California Ricelands Waterbird Foundation

Recently, our Foundation was called upon to deploy extra investments from the State of California get critical waterbird habitat out onto the dry Sacramento Valley landscape during the recent epic drought. These State investments allowed us to strategically flood nearly 100,000 acres of rice fields over two years to help offset the significant deficit of winter-flooded waterfowl habitat during the drought. Even though we are back to something more normal for now, we are always focused on the perennial need to provide flooded habitat for migratory waterbirds that experience a seasonal lack of habitat every fall and spring season. In addition, we are also involved in innovative projects to help struggling salmon populations. We accomplish this through implementation of several ongoing projects.Bid4Birds Habitat Program: This innovative habitat enhancement program focuses on creating critical shorebird and waterfowl habitat at the precise time periods when habitat is the most scarce. This special targeting of habitat investment, precisely where and when its most needed, provides cost-efficiencies by spending our donor funds within the exact weeks/months that are most critical. Thanks to our donors, this is our main perennial program delivering world-class waterbird habitat year-over-year.California Ricelands Salmon Project (Salmon.Calrice.org): This is a significant, cutting-edge research/pilot project to study and develop new innovative methods to raise juvenile salmon in winter-flooded rice fields. The project is supported by the Foundation, NRCS and many other funding partners. Since 2018, special salmon-rearing management practices have been pilot-tested and successful migration of rice-reared salmon out to the ocean has been tracked using state of the acoustic telemetry tags. Early results on survival rates look very good, showing enhanced survival for the salmon that are using these specially-managed rice fields. This is due to the fact that the winter-flooded rice fields are full of zooplanktonthe exact food source that juvenile salmon need at this stage of their life. Fish Food Program: The Foundation is also helping our salmon conservation partners with another innovative program to help juvenile salmon that cannot access the food in their historic floodplain due to flood protection levees. The Foundation is helping to find participating rice growers who are willing the grow the fish food in their fields and strategically export it to the river where juvenile salmon in the main river channel can access it and experience growth benefits.