California’s freshwater ecosystems are in urgent peril: reconciliation ecology may help

The view of the American River from Sunrise Recreation Area Wednesday, May 17, 2023. Andrew Nixon / CapRadio

In California, nearly 4,000 native plant and animal species depend on the state’s freshwater ecosystems. 

Trout, salmon and smelt run the rivers and carry nutrients to and from the oceans. Nutrients feed the invertebrates that fuel the food chain that’s hunted by wading birds and mammals. Amphibians reproduce in fresh water where snakes lay in wait nearby. Beavers build their dams, which create habitat and food sources for fish, which people eat. 

And freshwater flora — plants, trees, shrubs, flowers and grasses — have coevolved alongside the animal communities, and their interwoven relationships help define the very nature and function of freshwater ecosystems.

But California’s freshwater ecosystems are in peril. Nearly half of the state’s freshwater species are vulnerable to extinction, while only 6% are protected under endangered regulations, according to a new report, Climate-Smart Tools to Protect Freshwater Ecosystems, published in May by the Public Policy Institute of California. 

Jacob Katz, lead scientist at California Trout, which works to protect and restore the state’s waters and wild fish, says water infrastructure is part of the problem. 

“Where we are now — where it feels like California’s rivers can no longer support its fish — is a direct result of the way in which our state’s water infrastructure was built at a time when people thought they could control nature,” says Katz. “It’s like we built this pyre and now we’re sleeping in it, and then climate change shows up playing with matches.”

While the state is a world leader in environmental regulations with aggressive initiatives in place to respond to climate change, Ted Sommer, PPIC CalTrout Ecosystem Fellow, retired lead scientist for the Department of Water Resources and the lead author of the new PPIC report, says the state’s efforts are a really good start, but it’s not enough.

“There’s an awful lot of species and habitats out there that don’t necessarily have the protections, so we need to make sure that we go through systematically and make sure individual watersheds are covered and that there’s a portfolio of actions,” says Sommer.

Sommer and his team — who met with state and federal agencies, NGOs, universities, tribes and water districts to develop the report — recommend a comprehensive portfolio of 22 resource management tools that can be used collaboratively and tailored to meet the unique circumstances of individual watersheds at the local level throughout the state.

The report sends an urgent message that time is running out to save freshwater ecosystems, and it calls for a shift away from historical conservation management practices that generally focus on single high-profile species or location-specific critical habitat, to a broader scope that uses the tools to manage the biodiversity of entire freshwater ecosystems. And it does so with the mindset that people can no longer look to historical conditions to establish realistic conservation targets. Sommer explains we can’t preserve what we used to have, but instead people must look to the future, which will be different.

“Part of the rationale is that there’s so much uncertainty with climate change that we need to do some bet hedging,” Sommer says. “We can pick what we think are the best solutions right now, but it’s a moving target with climate change, and so we think using what we’re calling a portfolio approach, using a suite of tools, will give us reasonable coverage to save some of these species and freshwater ecosystems.”

But in order for the tools to be effective, Katz says it depends on how people use them. He explains the tools could be used with the same mindset that interrupted the planet’s natural systems, which led to environmental crisis and collapse — or they can be applied within the larger context of reconciliation ecology that aligns management outcomes with the way nature actually functions.

“It’s not just water flowing across the landscape. It’s water flowing across the landscape that then causes willows to grow on the sides of that river and that interrupts the flow on one side and pushes the river toward the other. So, the patterns are an interaction of life … through the […]

Full article: www.capradio.org