AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Just some hours north of right here, within the Central Valley, is California’s first new state park in a decade. It simply opened this summer season, and it reimagines what a state park might be. The park known as Dos Rios, that means two rivers, as a result of the Tuolumne and San Joaquin Rivers merge right here. And simply upstream from that junction, on the first light, we meet two conservationists, Julie Rentner and Austin Stevenot, beneath a cover of majestic oaks.
JULIE RENTNER: There’s loads of totally different birds we’re listening to proper now, they usually’re all simply waking up with this lovely dawn. Oh, I even heard a woodpecker simply then.
CHANG: Oh my God. How outdated do you assume this one oak tree is?
AUSTIN STEVENOT: I’ve heard issues from 300 years to 200 years, so…
CHANG: Oh my goodness.
These oaks sit on an historical flood plain, so the crops round listed below are used to getting their toes moist.
RENTNER: Many of the critters right here, the willows, the cottonwoods, the mugworts, are literally stimulated by that occasional flooding.
CHANG: Simply 15 years in the past, Dos Rios regarded nothing like this. Like a lot of this valley, it was simply acres and acres of farmland.
RENTNER: These flood plains had been as soon as laser-level fields that grew alfalfa or a rotation of corn and winter wheat.
CHANG: So moving into this park is like stepping right into a time machine the place the land has been restored to a semblance of what it used to appear like centuries in the past, earlier than farms, earlier than cities, earlier than all of the berms and levees squeezed these rivers into submission. Within the final decade, Julie and the nonprofit River Companions, the place she’s president, had planted some 350,000 native crops right here. And so they’ve punched holes in these berms and levees so when the rivers spill past their banks, the water flows freely throughout this sheet of land, because it did final spring when the rivers rose about 20 toes greater than they’re proper now.
RENTNER: Only one 12 months in the past – you possibly can see the watermarks on the tree the place the water was. You recognize, it could have been waist-high water proper now.
CHANG: To the waist? My goodness.
STEVENOT: Final June, I might have given you a ship tour by means of right here. And we had been doing that.
CHANG: Actually?
STEVENOT: It was about 4 miles extensive on the widest.
CHANG: And Julie says when the floodwaters come again, so do the river otters and beavers and waterfowl. And, , flooding right here implies that water can sink into the land, sparing cities downstream.
RENTNER: This place is lowering flood danger for downstream communities by absorbing floodwaters as they pour out of the Sierra Nevadas.
CHANG: The hazards of flooding on this valley is one thing that Lilia Lomeli-Gil is aware of fairly properly. In 1997, she was dwelling in close by Modesto when floodwaters ripped by means of the world.
LILIA LOMELI-GIL: The water went in – 4 toes into my home. We had been downriver from the sewage crops, so I’m going, uh uh. No. Let’s get out of right here, OK? And we got here again.
CHANG: It was flooding that pressured you to start out over in Grayson.
LOMELI-GIL: Sure. It nonetheless brings tears to my eyes.
CHANG: In tiny Grayson, proper exterior Dos Rios, the place she lives now, everybody calls her Miss Lily. She’s kind of the matriarch of this farming group that stretches solely 4 blocks extensive. She runs the group heart right here.
LOMELI-GIL: It is the one factor on the town. I imply, earlier than 2005, there was nothing out right here earlier than they even put within the gasoline station – zero.
CHANG: So proper now, it is the group heart and the one cease – the gasoline station.
LOMELI-GIL: That is it.
CHANG: As we stroll by means of the group heart, we see three excessive schoolers enjoying Uno…
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Uno.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Uno.
CHANG: …Some children making pink slime…
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Hey, you have to seize some…
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: Meals coloring?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: …Meals coloring.
CHANG: …And a gaggle of youngsters training their Rummikub expertise for the upcoming Battle of the Huge Brains contest.
Are you guys the massive brains of the middle right here?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: Yeah.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: Yeah.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #7: (Laughter).
CHANG: Luchie Sanchez, who’s 17, says this group heart is just about the one place to hang around in Grayson, apart from a few small parks with busted-up playground tools.
LUCHIE SANCHEZ: There was once swings proper there. They’re gone. They have been gone for years. It simply appears – it appears outdated, and it simply – it would not look good anymore.
