This story originally appeared in bioGraphic, an online magazine about nature and sustainability powered by the California Academy of Sciences.
Snow geese erupt against a blue sky trimmed with fresh, white clouds. The air is so clear you can see for miles, east to the distant peaks of the Sierra Nevada and west to the gentle slopes of the Coast Ranges. But Carson Jeffres and Jacob Katz are less interested in the view above them than the one at their feet. Standing knee-deep in a flooded field at Knaggs Ranch, a rice farm near Sacramento, they peer into a floating cage made of PVC pipe and mesh and prepare to check on its unusual inhabitants.
Jeffres opens the top of the cage and dips in a small net. When he pulls it out, a pair of plump fish, each the size of a pinky finger, wriggle inside. These are young Chinook salmon—a species imperiled in California. He holds up his catch for Katz to admire.
The two men are fish ecologists—Jeffres at the University of California, Davis, and Katz at the conservation-based non-profit California Trout—and they are testing a wild idea. To help save the Chinook, they are using rice fields as winter nurseries for young salmon migrating from their natal streams to the ocean.
Over the last century, water agencies have built levees along most of the state’s rivers to control floods and supply water to communities and farmers alike. But these levees also bar young Chinook from the floodplains that historically provided safe, food-rich places to grow on their journey to the Pacific. Today, more than half a million acres of these former floodplains in California’s immense interior valley are occupied by rice farms. Repurposing them as surrogate floodplains during the months they would otherwise lie fallow could be key to restoring endangered populations of wild-spawning Chinook.
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“We can’t restore those floodplains,” says Rene Henery, California science director for the conservation non-profit Trout Unlimited, “but we can recover the functionality that the fish evolved with.”
California’s Central Valley is a flat expanse, flanked on either side by mountain ranges, that extends 400 miles down the middle of the state. Salmon once flourished in the streams and rivers that course through it. “One or two million came back every year,” says Peter Moyle, a fish ecologist at UC Davis. “They were up to 60 pounds and close to a meter long.”
For millennia, adult Chinook in California returned to spawn in the upper reaches of waterways that flow down from mountains surrounding the valley. Then, when the winter rainy season caused their natal streams to swell, the next generation of young fish would all swim downstream toward the sea, taking advantage of the many floodplains along the way.
The final stretch of their long journey would begin when the fish hit the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, where the water slows, twisting and turning around the Delta’s many islands. Migrating young salmon have to navigate these braided waterways before making their way across the San Francisco Bay and through the Golden Gate Strait, the iconic narrow opening spanned by the Golden Gate Bridge that leads to the ocean.
Jacob Katz examining the siphon after collecting a water sample to measure zooplankton in the floodplain near the Sacramento River. (Jak Wonderly/bioGraphic)
Habitat Loss
Today, few Central Valley salmon spawn in the wild. The region’s waterways have been completely remade into a system that includes 20 major dams and more than 1,600 miles of riverbank levees. While this engineered set-up tames flooding and supplies drinking and irrigation water, these benefits to people come at a cost to salmon. Dams block entry to the mountain streams where the fish once spawned, and levees block access to the valley-floor floodplains where young salmon once found plentiful food and shelter.
Across their range, Central Valley Chinook are all classified as a single species, but for management purposes the fish are divided into four runs according to the season when adults return from the Pacific Ocean to spawn. Two of those runs are listed under the federal Endangered Species Act, while the other two are considered federal populations of concern.
Engineered rivers are almost completely to blame. “Just as we’ve lost almost all the floodplain habitat, we’ve also lost pretty much all of the spawning habitat,” says Brian Ellrott, the Central Valley salmon recovery coordinator at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which leads the efforts to restore populations of these fish.
“They’re just straggling along right now,” Jeffres says. “They’re propped up by hatcheries.” State hatcheries release more than 32 million young salmon annually, and these fish dominate all four runs of Central Valley Chinook.
The best way to restore Chinook salmon, fish biologists say, is to give them back some of what they’ve lost. To provide more spawning grounds, NOAA plans to start transporting migrating adults past Central Valley dams―from the downstream side to the upstream reaches―as is done by wildlife agencies in the states of Washington and Oregon.
Restoration of degraded spawning grounds below dams will also be critical to their recovery. While most salmon return to their natal waters to spawn, a few stray in search of new homes. This penchant for exploration allows them to revisit waterways where they had previously been extinct for decades. Recent restoration efforts are starting to pay off: After an absence of 70 years, Chinook now return by the hundreds to spawn in Putah Creek, a tributary of the Sacramento River. Likewise, for the first time in more than half a century, a couple dozen Chinook have found their way back to historical spawning grounds in the San Joaquin River, which flows from the Sierra Nevada to the Delta.
Restoring floodplain nurseries is a harder problem to solve, since this habitat has been more dramatically altered and requires changes on a much larger scale. Repurposing rice fields in the off-season may be a big part of the answer, and NOAA is supportive of the effort. “We’re pushing to make that happen,” Ellrott says. “Salmon are really resilient―I’m optimistic that if we give them the right nudge, we can restore them in the valley.”
Restorationists have good reason to think that prime nursery grounds are vital to the long-term survival of the region’s salmon. The most robust population of spring-run Chinook originates in Butte Creek, which runs along a wildlife refuge that contains some of the valley’s few remaining floodplains. The Butte Creek salmon population is wild-spawning and self-sustaining. “It’s the one successful population of spring-run salmon,” Jeffres says. Young salmon here are more likely to make it out to sea, and the adults more likely to return and spawn.
A probable reason for Butte Creek’s success is that it gives Chinook a place to grow and thrive. The creek’s young fish are larger than those elsewhere in the valley, and being bigger presumably boosts survival. “It makes the salmon more resilient,” Katz says, just like packing lunch before a long trip.
Restored wetlands from the air. This area is adjacent to the sample area. (Jak Wonderly/bioGraphic)
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Understanding Floodplain Value
Before researchers understood the value of floodplains, they considered them risky for fish. “Wildlife biologists thought floodplains were bad for salmon because they stranded them, and that levees were good for salmon because they kept them in the river,” Moyle says. “It was pretty much unquestioned.”
