Davis needs to do better at protecting its sensitive and endangered species

There is still a chance to preserve and restore habitats to help native species recover, including at Village Farms

By Kathryn Calderala

Environmentalism – Still a dirty word for some. A category Davis has a long history of claiming to embrace when the results show otherwise. As one example (and there are many); Davis used to be the proud stewards of a healthy population of Western Burrowing Owls – those pint-sized, ground dwelling owls perched on fence posts and signs. Almost everyone I have met since I moved here told me how they used to see owls everywhere. Yet now the species is almost gone from the county (no, they are not at Wildhorse anymore). They are considered extirpated – no longer nesting here and we are lucky to see a handful of individuals trying to overwinter in the area before moving on. Mostly they have been done in by the strange apathy that pervades the area.

If a pint-sized owl – that lives underground and has more charisma than most species – can’t be a priority, what hope do all the other dwindling native species have? The California Tiger Salamander – an icon of the state. The Vernal Pool Tadpole Shrimp – a straightup throwback to prehistoric design, trundling around like mini horseshoe crabs. The Western Spadefoot Toad – a cat-eyed chunk of toad that smells like peanuts when they are mad. If we, as a community, cannot rouse ourselves enough to fight for the underdogs, what hope do we have for the future?

On the larger scale, we are quickly shoving our biotic communities toward homogeneity. Look at Northstar Pond – Built to soothe the human love of green space and water – while housing a complex of species that could be found in almost any state in the country. That same pond, with those same features and species, anywhere in the lower 48. It is the Starbucks of ponds, one on every corner. American Bullfrogs – not native west of the Rockies, brought in during the great depression as a food source. Red-eared sliders – not native and a shoutout to the pet industry who did a bang-up job of marketing tiny turtles to a populace that didn’t realize they live 40+ years and are excellent colonizers when their owners – inevitably growing tired of them – released them into nearby waterbodies. Mallards. Red-wing Blackbirds. Canada Goose. Cattails. Yellow flag Iris. All the ornamental things that decades of pop culture have taught us mean “nature”. The thing we weren’t taught was what we could lose in the tradeoff. ALL of our native and endemic (found nowhere else in the world) species city-wide.

Here is the thing that distresses me. We chose that pond. And we continue to choose it over and over. Every new development, every new green ‘tradeoff’. The reality is that California, and ESPECIALLY the valley floor, are native habitat to a host of endemic species. We, as a community, still host remnant populations of plant and animal species that are literally going extinct before our eyes and that we have the resources to sustain and support.

Yet over and over again we choose the easiest most apathetic tradeoff possible. Northstar could have just as easily hosted species like California Red-legged Frogs, famed from Mark Twain’s story “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”, a California endemic now on the endangered species list. The pond still has the occasional visit from a native Western Pond Turtle (at a ratio of 60-1; 60 invasive sliders for every 1 native turtle seen during surveys). Yet people are mostly unaware that we only have ONE native freshwater turtle here and the places that should be providing refuge are instead making way for an idea that seems to be pervading subtext of the human drama – that one species is as good as the next.

I write this because today, right now, there is still the chance of preserving and restoring some of these habitats to help native species recover. There are still remnants of Vernal Pool habitats within the City of Davis, not just the singular large alkali pool north of Cannery – slated to be “preserved” by development and slowly memory-holed into obscurity. Vernal Pools generally do not exist in isolation. Historically, an entire complex exists in that area, easily viewable by scrolling backward through the historic imagery of Google Earth.

In addition to that one pool, Village Farms owns virtually half of the remaining relic vernal pool habitat left in Davis, albeit degraded due to ag practices. If Village Farms were to restore it as a mitigation bank, instead of fill it in, and create a preserve, they could actually bring some of this extremely rare habitat back and join a few other cities that are trying to do the same. Yes, they have been disced and disregarded for decades, but those small, aquatic invertebrate species likely still persist in the soils – fairy shrimp can go for decades encysted in dry soils, disced underground, only to emerge when the right conditions return. Sonoma County has had excellent success at mitigation banking and restoring vernal habitats. What those habitats are unlikely to survive is the massive amount of concrete and development piled atop them in the name of more housing.

At a time when there is less than 10% of vernal pool habitat left in California there are better ways and better areas that do not wipe out the last great native species hopes of Davis. The current development projects slated for these sensitive areas should be shelved until ALL possible options are considered, not just the ones that greenwash the impacts for the public.

I leave you with a quote from John Sawhill and a hope for the species trying to survive alongside us. “In the end, our society will be defined not only by what we create, but by what we refuse to destroy.”

~ Your Friendly Neighborhood Biologist

Kathryn Calderala is a local wildlife biologist that specializes in endemic and special-status species in Central California. She has worked on numerous large infrastructure and utility projects and with several regional governments on responsible development of community projects.