CHANG: So he says he is wanting ahead to trying out the brand new park, Dos Rios, tomorrow. It is simply 10 minutes from right here, and Miss Lily has organized an early morning tour – perhaps too early, a minimum of for Luchie.
You simply awakened, Luchie?
SANCHEZ: Yup.
CHANG: Good to see you.
SANCHEZ: I simply awakened. Good to see you, too.
CHANG: The place’s your solar safety? The place’s your huge hat?
SANCHEZ: I do not know.
CHANG: Did you put on sunscreen at the moment?
SANCHEZ: No.
CHANG: What?
Quickly, a dozen folks – youngsters, little ones and fogeys, who, I’d add, had been carrying their solar safety – hit the path for his or her first tour of Dos Rios.
EDUARDO GONZALEZ: (Talking Spanish).
CHANG: With us was their Spanish-speaking tour information Eduardo Gonzalez.
GONZALEZ: (Talking Spanish).
CHANG: Eduardo and the opposite park workers inform us it is important to the park’s mission to interact native households like these – with Spanish-language excursions, sure, but additionally with campfire nights and stargazing events.
At this level, we have been strolling about 20 minutes down the path, and Eduardo stops the group and gestures to the best…
GONZALEZ: (Talking Spanish).
CHANG: …The place outdated almond bushes sit in manicured rows.
GONZALEZ: (Talking Spanish).
CHANG: And on the left, it is a utterly totally different panorama – a restored flood plain bursting with wild native bushes and bushes.
GONZALEZ: (Talking Spanish).
CHANG: “What a distinction,” he says. “Do you see? All of the birds and rabbits have swiftly returned to the land on the left.”
It is like this little path that we’re strolling on splits the park between its current and its previous. And getting again to the previous is the purpose of one other a part of Dos Rios. It is a part of the park that is been put aside for Native Individuals.
STEVENOT: (Talking Miwok). My title’s Austin Stevenot.
CHANG: All proper. And you’re a member of the Northern Sierra Miwok tribe.
STEVENOT: I’m.
CHANG: Bear in mind we met Austin beneath these majestic oaks? Properly, a number of years in the past, River Companions employed him to assist rework this plot of land right into a Native-use backyard the place, with permission, California tribal members can gather crops for cultural practices.
STEVENOT: Considered one of these crops we’re standing over proper right here – Carex barbarae, white sedge – they’re lengthy rhizomes that develop beneath the bottom. And you then take these and use them as wefting materials.
CHANG: The thread.
STEVENOT: The thread on a coiled basket.
CHANG: Austin says his ancestors had been forcibly faraway from their close by village a century in the past, so it means rather a lot to him to have a bit of this park that his household can now use as their very own.
STEVENOT: It appears like a giant weed patch proper now, however there’s rather a lot right here. There’s loads of that means right here.
CHANG: Austin will get just a little choked up interested by how, now, members of his tribe are welcome on this land.
STEVENOT: I imply, we’d like 1000’s extra acres identical to this, proper? Not for simply water, not for habitat, however for the folks of the land, for the people who had been right here lengthy earlier than all people else.
CHANG: This park holds promise for therefore many individuals, all whereas restoring native habitat, defending in opposition to flood injury and replenishing the dwindling groundwater within the area. However in comparison with the huge Central Valley, this place is tiny. It is simply 2 1/2 sq. miles, and it took greater than a decade to safe the land and rework it, a mission that’s nonetheless in progress. Besides, Julie Rentner says she is optimistic that this place could be a blueprint for a lot of extra parks prefer it.
RENTNER: Properly, we have executed the planning. We have executed the mapping. Since you’re proper. It is a huge, large effort. However there’s lots of people who need to assist. So after we take into consideration doing perhaps 10 extra Dos Rioses, we’re interested by simply within the subsequent decade, perhaps much more.
CHANG: All proper.
RENTNER: Yeah.
CHANG: We’ll come see you in 10 years for 10 extra park openings hopefully.
RENTNER: I am telling you, they’re already deliberate. They’re within the works. It is taking place.
CHANG: For Julie, restoring the land to its previous is a manner of rethinking the state’s future.
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