It’s only in the last two decades that this conventional wisdom has been overturned. The first evidence came from scientists looking at the fate of young salmon in the Yolo Bypass. Built to contain a floodplain of the Sacramento River, the Bypass is an enormous flood control structure—about 40 miles long and two miles wide—that shunts water from the Sacramento River around the City of Sacramento. It’s bounded on either side by colossal, earthen levees that are more than 20 feet high and wide enough to drive on. When the river runs high, it overtops a weir at the north end of the levees. Water spills down inside the bypass, flooding it, then rejoins the river at the south end of the levees.
The Yolo Bypass only fills during the winter, and, when it does, some of the young salmon migrating downstream come along for the ride. During particularly wet winters, the bypass is so full it looks like an inland sea. “The floodplains are still there,” Katz says. “They’re just used differently, as bypasses.” A 1998 study concluded that salmon swept into the bypass grew faster than those that remained in the river.
Jeffres got similar results when he looked at fish in the Cosumnes, one of the state’s rare, free-flowing rivers that still has remnants of natural floodplains. In 2004, he found that young salmon in a floodplain grew faster than those in the Cosumnes River itself.
In 2009, the California Department of Water Resources decided to give salmon about 20,000 acres of floodplain habitat―one-third of the total acreage―in the Yolo Bypass. Most of the land there is privately owned and farmed for rice during the summer growing season. That decision caught the attention of rice farmer John Brennan, who wanted to keep fields in production in the Yolo Bypass.
Water is in short supply during the hot, dry Central Valley summers, especially during the state’s periodic severe droughts. Historically, the fight over this constrained resource has pitted growers against environmental laws that require allocating water for endangered fish like Chinook. Rather than playing this zero-sum game, Brennan has been looking for ways to integrate conservation with agriculture. “If you’re in the rice business, you’re in the water business―and if you’re in the water business, you’re in the fish business,” he says.
Katz puts it this way: “Fish abundance equals water security. It doesn’t have to be fish versus farms―it can be fish and farms.”
In 2010, Brennan joined forces with two environmentalists to see if rice fields in the bypass could be used as salmon nurseries during the winter, when the fields are dormant and fish are migrating downstream. After scouting the Yolo Bypass for available properties, Brennan and his partners settled on the rice fields of Knaggs Ranch as a chance to put their plan into practice. They bought the ranch and assembled a research team, starting with Jacob Katz since his father is one of Brennan’s partners. Katz invited Jeffres to join him, and the pair has collaborated ever since.
In the winter of 2012, the researchers flooded a five-acre corner of the ranch and released 10,000 young hatchery salmon in the fallow field. “When we first started, lots of farmers laughed and said it was the stupidest thing they’d ever heard,’” Jeffres says. He and Katz had their doubts, too. “It didn’t look like fish habitat,” Jeffres says, pointing across the ranch to their original test site. Flat brown fields stretch in all directions, and tidy mud berms divide the land into a patchwork of close-packed rice paddies. “We thought it might be the dumbest thing we’d ever done.”
They worried they’d end up with a field full of dead fish. They weren’t concerned about residual pesticides, which are applied months earlier and break down relatively quickly in the environment, but they fretted about a host of other potential pitfalls. They thought the stagnant, shallow water in the field might get too warm for fish or make them easy prey for hungry birds. And they didn’t know whether the decomposition of rice stubble, which is left on the fields after the fall harvest, would deplete oxygen levels in the water.
At first the researchers couldn’t tell whether anything was happening. “Out in the fields in mid-winter it looks like a mud puddle. We couldn’t see the fish,” Katz says. “Then we ran a net through the water and caught fish with little potbellies. It was amazing.”
Their rice-field test subjects did far more than survive. They thrived, growing five-fold―from 1 gram to more than 5―in just six weeks. “They grew at the highest rates recorded in the Central Valley,” Jeffres says.
Ultimately, the scientists envision that the young salmon, instead of being introduced into rice fields by humans, will leave their natal waters and migrate downstream and into the bypass on their own. To make that journey possible even if the weir hasn’t overflowed, the California Department of Water Resources wants to add gates that can be opened to let salmon swim in and out of the rice fields on their way to the ocean.
While there are still some barriers left to remove, the possibility of wild-spawning, self-sustaining Chinook runs raised on rice farms is no longer just a pipe dream. In the years since they launched their pilot project, Jeffres and Katz have expanded their effort to encompass 20 acres and 50,000 fish, proving that it can work on a real-world scale. They have also found that, on average, salmon reared in these rice-field nurseries weigh 12 times more than those that grow up in the Sacramento River. The reason for this, Jeffres says, is that there’s so much more for them to eat.
Hundreds of chinook salmon fry in a tank at the UC Davis Marine Laboratory. (Jak Wonderly/bioGraphic)
Back at Knaggs Ranch
Jeffres wants to know just how much more food the rice fields contain. He casts a long, white net across the shallow water of a rice field then draws it back carefully, keeping clear of the mud. Katz tips the contents into a plastic bag and lifts it high so they can both see.
Inside the plastic bag, tiny freshwater crustaceans―or “bugs,” as the researchers call them―dart back and forth in constant motion. The water is so thick with them that it looks like a whirling cloud of pink.
These small crustaceans are the perfect food for young fish, and this haul is the best Katz and Jeffres have ever seen. Most of the bugs they netted belong to the genus Daphnia, often dubbed water fleas for the way they swim in short hops. They’re here in such abundance because they thrive in shallow, algae-rich waters, from puddles to flooded fields to floodplains. “It’s magic when water slows down and spreads across a floodplain,” Katz says. “It’s liquid protein.”
Pickings are far slimmer in rivers. Katz holds up another bag, this one netted about an hour earlier from the Sacramento River. Just a few crustaceans scoot around inside it. “There’s basically nothing here,” he says. “By building levees, we’ve created rivers that are essentially food deserts.”
The Sacramento River has several flood control bypasses, and Katz estimates that, altogether, they contain up to 150,000 acres of rice fields that could be used as bug-rich salmon nurseries. Another 500,000 acres of rice farms lie along the Sacramento River but outside bypasses―and he thinks they may be able to help salmon, too.
