Project Narrative

In 2019, TNC launched a pilot environmental water trust to acquire and manage a portfolio of water assets that we could manage ourselves to make important contributions to freshwater-dependent ecosystem health across the Central Valley in ways that demonstrate more dynamic water management for people and nature. Through this Water Trust, we are focused on acquiring water to restore and protect instream flows in priority river systems and aim to demonstrate how that same portfolio of water rights can also be used to deliver multiple benefits downstreamÑlike creating vital wetland habitat for migratory shorebirds and filling critical water supply gaps for people. TNCÕs goal is to manage water rights to generate the most environmental benefit over the long-term and demonstrate how to optimize and balance the water needs of people and nature in a financially sustainable way. We are beginning pilot projects on two different approaches to acquiring and managing water for multiple benefits. Each approach is appropriate to the regional water rights context, land and water use, and conservation objectives. TNC aims to demonstrate starting in 2021 through 2023 the potential for a collaborative program that creates shallow-flooded habitat for migratory shorebirds on agricultural fields that have been idled as part of water transfers. Such exchanges commonly occur in drought years (like 2021), making environmental conditions worse for migratory water birds in California. Such an exchange could demonstrate how the needs of people can be combined with protecting and enhancing habitat for migratory birds as a long-term solution to water security. In 2021 we would execute a small pilot that would simply flood a 500-acre idled rice field that was part of a drought water transfer. This is an important demonstration because it will require resolving some key regulatory barriers to this kind of water management during droughts or other years. If successful, this would be followed by more complex pilot projects involving collaborative water leasing by urban water districts and TNC to secure more reliable water supplies for cities and in exchange for providing critical seasonal and drought habitat for migratory birds. These pilots, if successful, would be the foundation for establishing a long-term, larger scale program. In addition, since 2014, TNC has led Bird Returns, a targeted strategy to secure bird habitat on private lands in a way that is compatible with agriculture. Bird Returns uses cutting edge data to target and provide incentive payments for farmers to implement shallow flooding on their fallow fields for migratory shorebirds. This management improves the habitat value of farmlands at key times during migration and mitigates the threats that land and water use change are creating, thereby ensuring these birds can survive and adapt in a changing climate. These habitat auctions focus on extending seasonal flooding on farmlands outside of the growing season for the benefit of water birds, particularly shorebirds. While standard winter flooding of fields is beneficial for many water birds migrating along the Pacific Flyway, shorebirds arrive earlier in the fall and depend on the Central Valley later into the spring than most birds, when most fields and marshes are dry. Providing flooded habitat when it is most scarce is crucial in both of these seasons. TNC is now exploring a new model for institutionalizing the Bird Returns model for creating habitat and also piloting in partnership with agencies to show the potential for multiple-benefit groundwater recharge programs that create bird habitat, reduce flood risk to people, and replenish CaliforniaÕs depleted groundwater aquifers, as required by the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act.