Capinero Creek

Once a dairy farm, this 500-acre restoration site at Capinero Creek is a critical test, where TNC, the Tule Basin Land & Water Conservation Trust and more local partners are rewilding fallow farmlands, supported by funding from Union Pacific. This project will create habitat for wildlife like the San Joaquin kit fox while also helping TNC and partners study the effects of restoration on improving groundwater flows, weed management, air quality, soil quality and carbon dynamics.  

SGMA in Action

This is the first major restoration project in the region undertaken as a result of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), which requires local agencies to develop and implement long-term groundwater sustainability plans. It is likely that large amounts of agricultural land will need to come out of production in the future as a result of SGMA; predictions by TNC scientists and partners at Stanford suggest that as many as 200,000 acres will need to be retired over the next 10 to 20 years to achieve sustainability in the San Joaquin Valley. A major opportunity lies in that scale of land use change. If portions of those retired lands are restored as a connected network of natural lands, multiple benefits could be created for farmers and Valley communities, in addition to helping meet groundwater sustainability. 

We’re turning this theory into practice at Capinero Creek. By planting a mix of native alkali desert scrub, wildflowers and non-native grasses that can be easily scaled to cover vast acreages, TNC and partners are looking to develop a cost-effective, low-water method to bringing natural systems back to the land.  

Building on Decades of Protection and Study 

For more than four decades, TNC has furthered conservation efforts across the upland landscapes of the San Joaquin Valley. Working with many partners—and most closely with the Bureau of Land Management and California Department of Fish and Wildlife—TNC's initial investments in acquisition grew to what is now the 250,000+ acre Carrizo Plain National Monument, which is surrounded by more than 100,000+ acres of additional conservation land owned by other public and private entities.  

With the land protected, TNC was determined to leverage this win and deepen our understanding of how to best protect and manage areas the San Joaquin Valley. As the science evolved, so did the opportunities to put this science to work for conservation for both traditional land protection and new, innovative approaches like rewilding retired agricultural lands at Capinero Creek. 

Written and edited by TNC staff and colleagues, Rewilding Agricultural Landscapes: A California Study of Rebalancing the Needs of People and Nature captures more than 30 years of science and on-the-ground experience to chart a path to a more hopeful, equitable, healthy and sustainable future in the San Joaquin Valley. Offering pragmatic lessons that can be applied in similar regions around the world, the book concludes with a vision of a region restored to ecological balance and equipped for inevitable climate change, allowing nature and people to prosper.