One of these is River Garden Farms, which lies a short stretch upriver from Knaggs Ranch and is managed by Roger Cornwell. Like Brennan, Cornwell wondered if his fields could benefit salmon, despite the fact that the land is not in a bypass. “I met Jacob Katz and started talking to him about what we could do,” he says. Katz proposed another wild idea, one that could solve the food-desert problem: bug farming.
They wanted to know, Jeffres says, “If we can’t bring the fish to the floodplain, can we bring the floodplain to the fish?”
River Garden Farms is separated from the Sacramento River by a levee, atop which sits the Rough and Ready Pumping Plant, which was installed in 1915 to irrigate fields. The plant houses five glossy, black, massive pumps—each about six feet tall—which fill the pump house with a low roar. This past winter, the team took advantage of the setup and flooded a fallow rice field to raise bugs, then pumped the food-rich water into the Sacramento River to feed young fish as they swam through.
To test whether the bugs would reach their intended recipients, the researchers placed cages of young salmon at intervals along a mile or so of the river. The Rough and Ready pumps delivered bugs starting in late February, and Jacob Montgomery and Jennifer Kronk of California Trout took weekly measurements of the caged fish. By late March, when we visit, all the bugs have been pumped off the field. The field crew pulls on their waders and heads out to the river to see if the experiment worked.
They start at a site upstream of the pumping plant, where the caged fish didn’t get any field-raised bugs. Montgomery and Kronk wrestle a cage to the river’s muddy bank. Montgomery hefts the cage above the water, revealing young salmon that flash silver as they flip back and forth in distress. The team works fast so as to get the fish back to the river as soon as possible. Montgomery places each fish in a tray with a ruler, splashing it with water to keep it calm and still, and calls out the length for Kronk to record. Then he passes it to her for weighing. When the measuring is done, he estimates that the upstream fish averaged about 55 millimeters long and weighed around 2 grams.
Moving downstream to the next site, Kronk scoops up a fish collected right by the pump outfall. This site got the most bugs delivered from the rice field―if the experiment works, they’ll see it here.
“Oh, he’s fat,” Kronk says.
She lays it in the measuring tray. It’s 65 millimeters and 2.5 grams, considerably bigger than the upstream average. The next fish is even fatter, at 66 mm and just over 3 g, and the one after that is fatter still, at 71 mm and 4 g.
“Wow, look at these guys. They’re doing great,” Montgomery says.
Although supplying bugs to fish in a free-flowing river doesn’t guarantee delivery, a system that monitors migrating salmon is already in place―so the researchers will know when to expect the fish and can serve them food from the fields at just the right time. “We can pump bugs into the river when fish are passing by,” Katz says. By spring, the salmon will have completed their journey, and the rice fields will be drained and ready for planting.
Rachelle Tallman, UC Davis Graduate student, creating an incision in a salmon fry after inserting a tracking tag. (Jak Wonderly/bioGraphic)
Fish biologists have long assumed that the larger young salmon are when they navigate the Delta, the faster they can swim and the better their chances of survival. “It’s a really dangerous place,” Trout Unlimited’s Rene Henery says. “There are lots of introduced predatory fish.” To date, however, there is no direct evidence that size is important to survival.
“In the fish world, we say bigger fish are more likely to make it to the ocean. But no one has actually looked at survival,” says Rachelle Tallman, a graduate student in fish ecology at UC Davis. Tallman is now heading up a project to do just that.
The project is part of an effort by the California Rice Commission to incentivize farmers to manage their rice fields in a way that benefits local wildlife. Paul Buttner, who manages environmental affairs for the commission, currently pays farmers to flood their fields for water birds migrating along the Pacific Flyway. He hopes to launch a similar program for salmon that would compensate farmers for creating floodplain nurseries for young, migrating fish. But first he needs solid proof that it works.
“How many salmon from fields survive and go out the Golden Gate?” Buttner asks. “More than those that grow up in the river?”
While the Rough and Ready plant was pumping bugs into the Sacramento River, Tallman was setting up a different experiment to assess how size affects a salmon’s success. She reared two sets of young salmon: some in a laboratory tank and others in rice fields in the Yolo Bypass. Now, on a warm April day near the edge of the bypass, she’s pulling fish from the rice fields and equipping them with acoustic tags so she can compare survival rates as they swim out to, and beyond, the Golden Gate.
Tallman stands at a fish-surgery station sheltered by a white tent. As she slips a young salmon into a bucket of anesthetic, she alerts her team that a surgery is in progress. “Dope!” she calls out. A minute later the fish has stopped wriggling and Tallman springs into action. In rapid succession, she weighs it, measures it, and places it on a foam block. Cool water streams across the fish, which lies motionless apart from flapping gills.
Surgical scissors in hand, Tallman cuts a small opening in its belly and pushes a centimeter-long tag inside. She closes the wound with a single stitch and knots both ends. “Fish out of surgery,” she calls. A crew member collects the salmon and puts it in a recovery bucket. The whole operation, including anesthesia, takes just two minutes. Then Tallman picks up another fish and starts the process anew. “Dope!” she says.
Back at the lab, another crew tags tank-reared fish. Collectively, the team tags more than 750 salmon.
A day after the surgeries, Tallman releases her tagged salmon into the wild, sending some into the Sacramento River and some into the Yolo Bypass, which drains into the Sacramento. About 200 underwater acoustic receivers will track their progress.
By early May, the first tagged fish have navigated the perils of the Delta. Now, they must traverse the San Francisco Bay—a huge body of water that covers more than 500 square miles. But this part of their journey is less risky. Once they’ve gotten this far, most young salmon readily find their way across the Bay and swim through its narrow opening beneath the Golden Gate Bridge, out into the Pacific Ocean. It will likely be December before Tallman can crunch all the data and tell Buttner whether—and how much—the rice field nurseries boost survival rates for the salmon. While the final verdict is still out, Buttner says they’re all hoping for a nice Christmas present.
The fish in Tallman’s study that do make it to the Pacific and survive in the open ocean will eventually attempt to return as adults to spawn in the Central Valley’s extensive but highly altered river system. It’s a journey the scientists hope will become at least slightly less challenging in the years to come. “We’re not going to get back what we once had,” Jeffres says. “But we can mimic it.” He and Katz envision waterways that are managed for flood control and farming but also for Chinook survival, ones with rice-field nurseries and bug farms to help restore self-sustaining salmon populations.
