- Posted By: Trina Wood
- Written by: Peter Moyle, Professor of Fish Biology, UC Davis
Published on: May 5, 2011
The San Joaquin/Sacramento Delta and Suisun Marsh were once part of a continuous, enormously productive aquatic ecosystem that supported dense populations of fish from Sacramento perch to salmon, huge flocks of wintering waterfowl, and concentrations of mammals from beaver to tule elk. This amazing ecosystem is gone and cannot be brought back.
The once vast marshes have been turned into farmland and cities, protected by a complex system of levees. The patchy remnants of the original ecosystem are disappearing fast, as more and more native plants and animals become extinct or endangered. In their place, hundreds of alien species thrive in the altered conditions—crabs, clams, worms and fish from all over the...
Tags: Delta (3), ecosystem (4), estuary (1), Suisun Marsh (1), UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences (4)
Comments: 0
Viewing -3--3 of 1