Photo taken October 12, 2024, by MaryAnn McCrary.
The 150-acre restoration project at Rancho Breisgau is an amazing combination of public and private partnerships that has been on the drawing board for many years. Planting started this year and will continue into 2025. Eventually, the site will be home to 30,000 plantings that will be tended and irrigated for three years. Soon the area will be transformed into a riparian woodland that will be home to nesting neotropical migrant birds and other wildlife.
This expertly prepared site in the floodplain of the Sacramento River has deep loamy soil that is as easy to plant in as your own raised bed garden boxes. Because of all the pre-planting preparation, a relatively small number of volunteers from Redding, Red Bluff, Chico, and Davis were able to plant over 5,000 young riparian trees and shrubs! Shasta Chapter CNPS members came out to help, including our current nursery manager and our Shasta College intern. It was a pleasantly cool day and the digging was so easy!
As part of Bureau of Land Management lands along the Sacramento River that extend into the eastern foothills, this project will add significantly to the protected wildlife corridor from the valley floor all the way into Lassen Volcanic National Park. Struggling salmon populations will also benefit from this strategically located restoration.
In relatively few years, the public will be able to visit and enjoy the shade of willows and cottonwoods here, and do some excellent bird watching! Riparian restoration projects on this scale have been happening along the Sacramento River since the early 1990s. If you would like to see a similarly restored site that is now nearly 30 years old, consider a visit to the Rio Vista Unit of the Sacramento River National Wildlife Refuge, which is adjacent to Woodson Bridge State Park in Tehama County. ~MaryAnn McCrary
Photo taken October 12, 2024, by MaryAnn McCrary.