California is in Big Trouble
My California is in big trouble, you might even say, dying. The place I know and love, more than any other, where I grew up, and my parents, and their parents, where my roots are. Where my heart is. Not so much the silent, craggy wilderness along the high step and fringes. Nor so much the great deserts of the southwest. Not the dry chaparral ridges. Not even so much the big conifer forests of the northwest, which, I hope, saw their lowest ebb (?) many decades ago. The California I refer to is the part where I and most of us grew up, the pleasant part, the livable part, the most quintessentially Cailfornian part. I am talking about the soft fertile lowlands, the large and small “Valleys of Heart’s Ease,” from the broad coastal plain of Southern California with its towering mountain backdrop and the numberless beautiful little valleys of the coast ranges, and the great hot fertile Central Valley, and the idyllic Monterey and San Francisco Bay areas, on up into the inviting “wine country” of Sonoma, Napa, and Mendocino counties. In other words, almost exactly the same California which, two centuries ago, came under the influence of the Spanish missions of the Camino Real. Population growth, agricultural development, and urbanization have been most rapid and most devastating in this “heartland” region of California, and this is the area which this book primarily addresses. For some places it is already too late, at least in the short term. But, although the present picture, and present trends, are gloomy and depressing, at least most of the pieces of the great tapestry still exist, each in its own little “last stand,” and there is always a chance that enough of us, doing our own little bit, can at least bring the patient from critical to stable, and reap great personal rewards in the process.
The big problem throughout much of this erstwhile paradise is not (yet) too many people, but at least as I have gradually come to see it, too few people actually go out there on their own land doing the right thing. And this at a time when we are individually richer than ever (that is, rich in money, not necessarily spirit) and when more people than ever pay lip service to the “environment” and (maybe) even sincerely mean well. A time when unprecedented amounts of money are thrown at well-intentioned “restoration” projects, and more land is nominally “set aside” or “saved” by being handed over to public agencies. And yet, it is also a time when fewer people than ever are growing up with the kind of intimate knowledge of a particular piece of land, its non-human inhabitants and the ecological processes constantly at work on it--the kind of first-hand, osmotic, non-academic, but real knowledge that throughout history has been taken for granted, and which, even up to our own time, is accorded almost (?) no respect. Arguably, the Californian landscape has probably never been so dazzlingly beautiful, nor so richly productive (in terms of overall dazzlingly biological diversity--and human linguistic and cultural diversity as well), any time in recorded history as it was at the time of first contact by European chroniclers. Without the human land-managers of the time, whose principal but by no means only management tool was fire, the spectacular spring flower displays that so impressed early travelers would have been much less extensive (more on that subject later) and the insect and vertebrate faunas correspondingly reduced. The knowledge, gained over so many millenia, that made lowland California such a magnificent garden, was, quite characteristically, accorded little or no value by those who later appropriated the country and, like all new invaders, already had fixed ideas of their own and “knew better.” As a result, the earlier inhabitants were viewed not as teachers but as potential converts, then nuisances, obstacles, cheap labor, even vermin to be exterminated as quickly as possible (bounties as high as __ were paid for Indian scalps, heads, etc in California as recently as 18__).
The first wave of permanent European residents after the mission period, the “Californios,” had a relatively small effect on the glorious flora of the country, since their numbers were not very large and, more important, their economy was based on livestock, not agriculture, and Spanish cattle had somewhat the same effect as Indian fire, although the timing wasn’t really right. Undoubtedly the single great disaster of the Spanish period, apart from the dissolution of many of the native societies within their reach, was the introduction, mainly unintentional, of many of the worst grassland “weeds” still plaguing nearly all of lowland California today--such plants as ripgut brome, foxtails, rattail fescue, filaree, star-thistle, and many other unpleasant, aggressive, greedy, prickly space-grabbers which, taken together, now account for (I would guess) at least 99% of the total biomass in California grasslands today. [More on this later, e.g. “When you return from a stroll in a meadow in May and have to throw away your socks, or if you no longer even want to take such a walk… you know who to thank. In fact, maybe part of the reason so few people even venture out into grasslands at all now compared to our grandparents’ generation may have to do with the fact that in their day the grasslands were actually inviting, with carpets of fragrant flowers vibrating in the spring breeze, and soft grasses that invited a picnic… as opposed to a relentless monotonous sea of stickers…].
[For real start of text? Or for later?]
If you just moved here and got yourself a nice little place in the country… Welcome. I hope your life here is good. But I can promise that your life here will be all the better if you consider your neighbors, human and otherwise, and give some attention to making life good for them too. They will repay your efforts many times over.
The next, and far greater, wave of immigrants to take the Golden State, coming hard on the heels of the genteel Californios and soon edging them out, were the energetic and self-assured “Americans,” mostly Anglos from the eastern states. At first these came in small numbers, to set up various mining, trading, farming or logging enterprises, but then in a great violent wave during the 1849 Gold Rush, and in ever-increasing numbers thereafter, to stay.