“It’s about welcoming the wild back into human landscapes in a way that makes sense,” Katz says. “We’re reimagining the system to work with nature.”
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She moved to the Bay Area in 1996 to study documentary filmmaking at the University of California, Berkeley, where she received master’s degrees in journalism and Latin American studies.","avatar":"https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/6d82c20152affd1b434c31a904c40809?s=600&d=blank&r=g","twitter":"gabrielaquirosr","facebook":null,"instagram":null,"linkedin":null,"sites":[{"site":"science","roles":["editor"]},{"site":"quest","roles":["editor","ef_view_calendar","ef_view_story_budget"]}],"headData":{"title":"Gabriela Quirós | KQED","description":"Video Producer and Reporter","ogImgSrc":"https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/6d82c20152affd1b434c31a904c40809?s=600&d=blank&r=g","twImgSrc":"https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/6d82c20152affd1b434c31a904c40809?s=600&d=blank&r=g"},"isLoading":false,"link":"/author/gabriela-quiros"},"joshua-cassidy":{"type":"authors","id":"6219","meta":{"index":"authors_1591205172","id":"6219","found":true},"name":"Josh Cassidy","firstName":"Josh","lastName":"Cassidy","slug":"joshua-cassidy","email":"jcassidy@kqed.org","display_author_email":false,"staff_mastheads":["science"],"title":"Digital Video Producer","bio":"Josh is a Senior Video Producer for KQED Science, and the Lead Producer and Cinematographer for Deep Look. 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FM","link":"/"}},"science_1992363":{"type":"posts","id":"science_1992363","meta":{"index":"posts_1591205157","site":"science","id":"1992363","found":true},"guestAuthors":[],"slug":"as-california-seeks-to-legalize-psychedelics-for-therapeutic-use-oregon-provides-key-lessons","title":"As California Seeks to Legalize Psychedelics for Therapy, Oregon Provides Key Lessons","publishDate":1712955643,"format":"standard","headTitle":"As California Seeks to Legalize Psychedelics for Therapy, Oregon Provides Key Lessons | KQED","labelTerm":{"site":"science"},"content":"\u003cp>California has an opportunity to massively expand places where people can use psychedelic drugs under supervision, according to a \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240SB1012\">new bill proposing to legalize substances\u003c/a> in approved service centers, including psilocybin, MDMA and mescaline for therapeutic use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a model similar to Oregon’s Psilocybin Services Act — the first law in the United States to establish a regulatory framework for receiving psilocybin, or psychedelic mushrooms — which went into effect in 2023.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, as California lawmakers look to legalize the therapeutic use of psychedelics, uneven outcomes of that legal experiment in Oregon are surfacing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was billed by a lot of people as a solution to Oregon’s mental health problems, as a new option for mental health treatment,” said Mason Marks, a visiting professor of law at Harvard Law School who served on the advisory board for Oregon’s new psychedelics law. “Now, some years later, you have evidence to suggest the system is largely serving a psychedelic tourism of people flying in from out of state to pay very high prices.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If passed in California, \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240SB1012\">SB 1012\u003c/a> would create a professional licensing board to train facilitators, develop guidelines and regulate the therapeutic use of psychedelics. People could then use regulated psychedelic substances like magic mushrooms under the supervision of a facilitator.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bill passed a critical and tense state committee hearing Monday afternoon. But only after lawmakers added an amendment that said facilitators must also hold at least one medical license, such as psychologists, psychiatrists, therapists, social workers and nurse practitioners.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In California, the program would be overseen by a new department called the Division of Regulated Psychedelic Substances Control that would adopt rules over the coming years for the approved substances.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We know psychedelic therapy saves lives, and safe and controlled access to these innovative treatments will be transformative for so many Californians seeking relief from mental health and addiction challenges,” San Francisco state Sen. Scott Wiener said upon announcing the bill. “When paired with therapeutic support, psychedelics show amazing promise for treating conditions that resist other forms of treatment.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year, Wiener pursued a different bill that would have broadly decriminalized personal use and possession of psychedelic substances. But Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed it and asked for a bill that focused on psychedelic therapy instead.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside label=\"Related Stories\" postID=\"news_11974814,science_1982857,arts_13898354\"]“Both peer-reviewed science and powerful personal anecdotes lead me to support new opportunities to address mental health through psychedelic medicines like those addressed in this bill,” Newsom said in his veto message last year. “I urge the legislature to send me legislation next year that includes therapeutic guidelines.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01336-3\">Studies\u003c/a> have shown that MDMA-assisted therapy can help mitigate symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. Other \u003ca href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8901083/\">studies\u003c/a> have also linked psilocybin as a tool for treating depression and LSD as an option for generalized anxiety disorder. However, a small portion of people have negative experiences using psychedelics, including anxiety, aggression and suicidal thoughts, particularly with recreational use outside of controlled studies where dosage is tightly controlled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The research literature points out the importance of a person’s mindset heading into a psychedelic experience, as well as their immediate environment, to preventing these negative outcomes, what Timothy Leary and his colleagues in the 1960s coined the “set and setting.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, clinical trials are underway at the Food and Drug Administration to approve several treatment courses with psychedelics, and an MDMA treatment course could be approved as early as August.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>A trip to the mushroom doctor\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>For ages, psychedelic substances have been used across cultures and societies for healing and medicinal purposes, as well as for recreational use. And unlike daily medications or weekly counseling, treatment with psychedelics usually takes a day or two, typically followed by counseling, according to Jennifer Mitchell, the chief of staff for research at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs and professor of psychiatry at UCSF.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That different approach to treatment attracted Tobias Shea, a veteran who participated in one of Oregon’s programs in 2023 who was struggling with post-traumatic stress symptoms after two tours in Afghanistan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote align=\"right\" size=\"medium\" citation=\"State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco)\"]‘We know psychedelic therapy saves lives, and safe and controlled access to these innovative treatments will be transformative for so many Californians seeking relief from mental health and addiction challenges.’[/pullquote]“I went through a big bout of depression in 2012 that I just couldn’t navigate,” he said. “I just suffered through it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before he went through with the therapy session in Oregon last fall, he had phone calls with a facilitator who asked him about his background and mental health to see if he would be a good candidate for the program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the day of his appointment, he arrived at the service center, which he described as a relaxed environment, similar to a massage parlor or spa. In a small, enclosed room, someone was assigned to give him the appropriate dosage. A different facilitator then entered the room, and the two went over his intentions for the session, which lasted seven hours.