From California Water Blog

Tidal wetlands in the Sacramento – San Joaquin Delta used to be vast. You may have seen artistic renditions of how the landscape may have looked with meandering channels weaving through a mosaic of land and water and with teaming wildlife. In fact, prior to European colonization, the Delta used to be a whole 95% tidal freshwater wetlands covered in tule and cattail vegetation, stewarded by a number of Indigenous Tribes. We know this historical landscape was forever changed when settlers forcibly removed Indigenous people and their stewardship practices from the landscape, and spent the subsequent hundred and fifty years diking and draining the wetlands to create farmland. In one of the most ambitious restoration efforts of the State, and to help reverse the ecological decline this transformation caused, a network of California State agencies, Federal agencies, private institutions, and non-governmental organizations have spent the last decade trying to restore some of these wetlands. (more)