Water quality – Heather Bernikoff

January and February have been nice. Although I’ve still been out monitoring and planning, I have not had to do as much physical labor. The rest has been welcome. Last December and November, I planted the Xerces Grassland Habitat Kit – over 200 plants and perhaps 1000 seeds. Certainly, this is an effort of love for the land, love for butterflies and bees. This week feels more spring-like, so I am outside again performing maintenance labor. While out pulling grass and straightening gopher baskets already planted into the ground, I saw the first butterfly of the season. What incentive!

The monarch overwintering count has been encouraging, with the number of adults just over 330,000. This is up from the 260,000 last year. We all need to recognize, however, that these numbers are nothing compared to what their population should be. Monarch and other butterflies were in the millions in most of our lifetimes back in the 1980s. Please continue to do everything you can do to build habitat and make conditions livable for these relatives of ours.

Rains Bring Flowers

As I’ve performed my walks about the ranch, the smell of nectar hangs in the air. It is so sweet. My mind turns fuzzy – like that “in love” brain block. I am intoxicated from the smell. It is no wonder February is the month we celebrate love. I try not to admit that the fuzzy head is from a histamine reaction – allergies. The sense of being in love with the world is too pleasant a thought.

I follow my nose and am led to small, low growing white flowers. There are millions of them in all the areas without much grass. These are the first wildflowers of the season to emerge.

In just a week, there are more blooms. Arugula, not a native plant, but very prolific (and delicious), begin to blossom. There are thousands of plants with many flowers each. Then lavender….then brodiaea…and soon many more.

Water

Weeks after the major storms, the arroyos are still running, albeit a trickle, but still moving. The creeks are running well, but slowing. Pockets of algae are beginning to form. Algae occurs when there is significant nutrients in the water – typically the result of fertilizers farmers use and livestock. Here, it is the result of cattle poop. The cows were rotated to the north just after the big storms. The algae began to show last week. It is one of the down sides of cows. Algae can starve water of oxygen and make it inhabitable for other life. When it gets think, I try to open up holes on the surface of the water to allow movement and oxygen absorption. It is a losing battle of course. Unless I remove it after it forms, it just grows back again.

The force of the water was so tremendous, it blanched rocks – making the rock surfaces white. The torrent also deposited a remarkable amount of rock and sand into the creek channels. In some locations, the height of rock piles increased by 6″.

Water has receded reveling sandy edges and bars

Although it was shifted around during higher flow times, the bulk of my rock check dam held. It retained the sediment, which built up behind it. It is absolutely stunning how much rock and sediment flowed down even on small creeks.

Rock check dam. Note the sediment behind and to the right

Fire

I attended the Southern Sierra Miwuk Traditional Ecological Knowledge program, which was two days. The second day, we worked on using fire to make the ground and specific plants healthy. I am not too comfortable around large fires – small fires ok – but large are a bit daunting. With each experience, I get a little more comfortable. I would like to have a burn at the ranch in fall and target eliminating medusa head and promoting some of the riparian native plants.

Wanderings

Since turning around, dumping my vacation for a chance to see more monarchs, I waited on my patio for days. No monarchs. One remarkable note is that my neighbor said she saw a monarch flying down hill from my house the day after the turn around. There is nothing else this time of year that could look like a monarch, so I decided she wasn’t mistaken. I celebrated! I have not seen a monarch in Hornitos in nearly 10 years – so no matter what, this was incredible. The sighting preceded the news that monarchs have been seen in greater numbers at the overwintering sites than last year, and it is still several weeks before the traditional “Thanksgiving Day Count”. Let’s be clear, the numbers are still abysmally low. Intervention remains critical. I am very grateful to Xerces Society and other monarch supporting organizations for their relentless work to expand habitat and get the word out about the decimation of this crucial and iconic butterfly.

Recently, I have seen a painted lady, two admirals, several of what I think are a hairstreaks, yellow cabbage and some white sulfur butterflies. Combined with the other butterflies earlier in the year, though less in number than last year, I am calling the work I have done here a win.

Spoiling Water

As much as I love cattle, they have no awareness to not urinate and defecate in their water. They also trample the banks making soil tumble into the creek. It makes the water go from clear to muddy and promotes algae growth from all of the organic material. This is why there are programs to help ranchers fence off riparian areas – to help keep water clean, give plants a chance to grow and propagate and stabilize banks.

Clean beginning to the spring. Note the berm keeping the poop from the spring entry.

American Indian Council of Mariposa County Starts their Pollinator Program

Earlier this month the American Indian Council of Mariposa County hired two young women – Nellie and Kristie – one as a Pollinator Advisor and one as the Garden Designer. Both are young, strong Southern Sierra Miwuk women and will contribute much to the Council’s vision of starting a garden to help feed elders and using the garden as well as their Healing Center focus to expand pollinator habitat, especially for the declining monarch butterfly. These positions were made possible by the Resource Conservation Grant awarded in part to support the Walappu’ ‘Uuchuthuu project. Their first projects will be to design a garden, plant Xerces Plant kits, and install a native plant garden at the Mariposa History Museum. I am so excited to see what these young women do! Stay tuned for more on this technical assistance part of the project.

