340 I Street
PO Box 2176
Los Banos, CA 93635
(209) 826-3508

Gary Zahm decided not to take the easy way out. Not that he didn't consider the opportunity for going with a private conservation organization or retiring when first becoming eligible. Being the professional wildlife photographer that he is, he could have perhaps made that his career as well.

But Zahm has the penchant for toughing it out. As manger of the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge Complex along the San Joaquin River in California's Central Valley, he has for 17 years been in the center of some of the most vexing water issues faced anywhere in the refuge system.

His doggedness in doing what was best for wildlife got him embroiled in controversy, but it also paved the way for his refuge complex to grow toward being one of the wonders of the refuge system."We are seeing the rebirth of the San Joaquin River," said Zahm as he watched 500 white pelicans and 100 egrets feeding on one of the several restored wetland sites at the complex.

The refuge complex sits in a 160,000-acre area that Zahm himself, identified and named, the Grasslands Ecological Area, one of the few remaining places in the Central Valley where migratory birds are forced to crowd into. Despite the agricultural and urban development pressures around it, it contains the largest block of native bunchgrass and wetlands remaining in California .

Also crowded into the remaining habitat are species of special concern including: white-faced ibis, California horned lark, western pond turtle, California tiger salamander, vernal tadpole shrimp, and the endangered kit fox.

"The 35,000 acres of refuge lands represent the single largest landowner in the San Joaquin watershed of the Central Valley," says Zahm, a pertinent fact given that the grasslands are acclaimed internationally as being significant shorebird habitat. It attracts as much as 30 percent of the wintering waterfowl in all of the Central Valley.

Federal conservation easements and state holdings and easements add to the area reserved for wildlife, although much of the private holdings is in the ownership of over 100 duck clubs.

Where Grassland Water District regulations apply, grazing is permitted but row crops are prohibited.

Refuges in the complex were established both to save remnants of severely reduced wetland and riparian areas and to lure wildlife away from agricultural crops. The Central Valley Project, with its complex network of dams and canals, drained 95 percent of the valley's wetlands by containing the free-flowing rivers in reservoirs and sending water to vast croplands through regulated deliveries.

Most of the water in the San Joaquin valley, where the complex lies, is now shipped from the wetter Sacramento River valley. Regular overflows from the San Joaquin River into adjoining wetlands and woody riparian areas were stopped in 1944, when the CVP's Friant Dam construction was completed, making the river no longer navigable and ending the salmon migrations up and down its reaches.

Now, when the river floods as it did early in 1997, it is due to abnormal rain and mountain snowmelt, surmounting the capacity of protective levees and causing tremendous personal and business property losses. These most recent losses triggered Zahm into pursuing another avenue of opportunity: returning 3,100 acres of flood-prone agricultural land to natural floodplain.

The complex had consisted of four NWRs: San Luis, Kesterson, Merced, and San Joaquin River, until at Zahm's urging Kesterson was declassified in 1996 as a separate refuge and became a unit of San Luis.

Kesterson is where the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation was disposing irrigation drainage from farm fields by holding it in ponds where it would evaporate. Soon after his transfer to California in 1980 from a refuge in South Dakota, Zahm suspected and then confirmed the presence of an extreme water contamination problem.

The toxic effects of selenium and other mineral buildup in ponds were so severe on wildlife in terms of death and deformities that drainage flows were stopped, and in 1988 the ponds were abandoned and filled in. This, threw into question the traditional practice of using agricultural drain water to supply wetland needs.

Public interest in the problem became so intense that Zahm appeared on the televison news show 60 Minutes to explain the crisis. This did not please the reclamation officials who got stuck with a gross miscalculation in irrigation policy.

Zahm walked a fine line again when he pushed for and got a major rerouting of agricultural drainage. By reopening the same canal that supplied Kesterson with its deadly water he rerout the drainage directly to the San Joaquin River.

But even leading critics had to concede that wildlife would be better off if the concrete lined canal were used instead of the 90 miles of unpaved ditches through sensitive grasslands. Wetland water quality was vastly improved while the river was being monitored to determine what, if any, biological impacts were occurring.

The events following the Kesterson disaster was all Zahm needed to recharge the energies he expended during the traumatic first years he spent in California. Talk turned to the measures needed to mitigate the toll paid by wildlife during what some termed, the Three Mile Island of desert agriculture.

In addition to paying for damage claims from private wetland owners, the federal government was being asked to pay for the acquisition of marginal pasture and farmland amounting to over 23,000 acres. The acquisitions were to be part of an action plan to fill in the existing patchwork of suitable habitat for migratory birds.

The action plan turned out to be more lively than what even Zahm expected. The 5,600-acre Freitas cattle ranch lying between Kesterson and San Luis NWRs, obtained by the Department of Justice to settle a Kesterson lawsuit, was turned over to the refuge complex, an event that also made the two refuges contiguous.

Then one of the few remaining natural remnants of the Central Valley was added to Merced NWR: the 2,500-acre Sunrise Ranch where cattle were raised by six generations of the Crane family but no cultivation had ever occurred.

Among the species found there are the federally threatened Aleutian Canada goose, the endangered blunt-nosed leopard lizard, and the gregarious but declining tri-colored blackbird. The sandy grasslands and relic sand dunes are highly attractive to sand-loving wildflowers, sandhill cranes, long-billed curlews, mountain plovers, and burrowing owls.

San Luis NWR grew by another 7,700 acres when Joseph Gallo Farms sold part of its large land holdings in 1993. Gallo also enrolled 2,000 acres of one of his working farms in the Grassland Easement Program, a companion strategy for permanent protection of habitat in which land continues in private ownership by willing owners who are given a one-time payment in exchange for open-space use favorable to wildlife.

Randy Riviere, the program manager and now manager of the Grasslands WMA, has seen phenomenal growth in his program that now includes 68,000 acres of privately owned habitat. This has nearly tripled the area administered by the complex to a total of over 103,000 acres.

Partner funds helped to continue the unprecedented pace of acquisition and restoration. Wetland basin construction, undoing the leveling done for ranching, digging canals, installing water-control structure, and planting on newly acquired and existing refuge space was done with help from the North American Wetland Conservation grant program, Ducks Unlimited, the National Audubon Society, the California Waterfowl Association and the Bureau of Reclamation.

Especially welcome was the first internal water-distribution enhancements at Merced NWR, where heretofore water deliveries to the refuge went only as far as its boundaries. The high electrical cost of pumping ground water and the declining water table had been prohibiting access to the only available water source.

The agreed-upon action plan also made clear that existing water entitlements were neither reliable nor sufficient enough to re-establish wetlands, let alone maintain what existed. Zahm and his colleagues proceeded with acquisition and restoration anyway.

In 1992 Zahm's hopes for water wererealized. The Central Valley Project Improvement Act passed Congress and became law with President George Bush's signature.

Among other things, the act put wildlife needs on the same footing as agriculture and assured most of the water called for in the action plan plus that which was needed by owners of private wetlands. Revisions to the water-delivery system by the Bureau of Reclamation are supposed to be fully working by 2003, when all of both San Luis and Merced NWRs can be assured firm water supplies for the first time. Environmental assessments of the needed modifications are in preparation.

For more information:
San Luis NWR Complex, P.O. Box 2176, Los Banos, CA 93635, 209-826-3508.

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