Representative Josh Harder (CA-09) demanded answers from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services during a House Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies with ‘Nellie’, a taxidermied nutria, about their proposed funding cuts for controlling the invasive rodent population. Nutria are an semi-aquatic invasive species from South America that are easily recognized by their “nacho cheese” teeth that they use to chew through vegetation and water management systems. Affectionatelynicknamed “swamp rats”, nutria can weigh upwards of 40 pounds, eat a quarter of their body weight every day, and one female nutria can reproduce 200 offspring in a year. While they may look cute to some, they can wreak real havoc on their non-native environment.
“When I came to Congress, I didn’t think I would be leading the charge to eradicate swamp rats, but this is a real issue, and we have to act quickly before they fully invade our waterways” said Rep. Harder. “I understand they’re not in everyone’s backyard, but they’re in mine. And a lot of folks in my area would rather not have to wake up to these “nacho cheese” teeth every morning.”
Nutria have caused millions of dollars in damage to wetlands in several states including Maryland and Louisiana. Harder originally appeared with the stuffed rodent in 2019 when he introduced a bill to direct $7 million in funding towards nutria management in California. Nutria were discovered in Harder’s previous CA-10 district in 2017 and have posed an out-sized threat since then. Funding to manage the species is currently set to be cut by over 60%.
Nutria are known to damage farmland, increase the risk of flooding, and endanger local ecosystems. If unmanaged, the nutria population could grow to 250,000 in California within 5 years.
Harder addressed Tracy Stone-Manning, Director, Bureau of Land Management, Martha Williams, Director, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and Charles F. Sams III, Director, National Park Service during the hearing.
Today’s order by President Trump will provide welcome relief to Western farmers, cities, rural communities and wildlife refuges that have struggled under water supply rules that are long overdue for an update. Prioritizing national interest and the value of California food production, the president’s order requires the re-consultation of the biological opinions to be completed and fully implemented by August 2019. The deadline will bring to a close the review of rules governing the long-term operation of the federal Central Valley Project and California State Water Project. The review has been underway since August 2016, a process today’s order requires to be concluded by Aug. 31, 2019.
The president’s action today fulfills his campaign commitment to help solve the state’s water supply shortages and will greatly benefit Central Valley communities and the environment. Since 1992, water supply restrictions have caused severe economic consequences for farms and the people who depend on them for work. Many of the state’s most disadvantaged communities have suffered due to scarce water supplies. Wildlife refuges that are a critical component of the Pacific Flyway have had insufficient water to meet the needs of millions of ducks, geese, shorebirds, songbirds and endangered animals in large parts of the Central Valley and the Klamath Basin. An ongoing review of the rules governing these critical water supplies only delays the ability of these important areas to recover.
This action will also help address water shortages that have occurred across the West as the result of federal regulations overseen by multiple agencies. It offers hope to farmers and ranchers served by federal water projects in the Pacific Northwest, including the Columbia Basin and the Klamath Basin. The president’s order places the responsibility of operating the federal water projects with the Department of the Interior, to be supported by the National Marine Fisheries Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The action prohibits any impacts to threatened or endangered species protected under the federal Endangered Species Act.
This issue has been scrutinized by the Executive Branch as far back as 2011. At that time, President Obama observed that the Interior Department is in charge of salmon while they’re in freshwater, but the Commerce Department handles them when they’re in saltwater. Those overlapping jurisdictions have only slowed efforts to help the fish.
A committee convened by the National Research Council also studied this matter a few years ago. The NRC found that the lack of a systematic, well-framed overall analysis between the two services is “a serious scientific deficiency, and it likely is related to the ESA’s practical limitations as to the scope of actions that can or must be considered in a single biological opinion.”
Improved coordination between federal agencies will promote more efficient, effective and coordinated management of all ESA responsibilities for anadromous and freshwater fish in Western watersheds, from the highest reaches of our headwaters to the Pacific Ocean.
“This action is an important and common-sense move that will benefit Western farmers and ranchers whose livelihoods depend on federal water projects,” said Dan Keppen, executive director of the Family Farm Alliance. “It’s a practical and assertive change to Western water management and species recovery that our membership strongly supports.”
California’s GOP congressional delegation from the Central Valley played an important role in identifying the problems in the state’s water system and worked closely with the Trump administration to produce a solution that is consistent with federal law and will improve the water delivery system.
