Ducks Unlimited’s California Projects Show Why Wetlands Can Help With Floods

Photo: San Luis National Wildlife Refuge’s East Bear Creek Unit earlier this fall before it was inundated with floodwaters.

Before Californians built a network of levees and dams to keep cities from flooding, the rivers that formed the Central Valley each winter would spill out of their channels. In the wettest years, they’d flood to form a massive inland sea that stretched hundreds of miles from Redding to Bakersfield.

In wet winters such as this one, those rivers keep trying to form that massive seasonal wetland again, testing the strength of the levees that protect communities built on the state’s floodplains.

Along two of the state’s most flood-prone rivers, Ducks Unlimited has been working to create wetlands that use those natural flood patterns to create vital habitat for waterbirds and wildlife. The projects highlight why Californians should look to wetland expansion as one of the solutions to help reduce the risks from future floods.

In Merced County along the San Joaquin River, Ducks Unlimited worked with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Frito-Lay to restore and re-engineer 2,000 acres of wetlands in the heart of the Grasslands Ecological Area that mimic the historic function of the floodplain.

Completed earlier this […]

Full article: Ducks Unlimited’s California Projects Show Why Wetlands Can Help With Floods