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Forty percent of California drains into the Delta. Each of those waterways, each of those rivers, streams, and creeks, is a wildlife corridor. Some are the blue highways, some are interstates, the equivalent of I-5, because the animals move along those corridors, either in the water or in the shelter belt of the streamside woods, or a little of both if they’re amphibians. Some are moving through the trees, like squirrels and birds. So those animals can move from the Sierra to the Central Valley in the winter and back in the summer.

Formerly these waterways were all the home of salmon. Salmon is where it all comes together. They breed in the fresh water, go out into the ocean, they bring the nutrients of the ocean back to the land, feeding animals and trees and shrubs. In Alaska, as much as 80 percent of nitrogen in the trees many yards from the stream is brought there by the salmon. If we look in California at the Napa Valley, many of the nutrients left over are left there by dead and dying salmon. But we’re losing, we’re losing the connection.

The Cosumnes is the largest undammed river in California. The others are all dammed and managed--or mismanaged! The Shasta Dam blocks nearly 80 percent of salmon spawning areas; the Friant Dam near Fresno takes 100 percent of the San Joaquin’s water, leaving 65 miles of dry riverbed below. A wild river is not easy to live with because rivers by their very nature change course, and they flood. So the rivers are managed, and they’re cutting off overflows. When a river floods over its banks, fish can get to weeds and seeds and insects. The more they eat, the faster they grow, and the faster they grow, the better their chance of survival.

Yes. But go back a bit. When you say the Delta is the best habitat in California, what are you comparing?

It all comes together there, all based around water. The Delta includes brackish water, fresh, and salt. We have intertidal marshes--fresh water is being forced up into dead-end sloughs with the tides, then draining out. Two highs, two lows every day, pumping water in and out, much like arteries and veins. The Delta is truly California’s heart.

So if you want to experience the rich abundance of California, this is where you’d come, to the Delta?

You’d come to the Delta.

And to truly experience it you have to go out on the water?

I think so. I felt that as a kid. You gotta get out there. You have to be on the water to experience the essence of our planet--the water planet. And water is life; life is water.

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