“There’s no question that the Central Valley has lagged behind the economic recovery experienced in other parts of the state. We’re optimistic that these changes will not only help improve water supplies for farms, farm-related businesses, and disadvantaged rural communities, they will provide the incentive to put science-based solutions to work to help recover iconic native fish species that have suffered under the existing regulatory approach,” said Mike Wade, executive director of the California Farm Water Coalition.
“This is a common-sense improvement to a process that has been abused in the past by regulatory agencies seeking to impose a scientifically-unsound regime on water users that ultimately, by design, de-irrigates some of the highest quality farmland in the world. This move by the Administration simply ensures that the process of revising the rules governing Delta water operations will be less vulnerable to regulatory abuse,” said Tom Nassif, president of the Western Growers Association.
“Implementation of the Endangered Species Act can be better for both species and people, and the president’s action moves us in that direction,” California Farm Bureau Federation President Jamie Johansson said. “It’s time to grow beyond the culture of conflict that has governed California water for too long. We need streamlined solutions that benefit species and that benefit both the farmers who provide California-grown food and farm products and everyone who depends on those products.”
Manuel Cunha, Jr., President of the Nisei Farmers League shared, “We want to thank President Trump, Congressman Devin Nunes and the entire Valley delegation for their efforts that will improve the lives of many, especially in the San Joaquin Valley. There will be a strict timetable for rewriting the biological opinion that caused millions of acre feet of water that would have been used in the San Joaquin Valley to be flushed out to the ocean. This action prioritizes building water storage projects that are badly needed. It is a good day for California, for our hard-working families,and for our communities.
A honey bee helps pollinate Carolyn Read’s boysenberry bushes. Photo by Jonathan Snapp-Cook/USFWS.
By Joanna Gilkeson – It would be easy to call Carolyn Read a preservationist and leave it at that. How many people would settle in a ranch house built 130 years ago and raise a family there?
Or call her a conservationist. Read has made sure that native plants that were in danger of getting choked out by other invasives are again thriving in the arid reaches of her San Diego-area ranch.
Make sure you give Read credit for her business sense, too. She started a horse-themed magazine more than 30 years ago that remains an award-winning publication on the West Coast. She’s also raising and selling boysenberries.
Read is a rancher, an active community member, an equestrian advocate, a conservationist, a historian, an entrepreneur, a grower, a mother and a grandmother — all of which stem from her opportunity to build a life on the land.
A honey bee gathers nectar from black sage (Salvia mellifera), a coastal sage scrub plant, on Carolyn Read’s property. Photo by Jonathan Snapp-Cook/USFWS.
She’s worked with others to ensure that a ranch started in the 1800s remains viable, even as development nears its borders. Among her collaborators: the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service), which advised her as Read restored a hillside with coastal sage scrub. From that collaboration came a friendship with a Service biologist. That connection has roots as hearty as the sage scrub growing on the hills.
Read, 86, is just happy to remain on the land that she has tended so carefully for more than five decades.
“I am grateful for the opportunity to acquire and raise my family in this home,” she said recently, “and for the living heritage the area has given us.”
Read walking along her boysenberry bushes before demonstrating the irrigation system. Photo by Joanna Gilkeson/USFWS.
A Blessing
In 1874, an Arkansan by the name of Reynold Bascomb Borden traveled cross-county in a covered wagon. It came to a halt in a valley blanketed by coastal sage scrub and sunshine. In 1882, he would construct one of the first homesteads in this remote valley, now present-day San Marcos, in San Diego County.
The family kept the clapboard house until 1929. It went through more owners until 1963, when it was put up for sale. Three parties expressed interest in it. One was a young woman who needed space for a growing family.
“At the time, I was a single mom with four children,” Read said. “…For some reason the family who owned the property at the time chose me.”
It was a blessing. “I was able to establish roots, a chance to make a home.”
A Belding’s Orange Throated Whiptail on Carolyn’s property. Photo by Jonathan Snapp-Cook/USFWS.
Today, the property also is home to California quail, hummingbirds, pollinators, lizards, rattlesnakes and birds of prey.
She pointed to a hawk’s nest in the top of a eucalyptus tree.
“That’s the 12th generation of this pair of hawks,” Read said. “They just had their babies. The small sparrows torment them.”
