After the indefinite cancellation of school at the start of the Covid-19 quarantine, my Dad offered to teach my kids about Putah Creek. A fish biologist and University of California, Davis professor who started studying the creek during his early years at UC Davis in the 1970s, there are few people in the world who know as much about the creek. “Sure!” I responded enthusiastically, without asking the kids. Putting down the phone, I turned to Cam and Romy, age 13 and 11, with a stern look to tamp down any resistance. “You’re doing science lessons with your grandfather. And there will be homework. You’re going to participate and work hard.” Neither Romy or Cam are scientifically inclined, so my directive resulted in the expected resigned looks and sighs. I was briefly reminded of my own childhood antipathy to long hikes and unwanted nature lectures, once even lying down in protest across a trail. Given how much I appreciate those experiences now, it was easy to ignore my kids’ complaints.
Years ago, when I asked my father about his greatest achievement, he responded he was proudest of his work to help restore Putah Creek. His answer surprised me, given he’s internationally known for his textbooks and his research on California freshwater fishes. He has testified in lawsuits to restore river flows, published hundreds of papers, and contributed to Endangered Species Act listings of native fishes in decline. Putah Creek is a small California waterway walking distance from my parents’ house. It travels 85 miles from its headwaters in the Coast Range to the Yolo Bypass, where any remaining water flows into the Sacramento River and eventually into the ocean. The creek is dammed twice, to provide flood protection and water supply. The lowest dam is the Putah Creek Diversion Dam, above the City of Winters, which siphons off water for Solano County cities and farms. The creek then winds its way through agricultural fields, and finally skirts the City of Davis. This small creek is my Dad’s choice as the highlight of a life of conservation work?
The first science lesson with the kids focused on learning about the birds which call Putah Creek home and an introduction to important terms, such as “riparian habitat,” “endemic,” and “non-native.” The kids dutifully read off the answers from their homework assignments, with various levels of accuracy, and tried to identify the birds my Dad pointed out. They learned endemic means a plant or animal unique to a particular region, non-native means a species native to somewhere outside of this region, and riparian habitat refers to habitat adjacent to a waterway important to many animals. They learned how white settlers, who mostly arrived after the 1849 Gold Rush, transformed wide swaths of riparian forest into mere slivers of trees and plants lining the streams which today support only a fraction of the original bird and animal populations.
One day, we counted 18 western pond turtles sunning themselves on tree branches sticking out of the water, which the kids named “The Log of the Swimming Turtles.” I grew up visiting the creek, but I was astounded by how much I did not know. My Dad’s unassuming lectures and patient questions revealed a natural world few people notice; western bluebirds peeking out of nest boxes, black phoebes swooping over the creek to grab aquatic insects, tree swallows flitting over nearby agricultural fields, mockingbirds singing from their oak tree perches, and pairs of Swainson’s hawks flying high above in the blue sky.
When my Dad arrived at the UC Davis campus in 1972, the University mined Putah Creek for gravel, people used it as a dump site (including old cars and washing machines), and state agencies cleared the vegetation for flood control. My Dad’s first visit to the creek resulted in the disappointing conclusion, “There’s nothing to sample here.” And in particular, there were few native fish because much of the stream was dry. My Mom remembers signs warning people not to use the creek because of contamination. Six months pregnant with me, she made a mental note to keep her kids away from the creek.
Abandoned cars in Putah Creek above Pedrick Road Bridge, circa 1991 (top) and 2003 (bottom)
Stagnant water in the now South Fork Preserve prior to conservation, circa 1980. The City of Davis restored this stretch of Putah Creek and associated habitat in the 1990s with funds from the voter-approved open space parcel tax.
The next few science lessons involved teaching the girls about the cultural history and geomorphology of the creek, as well as continued bird identification and aquatic insect sampling. They learned about the native Patwin people who once lived everywhere in the watershed, the impact of building the Monticello Dam on natural flooding, and the incision of the creek’s corridor as a result of levees that prevent water from flowing freely onto nearby fields and meadows. The best student of my Dad’s teachings turned out to be my husband Vince, who quickly picked up on bird’s names and would stare intently into the trees until a bird emerged. After a particularly interesting lesson, we reported on the sightings to our 22-year-old daughter Maddie, home for the summer. “You’re all bird nerds,” she laughed. “True,” I thought. “We are. Who knew.”
