Audubon California’s Working Lands Program recently established our Working Waterways Initiative, the goal of which is to increase habitat along agricultural water delivery and tailwater systems up and down the Central Valley. This initiative grows out of our Landowner Stewardship Program’s fifteen years of working with farmers and ranchers to develop habitat on their properties. Revegetating sloughs, canals, and creeks provides important habitat for target birds, helping recover populations of riparian songbirds in the Central Valley. With over 30,000 miles of working waterways across the Central Valley, the opportunity to carry out more working waterways restoration projects is great. It also provides important benefits to the farmer, including weed control, reduced soil loss, improved water quality, pollination, and pest control. Audubon’s objective is to increase the extent and value of on-farm restoration through the following activities: applying the best available science to improve habitat value of restoration efforts, training new partners in restoration design and practice, implementing demonstration projects with partner landowners in close collaboration with NRCS, water agencies, Resource Conservation Districts (RCDs), or other local partners, and addressing through public policy barriers that prevent widespread adoption of canal restoration and revegetation on farms.
An example of Audubon’s restoration work can be viewed at Working Lands: A California Couple Builds Habitat Along Stream Edges.
