Jerry Gragnani swerves his pickup slightly to avoid hitting the squirrel that scurries in front of him.
He’s just outside Helm on Fresno County’s west side, headed down a dirt road to a place he treasures. It’s the land where the birds abound.
As a child 45 years ago, Gragnani used to walk the ditch banks, shooting firecrackers into the air to scare ducks away from the rice. Now, he welcomes those birds and others to more than 5,000 acres of land he used to farm.
Gragnani is among dozens of farmers in California who have entered into wetland restoration easements with the federal government since 1992. The farmer continues to maintain the property after selling the easement but cannot farm it. Easements are either permanent — which is the case with Gragnani’s property — or for 30 years.
Those easements now cover 91,000 acres, and about 60,000 acres have been restored.
Farmers are leading the way in restoration of a wetlands system that once spanned more than 4 million acres statewide. It was down to 400,000 acres by the turn of the century.
The easement total for this region is almost 27,000 acres.
Gragnani, and his father, Don, who owns the land, enjoy driving through the place where they used to raise sugar beets, cotton and barley.
“Sometimes we’ll be out here and come upon each other, just looking around,” the younger Gragnani says.
The family takes pleasure in the wildlife — including as many as 500 pelicans, 5,000 geese and 100,000 ducks — that visit the site, which is easy for motorists to miss as they zip along country roads outside the preserve.
But Gragnani is quick to say business was a key motivation for selling the easement to the Natural Resources Conservation Service, a part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“We weren’t making any money farming it,” he says. “None of the crops were high dollar. We couldn’t grow grapevines or trees. It had a tendency to flood.”
The family still has 10,000 acres on which they farm a variety of crops — almonds, nectarines, raisins, wine grapes, cotton, barley, wheat, onions, tomatoes and lettuce.
Others who have property that borders the Gragnanis also have turned over land for wetlands, including the Deal family with 400 acres and the Britz family with 77 acres.
At the time the Gragnanis sold their easement, the purchase price was $2,000 an acre. That was the most that could be paid after an appraisal of the value of the property for farmland.
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In October, the ceiling was lifted to $2,500 an acre, says Larry Norris, a biologist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service in Visalia.
Norris says the restoration program “pays for itself.” Benefits include creating masses of land where water can be stored to prevent flooding of communities or other farmland that could result in disaster payments.
The Gragnani land can hold between 12,000 and 15,000 acre-feet of water. An acre-foot of water is equivalent to 326,000 gallons. It equates to 1 foot of water spread over an acre, enough water to supply a family of four for 12 to 18 months.
Water flowing onto Gragnani’s land in recent days has come from Pine Flat Reservoir flood releases.
Coursing through channels that include the Stinson and Crescent canals, it spreads across much of the Gragnani property.
Sometimes it’s just inches deep and hidden from view by plants and grasses like shepherd’s purse and London rocket. Shore birds like the black-necked stilt abound.
In deeper water, ducks glide by. Birds such as the glossy ibis nest there. Egrets and great blue herons fly overhead.
A few beavers give Gragnani fits.
“The beavers are giving us [trouble] right now,” he says.
In order for water to continue to flow, a worker with a backhoe is opening up culverts the beavers have dammed. The beavers keep him busy. It’s a once-a-week chore.
Keeping up with the beavers isn’t the only cost of maintaining these restored wetlands.
“We still pay property taxes,” Gragnani says, adding that he has planted six plots of milo and corn grain on which the birds can feed.
“We have to keep them from eating up our neighbors,” he explains.
He estimates it costs between $45,000 and $50,000 a year to maintain the property, including the costs of putting water there and paying about $30,000 in property taxes.
Biologists with the conservation service monitor the property and offer advice. Gragnani marvels at the knowledge of all the biologists he has chauffeured over his land, some from the conservation service, others from organizations or academic institutions.
A farmer who sells the easement for wetlands retains other rights to the land and can recoup some of the costs of maintaining the property by opening it for hunting and fishing.
Gragnani says some individuals help with volunteer efforts or donations to the wetlands efforts. “Hunters reach into their pockets to help out,” he says.