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For his first session, Shea said he sought to reflect on some of his experiences in the military and the grief he had struggled with following his father’s death.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t want to sound cliche here when I say this, but it opened my mind again to the bigger picture of, like, not just being a soldier anymore and not being involved with the military,” he said. “It brought me back into what it means to be a human.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Setbacks in Oregon, teachings for California\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Shea’s success story comes alongside mixed perceptions about issues with Oregon’s program. It’s still in its infancy, so advocates say there’s still time for things to sort out. But already, the state had to bail out the program using tax dollars because it hadn’t made enough money from service fees and revenues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Educating and training new facilitators — who work directly with individuals with mental challenges and who could need emergency help — has also been a hurdle. Organizations like the Synthesis Institute, which trained people to deliver psilocybin therapy, promised to revolutionize psychedelic-assisted therapy in Oregon. However, the school abruptly closed down in 2023 after going bankrupt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“An issue there with Oregon that I think has come up is how well-trained the guides are and what they’re being used for,” said Mitchell of UCSF.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Marks, who served on the Oregon Psilocybin Advisory Board for a year, is also critical of how centers brand their services as “therapy” when, in fact, they are not yet FDA-approved. Instead of psychedelic-assisted therapy as it’s often branded, he said Oregon legalized “supported adult use of psilocybin” and points out that providers can’t diagnose medication conditions or make medical claims.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s also proven to be unaffordable for many people who can’t pay out of pocket, reserving the new treatment approach for people who can pay for and travel to it. Several service centers have reported that the majority of their clients are \u003ca href=\"https://www.opb.org/article/2023/11/29/psilocybin-mushrooms-oregon-service-centers-price/\">visitors from out of state\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My estimation of the average cost of a psilocybin treatment course in Oregon is from about $1,500 to $3,500, and that’s for a single dose,” Marks said. “That obviously could get pretty expensive pretty quickly and is not affordable for a lot of people.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sen. Wiener’s bill incorporates some of the critiques from Oregon’s model. It also creates a new public-private fund that will promote education and safety around psychedelic substances, as well as guardrails against conflicts of interest among officials crafting psychedelic laws.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to the legislation, board members cannot have any immediate family with ownership or economic interest in any institution that’s engaged in psychedelic-assisted therapy education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As states roll out psilocybin decriminalization policies unevenly around the country, there’s increasingly room for inequitable opportunities and treatment outcomes, as well as drug enforcement challenges. But, believers say the inevitable kinks of the new policy will be worked out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Hindsight’s 2020, so we can use Oregon as the beta tester and say, ‘Oh, that didn’t work. Oh, that works really well,’” Mitchell said. “I want to laud them for trying it first.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n","blocks":[],"excerpt":"Following Gov. Gavin Newsom’s veto last year, lawmakers hope SB 1012 can finally regulate supervised use of psychedelics in California. ","status":"publish","parent":0,"modified":1713225945,"stats":{"hasAudio":false,"hasVideo":false,"hasChartOrMap":false,"iframeSrcs":[],"hasGoogleForm":false,"hasGallery":false,"hasHearkenModule":false,"hasPolis":false,"paragraphCount":32,"wordCount":1457},"headData":{"title":"As California Seeks to Legalize Psychedelics for Therapy, Oregon Provides Key Lessons | KQED","description":"Following Gov. Gavin Newsom’s veto last year, lawmakers hope SB 1012 can finally regulate supervised use of psychedelics in California. ","ogTitle":"","ogDescription":"","ogImgId":"","twTitle":"","twDescription":"","twImgId":""},"sticky":false,"excludeFromSiteSearch":"Include","articleAge":"0","path":"/science/1992363/as-california-seeks-to-legalize-psychedelics-for-therapeutic-use-oregon-provides-key-lessons","audioTrackLength":null,"parsedContent":[{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>California has an opportunity to massively expand places where people can use psychedelic drugs under supervision, according to a \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240SB1012\">new bill proposing to legalize substances\u003c/a> in approved service centers, including psilocybin, MDMA and mescaline for therapeutic use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a model similar to Oregon’s Psilocybin Services Act — the first law in the United States to establish a regulatory framework for receiving psilocybin, or psychedelic mushrooms — which went into effect in 2023.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, as California lawmakers look to legalize the therapeutic use of psychedelics, uneven outcomes of that legal experiment in Oregon are surfacing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was billed by a lot of people as a solution to Oregon’s mental health problems, as a new option for mental health treatment,” said Mason Marks, a visiting professor of law at Harvard Law School who served on the advisory board for Oregon’s new psychedelics law. “Now, some years later, you have evidence to suggest the system is largely serving a psychedelic tourism of people flying in from out of state to pay very high prices.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"fullwidth"},"numeric":["fullwidth"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If passed in California, \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240SB1012\">SB 1012\u003c/a> would create a professional licensing board to train facilitators, develop guidelines and regulate the therapeutic use of psychedelics. People could then use regulated psychedelic substances like magic mushrooms under the supervision of a facilitator.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bill passed a critical and tense state committee hearing Monday afternoon. But only after lawmakers added an amendment that said facilitators must also hold at least one medical license, such as psychologists, psychiatrists, therapists, social workers and nurse practitioners.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In California, the program would be overseen by a new department called the Division of Regulated Psychedelic Substances Control that would adopt rules over the coming years for the approved substances.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We know psychedelic therapy saves lives, and safe and controlled access to these innovative treatments will be transformative for so many Californians seeking relief from mental health and addiction challenges,” San Francisco state Sen. Scott Wiener said upon announcing the bill. “When paired with therapeutic support, psychedelics show amazing promise for treating conditions that resist other forms of treatment.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year, Wiener pursued a different bill that would have broadly decriminalized personal use and possession of psychedelic substances. But Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed it and asked for a bill that focused on psychedelic therapy instead.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"aside","attributes":{"named":{"label":"Related Stories ","postid":"news_11974814,science_1982857,arts_13898354"},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“Both peer-reviewed science and powerful personal anecdotes lead me to support new opportunities to address mental health through psychedelic medicines like those addressed in this bill,” Newsom said in his veto message last year. “I urge the legislature to send me legislation next year that includes therapeutic guidelines.