Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio, Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff Lauren Vogelbaum here and the sharing economy has
Speaker 1: changed everything from how people get around a city to
Speaker 1: how they rent rooms while traveling, and now it's even
Speaker 1: seeping into ecology. In California's Sacramento Valley, farmers are temporarily
Speaker 1: leasing flooded rice patties to the Nature Conservancy so the
Speaker 1: migratory shore birds have a place to stop and feed
Speaker 1: while traveling the Pacific Flyway, which is the major north
Speaker 1: south route that extends from Alaska to Patagonia. The program,
Speaker 1: dubbed Bird Returns, has been in development by the Nature
Speaker 1: Conservancy since and is helping conservationists deal with the short
Speaker 1: term needs of migrating birds. Because of urbanization, agriculture, and
Speaker 1: climate change, the migrating birds have less access to wilderness
Speaker 1: to mate, feed, nest, and rear their young. At the
Speaker 1: same time, project gives farmers the opportunity to support conservation
Speaker 1: efforts and maybe earn a little extra money without negatively
Speaker 1: impacting crop production. During February and March of the pilot
Speaker 1: season for the program, just two percent of Sacramento Valleys,
Speaker 1: some five hundred thousand acres of rice fields, and that's
Speaker 1: around two hundred thousand hectares were turned into shallow water
Speaker 1: for shorebird habitat. That season, the pop up wetlands supported
Speaker 1: more than a hundred and eighty thousand birds, representing fifty
Speaker 1: seven different species. On average. The researchers found three times
Speaker 1: more bird diversity and five times greater density on rice
Speaker 1: patties that participated in the program compared to unenrolled fields.
Speaker 1: Migrating animals, like shorebirds are in jeopardy as their ranges
Speaker 1: cover vast swaths of land. A study published in the
Speaker 1: journal Science in reported that just nine percent of over
Speaker 1: one thousand, four hundred migratory bird species had access to
Speaker 1: protected areas for all the stage of their annual cycle.
Speaker 1: In California, in particular, of original wetland habitat has been
Speaker 1: lost to agriculture and urban development. Since the Nature Conservancy
Speaker 1: was founded in ninety one, it's worked to conserve habitat
Speaker 1: by working with landowners to purchase land or permanently limit
Speaker 1: the use of their land in order to maintain its wildness.
Speaker 1: Each agreement is worked out individually, a process that's expensive
Speaker 1: and can take months or years to develop. For the
Speaker 1: article of this episode, is based on how stuff works.
Speaker 1: Spoke with Mark Reynolds, PhD, the lead scientist for the
Speaker 1: Nature Conservancy's California Migratory Bird program. He explained that he
Speaker 1: and his colleagues, including Sandy Matsmoto, the team's project manager,
Speaker 1: and Eric Halstein, the team's economist, thought that the demand
Speaker 1: for purchasing migrating bird habitat could far exceed their resources. Quote.
Speaker 1: We were looking at our habitat needs and thinking how
Speaker 1: do we buy our way to success us? Sandy said,
Speaker 1: do we need to buy land for the whole year?
Speaker 1: It looks like the animals needed part of the time. Eric,
Speaker 1: with his background and economics, said we could do a
Speaker 1: reverse auction. I said, a reverse What? A reverse auction
Speaker 1: overturned the conventional role of buyer and seller. Instead of
Speaker 1: buyers competing to outbid each other to obtain a good
Speaker 1: or service, as sellers compete to offer their goods or
Speaker 1: services to one buyer at a competitive price. And the
Speaker 1: sellers in this case are the owners of rice fields,
Speaker 1: which are typically farmed in California from April through August
Speaker 1: or May through October. During the growing seasons. The fields
Speaker 1: are normally flooded, but they're also flooded during the off
Speaker 1: seasons to decompose the rice double after harvest, Reynolds and
Speaker 1: his colleagues saw an opportunity to work with the farmers
Speaker 1: to provide temporary wetland habitat for shorebirds passing through. So
Speaker 1: in early the Nature Conservancy issued an invitation to rice
Speaker 1: farmers to submit bids that itemized their costs to flood
Speaker 1: fields for four, six or eight weeks at a time
Speaker 1: beginning in February of that same year. The farmers set
Speaker 1: their own prices and the Nature Conservancy was able to
Speaker 1: select the highest quality habitat for the lowest total cost.
Speaker 1: They repeated the process in the fall often then every
Speaker 1: year since then. Housta Works also spoke with John Brennan,
Speaker 1: a partner at Brennan Jewitt and Associates, a firm that
Speaker 1: manages rice sales for the Robbins Rice Company. He explained
Speaker 1: that the farmers are very receptive to this concept quote
Speaker 1: and to the extent that they can get their costs
Speaker 1: covered to do it. They're even more receptive because they
Speaker 1: see it as a something that they're excited about and
Speaker 1: a way to make an environmental difference and be something
Speaker 1: that really helps secure the longevity of the rice industry
Speaker 1: in California. To figure out where and when shore birds
Speaker 1: most needed wetland habitat for their migrations, Reynolds and his
Speaker 1: colleagues worked with experts at Cornell University's Lab of Ornithology,
Speaker 1: which collects information about birds through its citizen science project
Speaker 1: The Bird. This online checklist allows bird enthusiasts across the
Speaker 1: country to tabulate the kinds of birds they see, when
Speaker 1: they see them, how many, and where. Using data from
Speaker 1: eBird and grant money from NASA, the Cornell team built
Speaker 1: high powered computer models that predicted, at weekly intervals, the
Speaker 1: presence and abundance of birds at different locations. From these models,
Speaker 1: Reynolds and his colleagues created maps to visualize and prioritize
Speaker 1: where and when habitat was needed most. But once they
Speaker 1: knew the locations, they requested bids from the local rice farmers,
Speaker 1: and they adjust the program based on weather conditions. During
Speaker 1: times of drought, the Nature Conservancy would pay more, and
Speaker 1: during times of excessive rain, it would pay less. When
Speaker 1: they extrapolated the potential costs for the project out and
Speaker 1: they found the highest possible cost per year based on
Speaker 1: the average bid, was one point are million dollars, but
Speaker 1: that's significantly higher than what the Nature Conservancy actually paid. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the estimated cost to restore rice fields to wetland habitats
Speaker 1: equal to that land area would cost around twenty five
Speaker 1: million dollars, and maintenance fees would come in and about
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand dollars a year. So this seems like
Speaker 1: a win win, But the researchers stress that these pop
Speaker 1: up wetlands are tools and not meant to replace permanent protection.
Speaker 1: If the land switched from rice farming to some other
Speaker 1: use that wasn't compatible with seasonal flooding, another protection strategy
Speaker 1: would need to be considered. For now, though rice farming
Speaker 1: and bird conservation are working hand in hand, Reynolds said,
Speaker 1: we're engaged with this community of farmers and thinking about
Speaker 1: a lot of other ways to conjoin farming and environmental benefits.
Speaker 1: Today's episode is based on the article pop up Wetlands
Speaker 1: Helping migrating shorebirds on house toff works dot com, written
Speaker 1: by Tracy Steeter. Brain Stuff is production by Heart Radio
Speaker 1: in partnership with how stuffworks dot com, and it is
Speaker 1: produced by Tyler Klang. For more podcasts from my heart
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