Audubon's Important Bird Areas: La Grange/Waterford and Merced Grasslands

In my last post, I wrote about the importance of protecting California's remaining grasslands.  Today, I would like to introduce you to two very special, very important grasslands that are both near and dear to my heart - as well as my hometown.  Designated as Important Bird Areas by the National Audubon Society, the La Grange/Waterford Grasslands and Merced Grasslands collectively cover nearly 400,000 acres along the eastern edge of the San Joaquin Valley and the western extent of the Sierra foothills.

Merced Grasslands on a foggy winter morning

Important Bird Areas are regions that the National Audubon Society, the United States' partner with BirdLife International, has determined encompass the most critical and important habitats for birds in the US.  In California, a few of these areas include famed birding hotspots such as the Mono Lake Basin, Point Reyes and Tomales Bay, Humboldt Bay, Carrizo Plain, the Salton Sea and Imperial Valley, and the Lower Colorado River Valley.  Across the United States, the habitat represented by Important Bird Areas is varied, as are the many threats they face.  

Loggerhead Shrike, one of California's grassland Species of Special Concern

The grasslands east of the Valley provide vital habitat for a number of bird species that are of special interest to biologists, whether they are listed as State or Federally Endangered or Threatened, or listed as Species of Special Concern by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.  Burrowing Owls, Loggerhead Shrikes and Grasshopper Sparrows are three Species of Special Concern that nest on the grasslands, as do Horned Larks, which are on a separate conservation watch list.  Fully Protected species, like Golden Eagles and White-tailed Kites, hunt over the grasslands year-round, while Short-eared Owls, Ferruginous Hawks, and Long-billed Curlew, three more species of concern, spend their winters on the grasslands.  State Threatened Tricolored Blackbirds nest in brambles and reedy areas associated with riparian and wetland areas on the grasslands, as do Yellow-breasted Chats, yet another Species of Special Concern.  

State Threatened Tricolored Blackbirds

One of two Important Bird Areas on the eastern edge of the Great Central Valley, the La Grange/Waterford Grasslands cover 189,945 acres in Calaveras, San Joaquin, Stanislaus and Tuolumne Counties between the Stanislaus and Tuolumne Rivers (see map below).  This area is comprised of extensive grassland habitat and a few vernal pools, transitioning from grassland to blue oak savannah along the edge of the Sierra Nevada foothills.  This land is privately owned, and more acres fall to agricultural expansion every year.  Virtually no protected habitat occurs in this area, and there is essentially nothing stopping landowners from ripping up the grassland and converting it to orchards.  A high diversity of wintering raptors occurs on this grassland, including Ferruginous and Rough-legged Hawks, as well as both Golden and Bald Eagles, and Burrowing and Short-eared Owls.

A map of several of Audubon's Important Bird Areas surrounding my hometown.
Red areas have been designated as areas of global significance; green areas are of state significance.
Source: Audubon.org

South of the La Grange/Waterford Grasslands are the Merced Grasslands, another Important Bird area that covers 195,482 acres in Madera, Mariposa and Merced counties (see map above).  This grassland contains one of the largest and most diverse collections of vernal pools left in California, which are home to several endemic species.  The UC Merced Vernal Pools and Grassland Reserve protects 6,500 acres of habitat adjacent to the university, and the Nature Conservancy has obtained conservation easements on some ranches in this area, but much of the Merced Grasslands still remain unprotected and at high risk of agricultural development.

A spring day on the La Grange/Waterford Grasslands.  Note the encroachment of almond orchards into unirrigated rangeland on the left side of the photo.

The La Grange/Waterford and Merced Grasslands are almost entirely unprotected, their fate left to decisions made by landowners.  While using our grasslands as rangeland for sustainably grazing livestock is about the best arrangement we can have, more and more landowners are choosing to plow up the grasslands and plant valuable nut crops instead.  Drip irrigation allows growers to provide water to trees even on rolling hills, so the orchards continue to spread farther and farther into the grasslands every year.

Check out the satellite image below to see what I mean.

A satellite image of the grasslands, from Google.  The brown strip running through the center of the image are the foothill grasslands; to the west are the flat agricultural lands of the Central Valley (former grasslands!), and to the east are the steeper chaparral-clad hills leading up into the Sierra Nevada.  
Take a look at a few of the more recent orchards, creeping into the grasslands: in particular, look for the green rectangles near Eugene and Woodward Reservoir (south of Eugene), Knight's Ferry, Warnerville, Robert's Ferry and Snelling.  The section south of Turlock Lake, between Robert's Ferry and Hopeton is particularly concerning: orchards and other agricultural development has nearly spanned half the width of this narrow band of grasslands!  And the march east continues.

The image below is a closer look at the grasslands - and former grasslands - around Warnerville, right in the heart of the La Grange/Waterford Grasslands.

Satellite image from Google of the La Grange/Waterford Grasslands around Warnerville, bounded by Highway 132 to the south and Highway 108 to the north.  Notice the rectangular fields moving progressively farther east into the grasslands, pinching the remaining grasslands into an increasingly narrow band between the agricultural lands and foothill chaparral. 

Winter is perhaps the most painful time for a naturalist to drive through these grasslands, since this is the time landowners plant new orchards of bareroot trees.  It seems like every time I drive out across the grasslands I find that more and more acres of old-growth grassland have been stripped of their vegetation, the red earth laid bare.  Acre after acre of former grassland is now planted in neat rows of little sticks, future orchards, sterile monocrops of almond trees which require supplemental water and heavy uses of chemical pesticides and fertilizers, to say nothing of rodent control measures.

A Golden Eagle soars over the La Grange/Waterford Grasslands

Most, if not all, of the birds mentioned above cannot survive the unrelenting march of orchards.  Their lifestyles are not suited to orchards and agricultural areas; once the grassland habitat becomes too highly fragmented, or lost entirely, the birds that depend on it must leave to seek their living elsewhere.  

Ferruginous Hawks and Golden Eagles require vast expanses of open habitat to hunt rodents and small mammals; orchards with highly controlled squirrel populations offer nothing to these large raptors of wild western grasslands.  Long-billed Curlew, a species of prairie-nesting shorebird, rely on open grassland, not orchards, for winter habitat.  Meadowlarks, Horned Larks and several species of native sparrows nest on the ground in grasslands, concealed in clumps of vegetation; there is no place for these birds in an orchard.

Quite simply, when we lose the grasslands, we lose their birds.