"Can Agriculture And Wildlife Co-Exist? Rice Farmers Think So."

"With more than 90 percent of California's wetlands gone, some unlikely bedfellows are working together to bring habitat back."

"Before the Gold Rush, the Central Valley in California was like a bathtub. Rivers filled with water which then slowly spread out through natural wetlands. This created a rich feeding ground for migrating species: salmon going to and from the ocean, birds flying from Alaska and Argentina. But with the development of farms, dams, houses and roads over the course of the 20th century, California lost more than 90 percent of  its natural wetlands and that in turn threatened the wildlife.

Now, the northern part of the Central Valley—the Sacramento Valley—looks like a quilt of perfectly level rice fields, a vastly productive area that has made the state second only to the Mississippi Delta in rice production.

That dramatic change in the landscape may sound  grim, but in California’s rice country, some strange bedfellows are working together to address the historic loss of wildlife habitat, and to insure rice farming is part of the solution."

Lisa Morehouse reports for the Food & Environment Reporting Network April 8, 2018.