The Newspaper of the San Francisco Bay Chapter
March - April 2007
TABLE OF CONTENTS
| CONSERVATION NEWS |
 |
|
|
A Suisun Marsh primer
Suisun Marsh is the largest contiguous brackish marsh on the West Coast. A brackish marsh is one whose salinity varies from near fresh to near ocean levels. Suisun Marsh includes 85,000 acres of various types of wetlands, and 27,000 acres of surrounding uplands. It provides essential habitat for more than 221 bird species (especially migratory waterfowl and other migratory waterbirds), 45 mammals, 16 reptiles and amphibians, and more than 40 fish species. These include mink, river otter, and many other critters otherwise disappearing or already gone from the Bay Area, and the threatened Delta smelt. (Conservation groups have petitioned both the state and federal governments to raise the Delta smelt's conservation status to endangered.) 80% of the state's commercial salmon fisheries depend on the marsh's tidal wetlands for nursery habitat.
The marsh's adjacent grasslands and hills, including the 6,500-acre Potrero Hills, are a sanctuary for many native plants, several threatened or endangered. These uplands provide habitat for the golden eagle, as well as several "species of special concern" such as burrowing owl, northern harrier, and tri-colored blackbird. Grassland birds are the fastest-disappearing class of bird species in the U.S. due to development and industrial agriculture.
The marsh's uplands also provide critical freshwater inflows from rain and groundwater to the marsh's sloughs (wetland channels). This freshwater mixes with the incoming seawater to help create the brackish habitat that makes the marsh so unique. This freshwater also provides cooling temperatures, nutrients, and oxygen. These sloughs are some of the last healthy habitats for several species of endangered fish.
In 1977 the state legislature passed what is probably the strongest land-protection act ever enacted in California, the Suisun Marsh Preservation Act (SMPA). The Act makes the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) responsible for protecting the Primary Management Area - the marsh's wetlands and sloughs. It assigned Solano County to create a Local Protection Plan for the Secondary Management Area - the marsh's surrounding uplands. The SMPA, however, gives BCDC ultimate authority over both Primary and Secondary Areas, and allows the public to appeal any decision made by Solano County over the Secondary Management Area to BCDC. Ultimately, BCDC has the final say.
© 2007 San Francisco Sierra Club Yodeler