My Dad and Romy sampling for aquatic insects near the Pedrick Road Bridge, July 2020.
Despite my Dad’s uninspiring first visit to the creek, he supported student fish research projects on Putah Creek in the 1970s and started taking his fish class to sample the creek in 1976. Towards the end of the decade, he and other university scientists joined with professor Kerry Dawson, to ask the University to stop mining the creek and instead create a riparian reserve. Surprisingly, university leaders agreed and mining quietly stopped. Some urgency was added to my Dad’s advocacy by my brother Noah, who in the early 1980s was old enough to ride his bike with his friends to Putah Creek to swim during the summer. Much to my Mom’s horror, the boys liked to jump off a bridge on Old Davis Road into a pool fed by discharge from the University’s wastewater treatment plant. My Dad understandably decided kids should have alternate places on the creek to swim.
University gravel mining site and Pedrick Road Bridge construction, circa 1974
UC Davis hired recent graduate Steve Chainey to create and manage the new Putah Creek Riparian Reserve in the early 1980s. In 1988, Steve and his colleague Susan Sanders formed the nonprofit Putah Creek Council with other local luminaries such as Robin Kulakow and Bill Julian, marking the start of decades of work to restore the creek. The culmination of the Council’s work was a lawsuit filed in 1990 and settled in 1996, for which my Dad volunteered as an expert witness. The settlement required Solano County’s water agency to restore flows to Putah Creek, established a Putah Creek streamkeeper position, and contributed to over $12 million in grants to restore the creek over the next 15 years.
As a result of the Council’s lawsuit and decades of clean up and restoration work, the creek now flows with clear water, has lush riparian vegetation, and hundreds of salmon miraculously resumed spawning every fall after disappearing for decades. It is not a natural creek by any means; the creek is much altered by diversions, levees, and other human modifications. And it is still only a sliver of the habitat the creek originally provided for native species. But people who once avoided the creek now flock to it, floating downstream in inner tubes, tying ropes to trees to jump into deep pools, hiking on new trails, letting their dogs and children play in the clear, clean water. Unthinkable 40 years ago when people avoided the creek because “there was nothing there,” now overuse is contributing to erosion, trash accumulation, and other impacts that require constant vigilance and expenditures of large sums. And birds, turtles, coyotes, and other creatures have a small strip of refuge from less hospitable land uses.
Illegal swings over the creek in the UC Davis Riparian Reserve with associated erosion in 2020; abandoned inner tube in the background
The science lessons continued throughout the pandemic. Sometimes the kids’ attention turned to picking blackberries or shimmying up a tree to pluck bunches of wild grapes, so my Dad gracefully paused the lessons. Sometimes the kids' grumpiness at waking early required bribery with ice cream or popsicles. But I remember a time when I, too, rolled my eyes at my Dad’s efforts to educate me about nature and mightily resisted his entreaties to hike during hot Central Valley summers. Somehow, I absorbed the lessons he taught and the experiences he shared, albeit slowly and unwittingly, until they became a part of who I am. Now my curiosity is real and my dedication to furthering conservation unshakable. Regardless of whether Cam and Romy pursue an environmental career, I hope my Dad’s lessons will help them remember a mighty few can make a difference in this world with hard work and perseverance. And as importantly, I hope they remember to tread lightly on this earth to help protect the voiceless inhabitants of the natural world; birds, fish, and animals who continue to suffer great harm from ignorant human actions.
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For more information about Putah Creek, visit:
The Putah Creek Legacy — A five-part series published by The Davis Enterprise in 2004 that includes a chapter each on the 1980s drought, the Putah Creek Council, the lawsuit, the revival of the creek, and the future.
The Putah Creek Council’s Oral History Project — To celebrate the Putah Creek Council’s 25th anniversary, the Council interviewed nine early Putah Creek Council members, including my Dad.
Romy and Cam during a “lesson” with blackberries smeared on their faces. July 2020.
Fabulous.
Love this, thank you!
This is really wonderful Petrea. Thank you!