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01336-3\">Studies\u003c/a> have shown that MDMA-assisted therapy can help mitigate symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. Other \u003ca href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8901083/\">studies\u003c/a> have also linked psilocybin as a tool for treating depression and LSD as an option for generalized anxiety disorder. However, a small portion of people have negative experiences using psychedelics, including anxiety, aggression and suicidal thoughts, particularly with recreational use outside of controlled studies where dosage is tightly controlled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The research literature points out the importance of a person’s mindset heading into a psychedelic experience, as well as their immediate environment, to preventing these negative outcomes, what Timothy Leary and his colleagues in the 1960s coined the “set and setting.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, clinical trials are underway at the Food and Drug Administration to approve several treatment courses with psychedelics, and an MDMA treatment course could be approved as early as August.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>A trip to the mushroom doctor\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>For ages, psychedelic substances have been used across cultures and societies for healing and medicinal purposes, as well as for recreational use. And unlike daily medications or weekly counseling, treatment with psychedelics usually takes a day or two, typically followed by counseling, according to Jennifer Mitchell, the chief of staff for research at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs and professor of psychiatry at UCSF.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That different approach to treatment attracted Tobias Shea, a veteran who participated in one of Oregon’s programs in 2023 who was struggling with post-traumatic stress symptoms after two tours in Afghanistan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"‘We know psychedelic therapy saves lives, and safe and controlled access to these innovative treatments will be transformative for so many Californians seeking relief from mental health and addiction challenges.’","name":"pullquote","attributes":{"named":{"align":"right","size":"medium","citation":"State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco)","label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“I went through a big bout of depression in 2012 that I just couldn’t navigate,” he said. “I just suffered through it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before he went through with the therapy session in Oregon last fall, he had phone calls with a facilitator who asked him about his background and mental health to see if he would be a good candidate for the program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the day of his appointment, he arrived at the service center, which he described as a relaxed environment, similar to a massage parlor or spa. In a small, enclosed room, someone was assigned to give him the appropriate dosage. A different facilitator then entered the room, and the two went over his intentions for the session, which lasted seven hours.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For his first session, Shea said he sought to reflect on some of his experiences in the military and the grief he had struggled with following his father’s death.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t want to sound cliche here when I say this, but it opened my mind again to the bigger picture of, like, not just being a soldier anymore and not being involved with the military,” he said. “It brought me back into what it means to be a human.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Setbacks in Oregon, teachings for California\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Shea’s success story comes alongside mixed perceptions about issues with Oregon’s program. It’s still in its infancy, so advocates say there’s still time for things to sort out. But already, the state had to bail out the program using tax dollars because it hadn’t made enough money from service fees and revenues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Educating and training new facilitators — who work directly with individuals with mental challenges and who could need emergency help — has also been a hurdle. Organizations like the Synthesis Institute, which trained people to deliver psilocybin therapy, promised to revolutionize psychedelic-assisted therapy in Oregon. However, the school abruptly closed down in 2023 after going bankrupt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“An issue there with Oregon that I think has come up is how well-trained the guides are and what they’re being used for,” said Mitchell of UCSF.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Marks, who served on the Oregon Psilocybin Advisory Board for a year, is also critical of how centers brand their services as “therapy” when, in fact, they are not yet FDA-approved. Instead of psychedelic-assisted therapy as it’s often branded, he said Oregon legalized “supported adult use of psilocybin” and points out that providers can’t diagnose medication conditions or make medical claims.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s also proven to be unaffordable for many people who can’t pay out of pocket, reserving the new treatment approach for people who can pay for and travel to it. Several service centers have reported that the majority of their clients are \u003ca href=\"https://www.opb.org/article/2023/11/29/psilocybin-mushrooms-oregon-service-centers-price/\">visitors from out of state\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My estimation of the average cost of a psilocybin treatment course in Oregon is from about $1,500 to $3,500, and that’s for a single dose,” Marks said. “That obviously could get pretty expensive pretty quickly and is not affordable for a lot of people.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sen. Wiener’s bill incorporates some of the critiques from Oregon’s model. It also creates a new public-private fund that will promote education and safety around psychedelic substances, as well as guardrails against conflicts of interest among officials crafting psychedelic laws.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to the legislation, board members cannot have any immediate family with ownership or economic interest in any institution that’s engaged in psychedelic-assisted therapy education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As states roll out psilocybin decriminalization policies unevenly around the country, there’s increasingly room for inequitable opportunities and treatment outcomes, as well as drug enforcement challenges. But, believers say the inevitable kinks of the new policy will be worked out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Hindsight’s 2020, so we can use Oregon as the beta tester and say, ‘Oh, that didn’t work. Oh, that works really well,’” Mitchell said. “I want to laud them for trying it first.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"floatright"},"numeric":["floatright"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}}],"link":"/science/1992363/as-california-seeks-to-legalize-psychedelics-for-therapeutic-use-oregon-provides-key-lessons","authors":["11840"],"categories":["science_39","science_3890","science_40","science_4450"],"tags":["science_4417","science_4414","science_4008","science_5269"],"featImg":"science_1992374","label":"science"},"science_1992380":{"type":"posts","id":"science_1992380","meta":{"index":"posts_1591205157","site":"science","id":"1992380","found":true},"guestAuthors":[],"slug":"watch-ferns-get-freaky","title":"Watch Ferns Get Freaky","publishDate":1713278865,"format":"video","headTitle":"Watch Ferns Get Freaky | KQED","labelTerm":{"term":1935,"site":"science"},"content":"\u003cp>[dl_subscribe]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Look at the underside of a fern leaf. Those rows of orange clusters aren’t tiny insects; they’re spores waiting to be catapulted away. Once a spore lands, it grows into a tiny plant, from which fern sperm swim away, searching for an egg to fertilize. Think of \u003cem>that \u003c/em>next time you’re hiking in the forest.