Meet our Guests: John Brennan and Emily James

Emily James

Associate; Brennan, Jewett, & Associates

Colusa, CA

John Brennan

Founder/Owner; Brennan, Jewett, & Associates

Davis, CA

11/14/18

To most people, California is not the place for rice farming. Years of drought and groundwater pumping so extreme that the Central Valley is literally sinking are not generally conditions that are conducive to a water-intensive crop like rice. Emily James is an associate at John Brennan’s land management firm, Brennan, Jewett, & Associates, and work together to manage the historic Davis Ranch, near Colusa, CA. The ranch has been owned by the same family since 1857, so its water rights predate the damming and overallocation of the Sacramento River. Wielding the power of these rights, John and Emily are helping the farm find direction and stay relevant in a changing world.

That relevance initially came from restoring habitat for shore birds. By shifting the flooding of rice fields, the ranch was able to mimic the historical Central Valley floodplain and provide habitat for waterfowl. Today, the ranch works with the Audubon Society, Nature Conservancy, and Point Blue Observatory, and its fields are home to 230 species of wildlife in an area where wildlife has been pushed out by agriculture and urban sprawl since the nineteenth century.

Since, the ranch has also begun to plant hedgerows with native plants that provide corridors for animals like deer that are otherwise left without contiguous habitat. They have also begun a project to plant milkweed and other flowering plants to support monarch butterflies in their migration. Emily and John stressed how starkly these choices strayed from the pesticidal practices that farming in the United States has embraced since the 1970’s. These projects are not just benefitting habitat connectivity, they are serving Davis Ranch economically. Brennan’s push to commodify labels and certifications from partners like the Audubon Society on packaging help to sell and create a market for sustainable farming. Rather than work backward in an area where water is highly monitored and controlled by humans, through the help of John Brennan and Emily James, Davis Ranch and others like it are finding ways to create habitat for wild animals by working within the limits of human development.

By Darby Williams

Meet our Guests: Samantha Arthur

Samantha Arthur

Conservation Project Manager, Audubon California

Sacramento, CA

11/14/18

Sami Arthur stands, neck craned back, below a cotton candy sky as waterfowl take flight from the ponds surrounding us. Birds turn into black specks as they rise, joining the flow of thousands of others to the neighboring rice fields. Sami picks out Snow Geese, Egrets, and Pinstripe Ducks from the nearly liquid mass of birds with an expert’s eye. But Sami has not always been into birds. Upon getting her current job at the California Audubon Society, she had to study up on birds, but this was part of the allure of her position as Program Director: “I love that sort of learning.” Before her current position she described herself as a “fish person.” She graduated from Whitman with an Environmental Studies—Biology degree and wrote her thesis on salmon populations. She attended graduate school and debated getting her PhD, but decided that she was more interested in community engagement and ground-level conservation than research.

One of her first jobs was with a land trust in Northern California, where she learned that working with farmers and landowners on conservation projects was what she was excited about. Sami met with us at the Davis Ranch outside Colusa, just north of Sacramento, and shared her work with tri-colored blackbirds and groundwater recharge. Both of these projects involve engagement from the agricultural community, which Sami emphasizes as one of the reasons she loves her job and stays engaged. Sami explains that on projects, “I speak for the birds,” but also emphasizes the importance of making sure conservation works well for everyone involved.

By Clara Hoffman

Meet our Guests: Janet Millard

Janet Millard

Wildlife Biologist, Okanogan National Forest

Leavenworth, WA

9/4/2018

On a warm morning in early September, we met up with Janet Millard on the dusty, jagged slopes of Chelan Ridge, Washington. With her aging pup Ginger at her heels, Millard took most of our group to the observatory at the Chelan Raptor Migration Project. The project, which Millard holds near and dear to her heart, was the brainchild of Kent Woodruff, a retired wildlife biologist. Woodruff saw the potential to collect valuable data on raptor migration at the ridge, where an open skyline allows for easy visibility of birds in flight. Currently Millard is the director, and oversees the management of the project.

A few of us, the biology majors, are afforded the opportunity to spend the day in the blind, where birds are caught, banded, and set free. Millard uses her radio from the observatory to let us know when a raptor is close by. “There’s a Coopers hawk headed your way!” she relays eagerly. After a couple false alarms, we manage to catch two juvenile Sharp-Shinned hawks, one male and one female. “When I saw all three of you running, I knew you caught something!” she smiles, having run half a mile from the observatory to the blind. “One of them [a researcher] didn’t believe me, but I knew.” We tuck the birds into two hole-punched soup cans, an unlikely but effective carrying method that helps keep them calm. Their scaly feet stick out from the bottoms like popsicle sticks as we gingerly carry them to the rest of our group with Millard. When we get there, a hushed chatter falls over everyone as they realize what we’re holding. Carefully, we’re allowed to hold the birds, one finger resting on their breastbone, another wrapped around their legs. Millard and Woodruff fan out the tail feathers of the female hawk, counting carefully for the twelve that should be there. Next they probe the crop, where food is stored, to see how recently the bird has eaten. Millard seems just as excited by the hawk as we are: though she encounters them every day, the light and passion in her eyes are as bright as any of ours.

By Abby Hill