Appreciation for Dave Feliz and the Yolo Bypass Wildlife Area

Mallard ducks taking flight at the Yolo Bypass Wildlife Area in the Sacramento River Delta. Photo: Dave Feliz, Public Domain.

Dave Feliz is retiring.  California is losing one of its greatest public servants.  For the past 26 years Dave has been the manager of two of California’s most iconic public wildlife areas for the Department of Fish and Game (now Fish and Wildlife).  From 1998 to 2009 he was at the Vic Fazio Yolo Bypass Wildlife Area, located in the Yolo Bypass west of Sacramento; between 2009 and the present he has been at the Elkhorn Slough National Estuarine Reserve on the coast north of Monterey.

Dave brought to the Yolo Wildlife Area an ability to think in ten dimensions, maybe more.  The Wildlife Area is one of the largest in California, more than 16,000 acres.  It was created from laser-levelled farmland between 1994 and 1997 and is subject to periodic flooding, just a stone’s throw away from the state capitol in Sacramento.  As a state wildlife area over half of it is open to hunting during the waterfowl season; as farmland it is farmed in rice during the summer and harvested in the fall; managed winter flooding of the rice adds to the wetlands creating a healthy food mix for birds traveling the Pacific Flyway.  As a stop-over on the Pacific Flyway it is a destination for hundreds of thousands of migratory birds (ducks, geese, swans, raptors and cranes) in the winter and migrating shorebirds in the spring and summer. In more remote parts of the wildlife area, there is a grazing lease and rare vernal pools with spectacular wildflower displays and rare wetland plants. The managed grazing started by Dave, promotes the growth of the native plants.  There are micro-habitats for shy native snakes.  (Dave is an accomplished herpetologist.)

As a place in a large urban population the Yolo ByPass is a destination for the wildlife viewers and school-children, their teachers and parents looking for exposure to and education about the natural world.  Since the creation of the Wildlife Area it has become the summertime (breeding season) home of the largest bat colony in California (some 250,000 migratory Mexican Free-tailed bats flyout on summer evenings.)  This charismatic moment is witnessed by thousands of people on summer evenings.

As the pioneering Wildlife Area manager Dave set the protocols for balancing and accommodating these many uses and the people and groups who pursue them.  He got to know the farmers and ranchers – and found ways to make agriculture wildlife friendly (to the benefit of both hunters and birdwatchers).  As an outstanding visual artist (photography) he sculpted the ponds and vegetation to make stunning visual opportunities on the wildlife viewing loop, while keeping the public and the hunters separated and safe and the resting birds relatively undisturbed.  He knew how to make birds feel safe in the wetlands while being in view of students traveling in the Wildlife Area in buses (by strategically placing loafing islands at varying micro-elevations partly screened by vegetation.)   His partnership with the Yolo Basin Foundation supported programs that have brought more than 70,000 school children out to the wetlands for a day-long programmed experience. He created a beloved place where people come to find quiet and wonder, a place to discover and enjoy.

He took the gifts, talents and skills he developed at the Yolo Wildlife Area to Elkhorn Slough, another challenging and disturbed landscape – a major power plant at the mouth of the slough; historic dairying operations adjacent to the wildlife area; intensive farming along the watercourse.  Now sea otters rest in the brackish water of the estuary.  The intricate webs of shallow streams that feed the marshlands are being reconstructed; invasive trees that were imported a hundred years ago (eucalyptus) after the native trees (willows, oaks and pines) were felled to make pasture are going away, to recreate the views and landscapes as they might have been.  Elkhorn Slough is a collection of partnerships.  The Department of Fish and Wildlife owns and manages the Reserve.  It has long-standing partnership with the Elkhorn Slough Foundation and a research partnership with the national Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Dave’s ability to partner, developed at the Yolo Wildlife Area and honed at Elkhorn Slough, is a key ability in inhabiting this ten-dimensional world.

Dave appreciated the opportunity to get to know the old-timers and learn from past experiences on the land.  Dave can make this complex story meaningful for children and adults.  Hundreds of US Army Corps of Engineers civil engineers learned from Dave that to have successful restored wetlands, you have to manage movement of water on and off the land.  How to do it.  Over his long career he showed many communities of people across generations and across professional disciplines how to let the natural world come back into their lives.

It is his ability to see the whole of nature in its many dimensions, as it has been damaged and disfigured but also how it could be remade over time, that reveals his genius.  The multifarious elements – landscape, water, wildlife biology, botany, hunting, farming, public access, education, economics, visual, social interactions – are moving through time in a sort of rough harmony guided by the mind of Dave Feliz.  Check out the Yolo Bypass and Elkhorn Slough some time.  Genius in action.

Bill Julian is a retired public interest lawyer.  He was the Legislative Director and a legal advisor at the CPUC during the Energy Crisis (2000-01) and staff to the energy policy committees in the Assembly (Utilities and Commerce Committee, 1983-95) and Senate (Utilities, Energy and Communications, 2005-07).