‘Strong Connection’
In 2012, Read decided she needed help to restore wildlife habitat on her land. She worried that the native flora was getting overwhelmed by invasive plants.
Jonathan Snapp-Cook, Partners Biologist, translocates California sagebrush (Artemisia californica) to the restoration site. Photo by Carmen Wilson.
Jonathan Snapp-Cook, a Service biologist, visited her ranch. He knew right away that they shared an appreciation of land stewardship.
“It was obvious she had a strong connection to the historical and cultural aspects of her property and wanted to conserve wildlife,” said Snapp-Cook. “I knew it was going to be the beginning of a good partnership.”
Snapp-Cook and Read embarked on a restoration project to benefit native wildlife. A portion of the hillside behind Read’s house was chock-full of invasive plants while native coastal sage scrub voluntarily grew on the property’s dirt roads.
The idea: transplant the coastal native sage scrub in the roadway to the tract where invasives grew. It was best, they decided, to use the plants they already had to make the restoration take root.
As Read described it: “If the plants are able to make it on their own, then that’s who survives. They are the survivors.”
So far, the native plants are winning. Snapp-Cook and Read have completed three small, flourishing sections of restoration — but they didn’t do it alone. Read’s hired farm hands, family and grandchildren helped restore the hillside, one plant at time.
The restoration project has been a lesson for Read and her family; they see the sage scrub as a valuable member of the ranch ecosystem.
“Jonathan has been quite an inspiration to me, to walk across the property with a biologist, and the native plants he finds, he points out all these things happening at my feet,” she said. “It’s become a very enlightening friendship.”
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Partners Biologist Jonathan Snapp-Cook overlooking the invasive species on Carolyn Read’s property. Photo by Celeste Medina-Ontiveros/USFWS.
Horses & Berries
The view from Read’s front porch has changed since she moved in. Over the years she has watched development slowly creep toward her ranch. The 14-acre property is flanked by rows of white-and-beige houses on one side. An open space soon to be developed shares a property line on another. A hillside of coastal sage shrub touches a third.
Even as San Marcos extends its borders toward her, Read remains determined to protect the land and the creatures that live there.
Carolyn Read walks a horse out to pasture. Behind her is a remnant of her previous career as founder of Horsetrader magazine. Photo by Joanna Gilkeson/USFWS.
Every inch of the 14-acre ranch continues to be productive, which includes seven acres of preserved habitat. Read has four horses on site, with pastures to match. Three years ago, she turned her attention to a local delicacy.
Read began growing boysenberries – a move driven in equal parts by an appreciation of history as well as the bottom line.
The boysenberry enjoys historic importance in Southern California. In 1932, Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park, California, created a new kind of produce – a cross between red raspberries, blackberries and loganberries. The Knott family dubbed it the boysenberry.
The new berry was a tough thing to cultivate, its bushes riddled with thorns, but the payoff was good, too. Consumers loved the boysenberry. So does Read.
Carolyn Read’s boysenberries straight out of the crisper and ready to sell. Read became organically certified in April 2018. Photo courtesy of Carolyn Read.
“I started selling my berries to the neighbors, and I’ve gotten so much good feedback from the community,” she said. “I’ve connected with my neighbors because of the berries and they’re wonderful people.”
The berries also have made their way into local high-end restaurants through a contract with a San Diego produce distributor. “I don’t even know how it all happened,” Read said, “but I’m grateful.”
Growing and sharing California’s homegrown classic fruit is the way Read has chosen to share the living heritage of the homestead with the greater community.
For Read, the boysenberry provides a tangible, tasty link to the area’s rich history.
“Without the places that keep our stories alive…we lose some of the most profound parts of our local history,” she said.
She feels that way about her ranch, too. “It is part of who I am,” she said. “I would like to see some of that lifestyle preserved for future generations.”
California quail make themselves at home on the Pepper Hill Borden Homestead.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service supported this Nature’s Good
Neighbor through our Partners for Fish and Wildlife program. Our Partners program would like to acknowledge the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service for introducing them to this local landowner. The Partners program is a voluntary initiative that works with private landowners to improve fish and wildlife habitat on their land. A phone call or email is all it takes to learn more with one of our 250 private lands biologists. If you are interested in improving habitat for fish and wildlife on your land, find your local Partners for Fish and Wildlife biologist.
Joanna Gilkeson is a public affairs specialist out of the Pacific Southwest Region in Carlsbad, California.
