River Partners

Protecting the endangered riparian brush rabbit! A deadly virus threatens a critically endangered rabbit species that makes its home in our San Joaquin Valley restoration sites, including the San Joaquin River National Wildlife Refuge and the state park at Dos Rios. River Partners teamed up with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Endangered Species Recovery Program at Stanislaus State University, and the Oakland and Fresno Chaffee Zoos to gently capture and vaccinate riparian brush rabbits, protecting them from rabbit hemorrhagic disease. The virus has threatened the rabbit's survival in their very limited habitat along riverways in the San Joaquin Valley, where they're vulnerable to flooding, predators, and habitat loss. These vaccinations aim to give the rabbits immunity to prevent the disease from driving them further towards extinction and are a true testament to the power of collaboration in conservation. Thank you to all our partners and supports helping restore habitat and protect these vulnerable critters! Read the full article from the Modesto Bee: https://lnkd.in/gREBFzQD

From acoustic recording units and point counts to tens of thousands of photos and drone footage, River Partners is expanding our knowledge about current and future restoration through monitoring years after restoration is complete—and that’s how we think it should be.   Funded by the California Wildlife Conservation Board—and through collaboration with project partners Conservation Metrics, Point Blue, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service—we’re gaining a more comprehensive picture of our restoration to help imperiled species in the San Joaquin Valley.   https://lnkd.in/g_rDJAT9

Join River Partners President Julie Rentner and actor Ethan Peck for a special virtual film premiere of our documentary about Dos Rios, California's largest public-private floodplain restoration, with Q&A! When: October 16 at 11:30 am Pre-register here: https://lnkd.in/gwX_n884

Whether it’s one year after restoration or 20 years, we’re eavesdropping on wildlife so they can tell us how we’re doing. We’re using high-tech surveillance tools to monitor results so we can learn from our findings. We’ve deployed hundreds of camera traps, infrared trail counters, drones and acoustic recording units (ARUs), pictured, at our restoration sites over the last several years—more than 150 units this year alone. We’ve picked up birdsongs, endangered bumblebees, and nocturnal mammals roaming their home territories, detecting the return of wildlife and rare species around the clock—a nearly impossible task for human researchers to accomplish at this scale in the field. Every month or so, we check on our camera traps and ARUs and export the data for analysis using new artificial intelligence that is actively learning to identify, tally, and pinpoint when and where avian and terrestrial wildlife species have visited our restoration sites. For example, we’re hoping that our summer ARU deployment detected rare yellow-billed cuckoo, yellow-breasted chat, and yellow warbler songs—and in the future we envision using ARUs for bat detection. This summer our camera traps snapped more than 1 million photos and ARUs collected over 14,000 hours of recordings. As we assess the data, we’re improving the effectiveness of these high-tech tools, vital to see what’s working and what isn’t, informing our future restoration work all over California.

From industry and recreation to cultural significance for Indigenous people, salmon have deep importance in our state. And because they spend time in marine environments in the ocean as well as fresh water, there’s a unique and critical link between the ocean environment and our rivers in the Central Valley. Today, however, salmon are in serious trouble. River Partners is re-engineering historic side channels and floodplain rearing habitats at eight sites along a 130-mile stretch of the Sacramento River from Redding in the north to south of Colusa. Partnering with state and federal agencies, the work is challenging and tedious—but something as vital and precious as salmon surely deserves it. https://lnkd.in/gNVVfMni

From industry and recreation to cultural significance for Indigenous people, salmon have deep importance in our state. And because they spend time in marine environments in the ocean as well as fresh water, there’s a unique and critical link between the ocean environment and our rivers in the Central Valley. Today, however, salmon are in serious trouble. River Partners is re-engineering historic side channels and floodplain rearing habitats at eight sites along a 130-mile stretch of the Sacramento River from Redding in the north to south of Colusa. Partnering with state and federal agencies, the work is challenging and tedious—but something as vital and precious as salmon surely deserves it. https://lnkd.in/gNVVfMni

In phase 2 of our Hamilton City Flood Risk Reduction and Ecosystem Restoration Project, River Partners restored nearly 465 acres of former farm fields along the banks of the Sacramento River with 67,000 native trees and plants. Read how this project became the first of its kind in the nation and in the history of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers: https://lnkd.in/g24BkqEn

River Partners is thrilled to partner with Amazon to expand critical riverway restoration throughout the Central Valley. Amazon’s bold water investment comes at a critical time for California. A changing climate is having profound impacts on our unique ecosystems, communities, and natural resources. Bringing Central Valley rivers back to life presents a powerful, proven solution to achieve water sustainability in tangible ways. Restoring rivers also generates other important benefits like improved flood safety for vulnerable communities, more habitat for species on the brink, increased public health through better access to the outdoors, and much more. https://lnkd.in/dQmQkuJb

Word keeps spreading about the new state park at River Partners’ former Dos Rios Ranch Preserve near Modesto. On NPR's “All Things Considered” show, host Ailsa Chang shared that, “…stepping into this park is like stepping into a time machine, where the land has been restored to a semblance of what it used to look like centuries ago…” The 1,600-acre Dos Rios is the largest public-private floodplain restoration project in California history, has been dubbed a "park of the future," and delivers critical wins for the state's environment and communities. Those benefits include improved flood safety for vulnerable communities, increased water supply for farms and households, more habitat for struggling wildlife, natural carbon capture, and increased public health through new outdoor-recreation opportunities. "We need thousands more acres just like this. Not just not for just water, not for habitat, but for the people of the land, for the people that were here long before anybody else." - Austin Stevenot, Northern Sierra Mewuk, River Partners San Joaquin Valley Field Manager https://lnkd.in/gUu6U272