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>TRANSCRIPT\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>The undersides of ferns have many looks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But all these intricate structures do the same thing. They hold – and then launch – the fern’s spores.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Spores are the main way ferns make more ferns, but they’re not the eggs or sperm. Those come later.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since before the dinosaurs roamed … and plants grew sex organs called flowers … ferns have been “doing it” through flying spores and swimming sperm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the spores mature, a fern leaf comes alive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Look how things are moving under there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Each of these clusters is called a sorus. And every worm-like thingy is a sporangium full of spores.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The sporangium has an outer ring filled with water. When it’s warm outside, that water starts to evaporate. The ring shrinks, making the sporangium crack open. The ring bends farther and farther back. The sporangium jerks forward … and catapults the spores out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A single fern launches millions of spores.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Each one grows into a gametophyte. But these pea-sized plants aren’t baby ferns. Where their fern parent was asexual, the gametophytes make eggs and sperm in specialized organs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yep, fern sperm. It’s a thing. Look at these little curlicues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the rains come, sperm swim away from the gametophyte that made them – a tiny puddle will do. They follow a trail of pheromones to find eggs stored in nearby gametophytes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When sperm meets egg, ta-da! A fern sprouts right out of its gametophyte mother, which it feeds on. Now, this is a baby fern. Finally. Awww.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ferns don’t need to wait around for some insect to help them with pollination.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They can go it alone, as long as there’s water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, next time you go on a walk through a damp forest, think of the ferns getting busy all around you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Happy Earth Month, everybody! Ferns aren’t the only ones that go it alone. Jellyfish can go through a “stack-of-pancakes” phase to clone themselves. You gotta see it to believe it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All this month PBS is dropping new videos celebrating our amazing planet, like this episode of “Reactions,” which takes a deep look at geoengineering one of the deepest places on Earth: the ocean. Links to that video and the full Earth Month playlist in the description.\u003c/p>\n\n","blocks":[],"excerpt":"Look at the underside of a fern leaf. Those rows of orange clusters aren’t tiny insects; they’re spores waiting to be catapulted away. Once a spore lands, it grows into a tiny plant, from which fern sperm swim away, searching for an egg to fertilize. Think of that next time you’re hiking in the forest.","status":"publish","parent":0,"modified":1713278825,"stats":{"hasAudio":false,"hasVideo":false,"hasChartOrMap":false,"iframeSrcs":[],"hasGoogleForm":false,"hasGallery":false,"hasHearkenModule":false,"hasPolis":false,"paragraphCount":22,"wordCount":464},"headData":{"title":"Watch Ferns Get Freaky | KQED","description":"Look at the underside of a fern leaf. Those rows of orange clusters aren’t tiny insects; they’re spores waiting to be catapulted away. Once a spore lands, it grows into a tiny plant, from which fern sperm swim away, searching for an egg to fertilize. Think of that next time you’re hiking in the forest.","ogTitle":"","ogDescription":"","ogImgId":"","twTitle":"","twDescription":"","twImgId":""},"videoEmbed":"https://youtu.be/waMtqP1U6-8?si=8yWsnVaJGVmm6hPy","sticky":false,"excludeFromSiteSearch":"Include","articleAge":"0","path":"/science/1992380/watch-ferns-get-freaky","audioTrackLength":null,"parsedContent":[{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"dl_subscribe","attributes":{"named":{"label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Look at the underside of a fern leaf. Those rows of orange clusters aren’t tiny insects; they’re spores waiting to be catapulted away. Once a spore lands, it grows into a tiny plant, from which fern sperm swim away, searching for an egg to fertilize. Think of \u003cem>that \u003c/em>next time you’re hiking in the forest.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>TRANSCRIPT\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>The undersides of ferns have many looks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But all these intricate structures do the same thing. They hold – and then launch – the fern’s spores.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Spores are the main way ferns make more ferns, but they’re not the eggs or sperm. Those come later.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"fullwidth"},"numeric":["fullwidth"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since before the dinosaurs roamed … and plants grew sex organs called flowers … ferns have been “doing it” through flying spores and swimming sperm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the spores mature, a fern leaf comes alive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Look how things are moving under there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Each of these clusters is called a sorus. And every worm-like thingy is a sporangium full of spores.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The sporangium has an outer ring filled with water. When it’s warm outside, that water starts to evaporate. The ring shrinks, making the sporangium crack open. The ring bends farther and farther back. The sporangium jerks forward … and catapults the spores out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A single fern launches millions of spores.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Each one grows into a gametophyte. But these pea-sized plants aren’t baby ferns. Where their fern parent was asexual, the gametophytes make eggs and sperm in specialized organs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yep, fern sperm. It’s a thing. Look at these little curlicues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the rains come, sperm swim away from the gametophyte that made them – a tiny puddle will do. They follow a trail of pheromones to find eggs stored in nearby gametophytes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When sperm meets egg, ta-da! A fern sprouts right out of its gametophyte mother, which it feeds on. Now, this is a baby fern. Finally. Awww.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ferns don’t need to wait around for some insect to help them with pollination.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They can go it alone, as long as there’s water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, next time you go on a walk through a damp forest, think of the ferns getting busy all around you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Happy Earth Month, everybody! Ferns aren’t the only ones that go it alone. Jellyfish can go through a “stack-of-pancakes” phase to clone themselves. You gotta see it to believe it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All this month PBS is dropping new videos celebrating our amazing planet, like this episode of “Reactions,” which takes a deep look at geoengineering one of the deepest places on Earth: the ocean. Links to that video and the full Earth Month playlist in the description.