Natomas Basin - Wildlife Friendly Lands

Northern Natomas Basin

It was one thing for me to sit in an office behind a computer and work on conservation of a threatened species and its habitat. To actually go out into the field and see the habitat is another thing and was a privilege of my job. However, when anyone drives through an area with some open space and farmlands in northern California, they may be driving through very important habitat for the rarest of species without realizing it. This is because as natural wetlands in California declined to nearly ten per cent of the area they once covered, working landowners--mostly farmers and conservancies--started managing their lands and operations to create the habitat function the lost wetlands once provided.

One such area is the Natomas Basin, in the City of Sacramento and to the north. South Natomas is about 10 minutes from downtown, where affordable housing communities provide attractive options for commuters and newcomers to buy homes. Although North Natomas is also somewhat developed, a more rural landscape farther north stretches into southern Sutter County. Here, farmers do business in the best way possible to be profitable and successful while providing a benefit to the wildlife that use their fields as habitat during certain times of the year, a term coined as "wildlife friendly agriculture". North Natomas also has reserve lands managed by The Natomas Basin Conservancy. This land is set aside for the recovery and conservation of wildlife, including species that are threatened and endangered in the U.S. and California, such as the giant garter snake and Swainson's hawk.

I was working to help conserve the giant garter snake, a species endemic only to certain parts of the state, with disjunct populations that are threatened by genetic isolation and local extirpations. The Natomas Basin population is important for the survival of the species. So when a representative of the Natomas Basin Conservancy invited my supervisor and me to tour giant garter snake habitat on their reserve, we felt very fortunate.

A canal used by the giant garter snake with upland habitat on the rocks and levee.

It was a beautiful sunny day with a very clear blue sky on October 9, 2015. We toured tracts of the reserve at the northern edge of Sacramento County off of Elverta Road, which is accessed from Highway 70/99, that included rice fields, freshwater marshes, tree-lined canals, large ponds, and open grassland. Though we did not see the snakes, we saw the edges of ponds, canals, and flooded rice fields that we know they are using to meet most of their needs, such as breeding, dispersing, and foraging. The giant garter snakes also use grassy, rocky, or vegetated banks of these watery habitats, sometimes up to several hundred feet away, as "upland" habitat. This is where they use burrows or crevices to hibernate underground in the winter; or when above ground, to hide from predators or extreme weather.

The snakes colonized the emergent vegetation at the edge of this pond and its bank.

Sometimes the ponds get overrun with water primrose, which needs to be removed. 

Swainson's hawks also nest in the trees in the reserve, and tricolored blackbirds may use the tules in the ponds or marshes.

We then traveled up Natomas Road in southern Sutter County through the rice fields, where the farmers manage their crops for the benefit of the giant garter snake and birds. Turning left on Sankey Road, we drove by some some trees and grasslands that are used by Swainson's hawks for nesting and foraging.

Although the public does not have access to the reserve itself, there are good viewing spots from the roads that surround them and a preserve map that shows where to go. The Natomas Basin is scenic and peaceful and worth a drive-through for local people who want to take a daytime excursion. Fishing is allowed in some of the canals, and the more developed areas have good eateries. So while my trip was focused on viewing habitat for wildlife, there is always a little something for everyone to do or see.