August 29, 2025By Chloe Curtis
At our 1,600-acre Dos Rios Norte restoration site, at the confluence of the Sacramento River, Feather River, and Butte Creek, something wonderful happened this summer. We participated in BirdReturns, a five-week initiative funded by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and run by The Nature Conservancy, with the mission to create temporary habitat for migratory shorebirds by shallowly flooding fallowed agricultural land during the birds’ migrations. And it didn’t take long to notice how important this was for migratory and other bird species to use it as a rest stop.
“Conservation can feel quite hard and tractable. You don’t know how to solve the problems that we face. This is an example of something relatively simple but something that not just us, but many landowners can engage in. It’s easy to do, and you can see in the way the birds are attracted to the site where it works almost immediately.”
River Partners Senior Restoration Science Ecologist Mike Davis