The effect of this on the northern and mountain tribes still relatively un[harmed] by the Spanish invasion was literally murderous. So ended the last major outposts of native land management and ecological knowledge.
At this point began the next big change in land use came to California. Mining. In the foothills it was mining, a hell-for-leather, no-holds-barred kind of mining, that tore open hillsides and silted up the streams. In the coastal and Sierran forests, it was another kind of mining--for lumber. Vast tracts of old-growth redwood, fir, sequoia, ponderosa and sugar pine were clear-cut just as the hills were strip-mined, with no visible regard for aesthetic, ecological, or even economic long-term implications. To the fertile, pleasant valleys of the lowlands came a more subtle kind of mining--agriculture. This meant the wholesale remaking of the landscape. Almost everywhere that the soil was deep enough, rich enough, and level enough to plow, it was. In rich valleys and floodplains with broad, parklike groves of giant old sycamores, valley oaks, cottonwoods and other trees, or with dense riparian jungles of willow and cottonwood and vines, all the vegetation was cleared, except sometimes a narrow strip right along the stream channel. Wetlands were drained wherever possible--the term used for this was invariably “reclamation,” as if nature had somehow stolen this valuable land from the poor farmer.
What we have left that still more or less suggests the original California is the rangeland of the low foothills (or little vales too small to farm), often associated with parklike savannahs of blue oak, live oak, and valley oak. A few on the treeless flat valleys. Those remnants are it. Absolutely critical to the future of…
In less well-watered and wooded regions like much of the Central Valley (even though there also were originally large wild “orchards” of valley oaks and other trees there), the great sacrifice to agriculture were the flower fields. This conversion was gradual and progressive; over the span of 150 years, the multicolored spring flower-fields went from being the dominant feature and glory of the Central Valley in 1850 to a pitiful scattering of threatened little patches by 2000, mostly confined to little, seasonally-flooded depressions called vernal pools.
If the country had been maximally productive of beauty and biological diversity under Indian management, the first economic revolution brought by the Spanish undoubtedly made the country more productive in terms of human carrying capacity, although at some loss of beauty and biological richness. The Spanish introduced important food plants including grains, olives and almonds, but their main food-production increase came from the great cattle herds. No doubt this was at some expense to beauty (flower fields), nature food production (wildflower seeds), and biodiversity (native pollinator insects, small rodents, etc). Also, large game and predatory animals were reduced, but cows made up for it in meat. On the other hand, certain native animals increased greatly at the same time, in particular the scavengers (coyote, turkey vulture, even possibly the California condor), and livestock-followers such as blackbirds and cowbirds, “domestic” or “camp-followers” like house finches, cliff and barn swallows, etc, and certain species of flies, dung-beetles, etc. In its overall effects, however, the Spanish “ranching-revolution” was a minor shift in the balance compared with the American agricultural revolution that came in the wake of the Gold Rush; but the ranching culture remained throughout large, non-arable parts of “real California” and what remains of it now is still the closest thing we have to remind us of the earlier, cleaner, sweeter time [more later]. Depraved as so much of it now is (mostly due to weeds) it still remains the last refuge and best, maybe only hope for vast portions of the California flora and fauna. What the Anglo/agricultural did was to multiply a hundredfold or less the human carrying capacity, with a correspondingly massive reduction of biodiversity, and biological productivity and beauty (and quality of life, at least for some of us).
Nevertheless, it was cleaner than now.
[Paint a picture of ideal, idyllic farm].
Now the mining aspect of agriculture has come out. No longer a small family venture with people living where they work, all knowing their little piece of land well. “Agribusiness” is real mining. As dead biologically as the old-style farm is alive.
“Clean cultivation”
Heavy poison and fertilizer use
Heavy subsidized irrigation, water theft, salinization, alkali
Huge factories for food
Then, mainly after World War II came another revolution--the wage-earner/commuter economy.
Sparked off highway system, traffic jams, smog, (sub)urban sprawl, slurbia
People abandon the land one by one--few left now, but a few young always trying to restart.
Lost continuity.
My own family--the chain is broken, and the sweet memories can never be shared. So few now getting early exposure. But so many getting message from school, TV, etc that they should care. How can they really, if they don’t know gardens have been replaced by sterile “landscaping.” Real management has been replaced by feelgood projects, funding.
Well, there isn’t a lot we can do without any land, but… volunteer? E.g. weeding.
This book is mainly for those of us who are lucky enough to live surrounded by at least some land, preferably next to a relatively wild area. But even close to town there are opportunities and things can always be made better, fuller, richer and more lively and interesting and productive than they are.
One idea--one of the best things you can do is to use land for serious vegetable garden instead of silly “grow a native” notions.