Xerces Society Does It Again

Angela Laws (Left) and Jessa Kay Cruz of Xerces Society distributing pollinator plant kits

There are a number of groups and individuals doing what they can to help increase the numbers of the monarch butterfly population. From my perspective, one of the most effective and exciting efforts has been the Xerces Society pollinator plant kits program. They have scaled their plant work into the 10s of thousands of plants, with corresponding increases in the number of individuals partnering with them and acres planted. These women, including Deedee Soto (the Xerces biologist who has been mentioned many times before in this blog for her outstanding assistance to me on my Walappu’ project), are truly heroes for their tireless work to help many pollinator species come back from the bring of extinction.

I picked up the pollinator kits for me, the Tribe and Irene, a young Southern Sierra Miwuk woman doing her own restoration work. My truck was completely FULL. The two hour drive home from the distribution site smelled great. Thank you Xerces Society!

Loading the truck at the distribution site

Water for the New Plants

I am finally growing up. I am getting an adult rainwater catchment system – well almost adult. It has only taken me 20 years to find the right firm and have enough financial resources to get it done. It is just in time too. My body just cannot make it through another year of hauling water all around. I hired local Watershed Progressive to perform the design and work for the system. Two young women came out to dig trenches and do all the plumbing work. It was great meeting these strong young women who know so much about water. I plan to showcase this system to folks who want to learn more about rainwater catchment. We all really need to be capturing some rain water to irrigate our plants in the west. Drought conditions are too frequent and destructive.

Fencing to Protect the New Plants

It has been quite the journey at Site 8. I have thought through so many fencing types to protect the plants, spring and creek banks from the cattle. What a circuitous road! We finally settled on a t-post fence with Wedge-Loc corner systems to allow for strength across the entire span of fence. While I did finally get an NRCS contract to build permanent riparian fencing, it is expensive to build that type of fence, and I have to front the money and get paid in arrears. This t-post fencing is a good stop-gap fence – although it is so much work I am thinking maybe it will be permanent!

Originally, I had planned to use field fencing to fence off a section of the creek from the cattle and do wildlife friendly fencing up stream where access to the spring was critical for wildlife. Since we were going to stretch wire anyway, I thought, “Let’s just do the wire for the entire span.” This is the final configuration.

A red tail spirit comes to check our work

A wildlife friendly fence is essentially having a smooth wire at the top and bottom of the fence instead of barbed wire. This way wildlife can scoot under or jump over the fence with no catching or scrapes. The barbed wire comprises the center two wires in between to discourage cattle. This creek will be planted with all kinds of milkweed and nectar plants. Hopefully, the Xerces kit plants I planted last year along the creek will reemerge next Spring. That was a huge amount of work last year, including building the branch fence.

For those cattle ranchers that read this blog, and I know there are at least two of you, you will be thinking, “Oh no! How will cattle get to the water?” Great question. Here is the plan. Just below the fenced off area, you may recall a flatter area where the spring water and rain water pools. This is where I want to drive the cattle to access water. In this way, they are not crushing soil off steep banks and into the creek. I am also hoping for wider access to water so more than a few head at a time can access water. Here are the key elements to accomplish this: 1. With less soil intrusion, and even with more plantings, the spring water will have greater volume, be cleaner and pool in the watering area. 2. I plan to build a beaver dam analog (essentially a human created beaver dam type structure) early next year to slow runoff and retain moisture in the soil behind the dam, which will allow for pooling of water. I cannot wait to share the results of the beaver dam analog. I am planning to host a clinic here for other ranchers and property owners. After doing much research on these, I think this solution can be a game-changer for drought resilience, feed growth (which equals weight gain) and pollinator habitat. Thanks to Jesse Bahm of NRCS who first mentioned this once mysterious concept to me back in 2019.

Rain Comes and Log Pile Dams Work

The series of three storms came last week, including the “bomb cyclone” predicted to drop an enormous amount of rain. Well, it didn’t do quite that, but the resulting rain was greatly appreciated. We spent the Saturday before the storm cleaning up and putting things away. I had to roll the 250lb field fencing out of the creek where a cow kicked it – in case we did have a massive rainfall. Fortunately, I have really good leg strength to roll/push it up the bank and lodged it between two oaks. Per my rain gauge, the first storm was maybe 2 drops. The second was about an 1/8th of an inch. The third, and largest, was 2.25″. I’ll take it.

A day or two after the rains, I walked the ranch to see what had happened. The filed fencing stayed put (hurray), but the most incredible thing was that the log pile “dams” I had created along the Spring Creek worked. There was not enough water to move the logs. The piles had slowed the rain runoff to such an extent that there was standing water before each dam as compared to other similar sections on the creek that had no standing water. The standing water was not influenced by the spring. The heat had beaten the spring back quite a bit, and the standing water was much further downstream. The soil was very thirsty, but with the nearly 2.5″, standing water was possible. I am so encouraged and cannot wait to make that beaver dam further downstream.

Great blue heron perched on the east gate – gopher hunting – YES!

Dogs, Odds and [Tail] Ends

The days are finally cooler, with sweater weather at night. I love the smell of tarweed, moist soil and grass. It lifts me; it keeps me going to the next day, and then the next. I even like the smell of my neighbor’s fireplace. Smoke in smaller quantities and wood only (as opposed to buildings) reminds me of my youth, far away from most people on the edge of the Stanislaus National Forest. I would be gone all day, just my dog and I, a bota bag of water and a sandwich in my pocket for us to share, observing life, the movement of water, insects, birds and animal tracks. The smells of the forest make up the organics of my brain, its tissues and neurotransmitters. It is such a part of me that I can hardly remember a time without that memory. Walking with a dog (or two or three, or…) is so pleasurable – getting lost in memory, yet not being alone. Now that is living.