Renew America Success Stories

Yolo County Resource Conservation District

Description

The Yolo County Resource Conservation District (YCRCD) develops cooperative relationships with farmers and other landowners to develop and implement sustainable resource management initiatives. The YCRCD believes that such initiatives, which include the protection of biodiversity, do not compete with economic development but, rather, serve to ensure it. By working with self-motivated, local stakeholders, the YCRCD helps landowners develop effective, long-term models of stewardship.

The YCRCD is working to reverse the intertwined set of problems produced in Yolo County through 40 years of intensive, conventional agricultural practices: flooding, erosion, sediment deposition, nutrient and pesticide runoff, impaired water quality, reduced groundwater recharge, increasing energy costs and reduced biodiversity and wildlife.

Through conservation, efficiency and restoration projects, some of these trends are being reversed. In partnership with landowners, the YCRCD has helped implement numerous stewardship initiatives, including the development of irrigation runoff ponds to conserve water, trap sediment, filter nutrients and add to underground recharge rates; the cultivation of cover crops and hedgerows to harbor beneficial insects, thus reducing harmful pests; the development water management systems that provide the right amount of water at the right time, reducing pumping costs and devising crop rotation cycles that increase productivity and encourage the reproduction of helpful predators that thrive in self-sustaining, low maintenance habitat zones.

"The success of our stewardship initiatives means figuring what our neighbors really want and will support without external pressure," says Katy Pye, YCRCD's Executive Director. "Outreach thus drives every project."

Program Highlights

Major Initiatives

• The Model Farm project is investigating numerous sustainable agriculture practices to determine which of the practices work on which specific farms and at what benefit to cost ratio.
• A two-year farmscaping program uses irrigation tailwater return ponds and native grassland systems on riparian habitat corridors to help reduce pollution.
• A Wildlife Workshop/Outreach program teaches local landowners, farmers and ranchers to become conservation stewards on their own land.
• An integrated Resource Assessment of a major western Yolo County watershed is helping to define a long-term, community-based restoration strategy.

• The Integrated Resource Management Plan for the 131,000-acre Westside Tributaries Area uses ponds and reservoirs to increase groundwater recharge rates, create wetlands and control downstream flooding.
• The YCRCD rents a rice roller that crushes and incorporates rice stubble into the soil, thus transforming the harvested fields into winter wetlands for Pacific waterfowl.
• The YCRCD offers a tree planting program to provide shade, save energy and protect buildings from hot summer sun at migrant workers' housing centers.
• The YCRCD has formed an alliance with a highly successful local school program that employs "at-risk" students in riparian restoration.
• The YCRCD has created a model arboretum for an outdoor classroom at a local grammar school.
• The YCRCD is cooperating with DQU, a Native American community college, to restore on-campus wetlands.

Vital Statistics

Program Management/Partnerships: The Yolo County Conservation District is a nonprofit organization that has formed partnerships with numerous individuals and agencies including the Yolo County Flood Control and Water Conservation District, Pacific Gas & Electric, the University of California-Davis, the Soil Conservation Service, the Bureau of Reclamation, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the California Native Plant Society and Ducks Unlimited.

Budget: The latest figures are available by contacting the program.

Community Served: The 150,000 residents of Yolo County. In addition, the efforts of the Yolo County Resource Conservation District improve the water systems that flow into the San Francisco Bay, providing a benefit to the millions of residents of the Bay area.

Measures of Success:

Restoration of strangled creeks is providing wildlife habitat and increased groundwater recharge rates.

The addition of seasonal and permanent wetlands on current rice fields and marginal land has diverted downstream flood flows and provided feeding and nesting sites for Pacific Flyway waterfowl.

Farmers and county road crews have planted multi-species wildlife corridors on canal banks, roadsides and field borders to provide habitat for beneficial insects and to reduce maintenance.

YCRCD initiatives and projects provide open space, recreation and educational activities to the broader community.

Success stories designed by Mark Nowak

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