The conservation service also spends money to restore wetlands, carving channels, creating islands, building levees, adding banks of dirt and roadways.
Norris says that work costs about $300 an acre.
He says other organizations sometimes become partners in the renovation.
An example of collaborative effort is unfolding on the Wheatville Ranch, a mile from Gragnani’s wetlands. Anthony Coelho Jr., a partner with his brother, Gary, says he sold an easement to the conservation service two years ago on 1,600 acres of Wheatville land.
“It was marginal farmland,” Anthony Coelho says, adding that the cost of pumping water to farm the land made it too costly to keep for that purpose. After seeing what Gragnani has done, the Coelhoes decided to sell the easement and turn the property into a hunting preserve.
“It’s a new idea for us, as farmers, having people come onto our property,” Anthony Coelho says. But as the Valley’s population grows, there is greater demand for such preserves.
Among those working on the Coelho property is Randy Riviere, director of environmental affairs for Joseph Gallo Farms in Merced County, which was honored recently with a National Wetlands Conservation Award from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Gallo Farms, based in Atwater, has been a pioneer in efforts such as modifying harvest methods to sustain wildlife that includes tricolor blackbirds. Mike Gallo, CEO for Gallo Farms, has put thousands of acres into an easement that borders the Grassland Ecological Area, which includes the San Luis National Wildlife Reserve.
“Agriculture offers a lot of environmental benefits,” Riviere says. “With rapidly encroaching development, environmentalists should be looking to farmers more and more. The conservation community should consider the farmer one of their best friends. They offer great potential to provide wildlife benefits directly and to buffer development.”
On the Coelho property, Riviere is working with the conservation service, Ducks Unlimited and the California Wildlife Conservation Board, which is part of the California Department of Fish and Game.
“Farmers are phenomenal land managers,” says Chris Hildebrandt, regional biologist with Ducks Unlimited in Los Banos. “They have to survive off it. This is a way to help them maximize their good ag land.”
Hildebrandt says the wetlands restoration for the Coelho land will make it similar to the Tulare Lake basin “200 years ago.”
A herder has sheep on the property to clear vegetation. Building of dikes and levees will take place over the next six months.
Ducks Unlimited received a grant for $130,000 from the North American Wetlands Conservation Act, and the Wildlife Conservation Board is providing $485,000 for the restoration.
Norris is busy at another restoration project near Alpaugh on farmland owned by Trent Hair. Restoration on the Hair property started three years ago. It has been completed on 960 acres and continues on 640 acres.
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“We’re developing 60 percent of the property into wetlands,” Norris says. “On another 40 percent, we’re trying to develop it in a way it could be habitat for kangaroo rats and the kit fox, upland species. They’re not there right now, but we realize the area has potential to restore habitat for endangered species.”
Bob Bowman, a neighbor of Hair’s, is semi-retired from farming at 80. He has put 800 acres into the wetlands program and continues to grow prunes, plums and cotton on another 800 acres.
He would like to turn his property over to a hunting club.
Gragnani also likes to hunt, but mostly for big game.
He allows no hunting or fishing on most of his nearly 5,000 acres of wetlands. He does allow hunting for pheasants on about 20 percent of the property under an arrangement with the Ace High Adventures Hunting Club based in Chowchilla. Gragnani said Keith Bennett, who owns Ace High, has provided him with almost 1,500 pheasants for breeding on the area not hunted.
As he drives his pickup along a creek lined by willows, Gragnani quietly points out the pheasants. “There’s a hen with babies,” he says, “and the rooster.”
Gragnani has a son, Donnie, named for his grandfather. Donnie is 8, about the age his father was when he used to scare away the ducks that fed on the rice.
Donnie rides with his dad in the pickup, scattering bird seed for the pheasants.
“It’s relaxing out here,” he says to his father, who tries to find an hour or so each day to visit the land where the birds abound.
Gragnani concurs.
He drives through the wetlands just about every day, savoring the sounds and sights, taking a break of an hour or so from the rigors of working the land. “It’s beautiful out there,” he says. “I go there because I want to be out there, not because I have to be out there.”