, one handshake and one smile at a time..

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