VERNAL POOLS
Central Valley Vernal Pools
A California Academy Of Sciences exhibit
Vernal
Pools: A Vanishing Habitat
by Dianne Fristrom and John
Game
Mather
Field
(Docent Training)
An Op Ed About Fairy Shrimp Which Illustrates The Ignorance We're Up Against
Final USFWS CA & So OR Vernal Pool Recovery Plan
A News Article About The USFWS Vernal Pool Ecosystem Recovery Plan
Vernal
Pools:
More
Than Just "Rain Puddles"
Long
before man, long before the dinosaurs even, our planet was ageing,
and not always gently: Volcanoes spewed
forth fiery portions from the contents of our planet. Earthquakes
swallowed up parts of our planet and returned them to the boiling cauldron from
whence they came. Huge rocks from outer space flashed through our protective
atmosphere and crashed into our planet, reshaping anything and everything they
crashed into and beyond. Mountains rose and fell. Oceans filled and
drained. Earthquakes made some things tall and some things deep. As our planet
and Nature constantly reshaped itself into the only world you and I and
countless other species can call home, one huge continent surrounded by an
immense ocean broke apart and became the several we recognize upon our globe
today. Storms beyond belief blew in and blew out. As old
minerals cooked and compressed into new rocks and mountains in one place, old
mountains and rocks crumbled and dissolved back into minerals in another place.
After ages and ages of rain and floods, in one very special place that would become a paradise of temperate climate and nurturing topography--some of those nomadic minerals slowly washed and sifted down through the barren dirt to collect and compress into platter-like hard layers in different locations and at different depths beneath the soil surface.
As eons of Nature's cataclysmic events shaped the part of our planet we now call the Central Valley region of California, they scooped out a virtual valley-utopia nestled between the ever-disintegrating Coastal Mountain Range and the ever-disintegrating Sierra Mountain Range. In our Cental Valley region (which used to be an inland ocean), those scattered platters of hardened minerals beneath the soil helped to trap rainwater in temporary ponds on the surface, stretching from north to south of California. As life began to appear on our planet, certain delicate species of flora and fauna evolved to adapt to only one kind of habitat: those temporary but annually re-occurring ponds that we call vernal pools.
Many
short-sighted and special-interest groups nowadays portray vernal pools as easily expendable
"rain puddles" or "buffalo wallows"--hindrances to
PROGRESS-- but, in truth, they are a legacy of California's dimming
natural heritage and some of the last vestiges of Nature's desperate struggle
for survival
Only
about 10 percent of California’s ancient vernal pools remain to us and the
rest of the world today.
Many of these remaining few temporary wetlands, and the plant and animal species which
grace them, are imperiled for the world of tomorrow.
As our population is inexorably shepherded out from urban centers and we
encroach upon what little remains of our agricultural and rural areas, vernal
pools get scraped up, plowed under, polluted, or asphalted over--never to be
seen again. Although these
kaleidoscopes of life seem to come alive for only a few short, wet months of the year, a
plentitude of creatures and plants (many of whom saw the dinosaurs come and go),
thrive in, and rely upon, these seasonal rain puddles and their surrounding grasslands.
Sadly, many of these plant and animal species can live nowhere else, and are doomed to
certain extinction.
We have but two federal laws
which are supposed to protect our vernal pools: the Clean Water Act (CWA) and
the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The
CWA is supposed to regulate the junk that gets dumped into our wetlands and
waters. The ESA is supposed to regulate
the preservation of endangered vernal pool species.
But, neither of these two laws actually prevent destruction of
vernal pools --they seem satisfied only to regulate their decline, and,
properly record their destruction.
Under the CWA, projects that will destroy vernal pools can be approved—provided that the impacts are mitigated. Mitigation entails creating a fake vernal pool landscape somewhere else, or, paying for protection--an easement--on another vernal pool somewhere else. Under the ESA, species facing extinction can be killed and their habitat destroyed, as long as a project is mitigated and doesn’t clearly cause the extinction.
Given
that most of the creatures who inhabit these pools are not very large, it is
perhaps easy to see how some people might conveniently overlook their importance
in the larger scheme of things concerning our industrious population today.
Less than half of these crawlies and critters have ever been properly named, and most
live nowhere else on our planet. Yet,
larger organisms—ourselves included—of which some pseudo-conservation-ethic
politicians grudgingly profess concern,
actually depend upon this particular primary link in life's complex food chain for their, and
our own, very survival.
Given
that most of the over 200 species of plants that grow in and around vernal pools
bloom with their dazzling array of color and vitality in rings and ribbons for
just a brief display each year, those who have trained themselves not to see can
easily overlook their beauty and importance in our daily lives.
Despite their aesthetic contribution, despite the iintegral role these plants also play
in the complex food-web of life, some people would have us forever turn our
backs on them and
the pools with which they live in and around.
About half of these plants exist nowhere else on our world.
Most
vernal pool experts will relate to us how these temporary wetlands have three
distinct phases: A “wet phase” usually during the winter, when the rains
come and fill up the leak-proof, shallow depressions with life-giving water.
And give life, it does. Healthy
pools are brimming with aquatic, bird, and new plant life.
The aquatic life is in a frenzy to hatch, feed, grow and mate to secure a
future generation; the birds are feeding on the aquatic and plant life for their
long migrations and future broods; and the plants are beginning to sprout.
Next comes the “flowering phase” in the early spring.
The flower displays are constantly changing, from week to week: ribbons
and rings of yellow, white, pink, blue, and purple.
The aquatic life is pretty much gone or beginning to fade away, as the
water in the pools begins to evaporate, but, not
to worry, they have left a promise in the form of eggs and cysts bound into the
muddy bottom of the pool, along with many of the plants’ seeds until next
year. Next, comes the “dry phase”, in which the hot summer sun and
desiccating wind does its work. The
vernal pool becomes almost indistinguishable from the brown, dried grassland
surrounding it. Creatures still
come to the pools to feed upon what they can find, and other creature come to
feed upon them.
Those
three phases provide a short, but beautiful and bountiful season.
Until recently,
these miracles of Nature's grace have been re-appearing--like a promise--for hundreds of thousands
of years.
But
with its degenerating mild Mediterranean climate; with its housing-developed,
gently rolling, excavated verdant hillsides; with its shipped-somewhere-else
bubbling brooks and powerful yet lazy rivers; with its shopping-mall-potential
grasslands, wetlands, and wild places,
there are still those who refuse to respond to the plain truth that there's just
too many of us, with more and more coming everyday, to follow that American
Dream ideology in our central valley.
Precariously sheltered within our equally misused, misunderstood and endangered
grasslands and watersheds--which are our natural flood-control, water-purification,
and, mosquito abatement systems--too many of our ancient California vernal pools are
doomed to become just another precursor of Nature's fate as they face a
permanent "fourth phase".
--Slow