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}}],"link":"/science/1992380/watch-ferns-get-freaky","authors":["6186"],"series":["science_1935"],"categories":["science_30","science_40","science_4450","science_86"],"tags":["science_1970","science_4414","science_1097"],"featImg":"science_1992383","label":"science_1935"},"science_1992309":{"type":"posts","id":"science_1992309","meta":{"index":"posts_1591205157","site":"science","id":"1992309","found":true},"guestAuthors":[],"slug":"californias-commercial-salmon-season-is-closed-again-this-year","title":"California’s Commercial Salmon Season Is Closed Again This Year","publishDate":1712801467,"format":"standard","headTitle":"California’s Commercial Salmon Season Is Closed Again This Year | KQED","labelTerm":{},"content":"\u003cp>Not enough salmon will swim up the state’s rivers to spawn this year to make a commercial salmon season viable, the Pacific Fishery Management Council announced late Wednesday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“The number of fish that could be available for harvest was so small there was risk that we wouldn’t be able to conduct a fishery and stay within our limitations,” Robin Ehlke, a staff officer with the Salmon and Pacific Halibut Pacific Fishery Management Council, told KQED. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Matt Juanes, Bay Area fisher\"]‘I’d rather see the fish go back up the river.’[/pullquote]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is the second year in a row that the council voted to close the season, which hundreds of commercial fishers and tribes rely on for their livelihoods and food supplies. This year’s scarcity of Chinook salmon is tied to California’s last drought. The fish have a three-year lifecycle, so the returning fish were born when there wasn’t enough water to thrive. The issues threatening the species extend well beyond the recent dry years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“We hope the decision gives the benefit to the fish so they can rebuild themselves and be available for fisheries in future years,” Ehlke said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California’s water management decisions have played a significant role in the species’ decline over the years — cutting off the fish from spawning grounds and decreasing the cold water the salmon need.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1984149/as-klamath-dams-come-down-a-once-in-a-generation-river-restoration-begins\">State leaders unveiled a blueprint to boost salmon populations\u003c/a> in January, including tearing down dams that block salmon from spawning grounds and restoring some river flows. However, scientists and environmental groups argue that the pace of the work is too slow and that some salmon runs may not exist by the time the state completes the projects.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘It comes down to water’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The closing of the salmon season will force Matt Juanes, who docks his green and white 36-foot-long boat, Plumeria, at San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf, to diversify his income this year. Juanes said he will likely lose nearly half his income. “This year is going to be very difficult,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1992315\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/2024/04/10/californias-commercial-salmon-season-is-closed-again-this-year/230607-salmon-closures-02-ks_qut-2/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-1992315\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1992315 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2024/04/230607-salmon-closures-02-ks_qut-1.jpg\" alt=\"A man dressed in black jacket and a black beanie stands on a boat surrounded by orange and white boating supplies. The sky behind him is purple and pink\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1277\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2024/04/230607-salmon-closures-02-ks_qut-1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2024/04/230607-salmon-closures-02-ks_qut-1-800x532.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2024/04/230607-salmon-closures-02-ks_qut-1-1020x678.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2024/04/230607-salmon-closures-02-ks_qut-1-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2024/04/230607-salmon-closures-02-ks_qut-1-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2024/04/230607-salmon-closures-02-ks_qut-1-1536x1022.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Commercial salmon fisher Matt Juanes prepares to set sail at Pier 47 in San Francisco on June 7, 2023. With California’s salmon season shut down this year, Juanes is pivoting to fish for crab and using his boat to charter tourists. (Kori Suzuki/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>He’s fished salmon for six years, and the numbers seem to dwindle each season, he said. The closure of the fishery was a gut punch, but he agreed that it was a necessary step for the species to rebound.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’d rather see the fish go back up the river,” he said. “It comes down to water. If it had rained, we probably wouldn’t be in this predicament.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Drought isn’t the only factor contributing to the demise of California’s salmon.[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Robert Lusardi, UC Davis wetlands professor\"]‘That’s a beacon of hope for the future, but it has to happen at a faster rate. We need these habitats like yesterday.’[/pullquote]Also to blame is a \u003ca href=\"https://oehha.ca.gov/climate-change/epic-2022/impacts-vegetation-and-wildlife/chinook-salmon-abundance#:~:text=California%20Chinook%20salmon%20populations%20are,dramatically%20declined%20in%20recent%20years.\">warming and acidifying ocean\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1992122/toxic-dust-threatens-california-salmon-population-lawmaker-seeks-solution\">toxic dust from tires that kills the fish in hours\u003c/a>, dams blocking migration paths, managers diverting water flows for storage and climate-fueled storms complicating river systems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With all these challenges, \u003ca href=\"https://caltrout.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/SOS-II-Fish-in-Hot-Water-Report.pdf\">the state could lose nearly half of its native salmon and trout species\u003c/a> within 50 years, according to a study co-authored by UC Davis professor Robert Lusardi.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lusardi, who studies freshwater ecology and wetlands, said the closure of the salmon season is a direct result of humans’ alteration of the salmon habitat. Nearly 2 million salmon historically swam up rivers within the Central Valley. This year, Lusardi expects just over 200,000 to spawn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What we have left are small populations that I would argue are not diverse, which means they are incapable of acclimating to changing environments,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘We need these habitats like yesterday’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In January, \u003ca href=\"https://www.gov.ca.gov/2024/01/30/governor-newsom-launches-californias-salmon-strategy-for-a-hotter-drier-future/\">Gov. Gavin Newsom outlined his administration’s strategy to restore salmon populations\u003c/a> “amidst hotter and drier weather exacerbated by climate change.” The sprawling plan includes improving salmon migration pathways, tearing down dams that block fish from spawning, updating hatcheries and restoring flows in some waterways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California — alongside environmental groups, tribes and scientists — has started to restore floodplains where juvenile fish can grow into what conservationists call “\u003ca href=\"https://www.capradio.org/articles/2018/01/23/a-floating-fillet-rice-farmers-grow-bugs-to-help-restore-californias-salmon/\">floodplain fatties\u003c/a>\u003ca href=\"https://www.capradio.org/articles/2018/01/23/a-floating-fillet-rice-farmers-grow-bugs-to-help-restore-californias-salmon/\">,\u003c/a>” a nickname for the well-fed salmon that feed off bugs in flooded areas. The state is \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1984149/as-klamath-dams-come-down-a-once-in-a-generation-river-restoration-begins\">removing four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River partly so fish have more room to spawn\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s a beacon of hope for the future, but it has to happen at a faster rate,” Lusardi said. “We need these habitats like yesterday.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State scientists, including Colin Purdy, environmental program manager for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, are tasked with implementing the governor’s plan. They have a considerable feat ahead of them. While some of the actions outlined in the state’s new blueprint are already underway, Purdy said changing how fisheries operate “takes years of doing pilot studies to flesh out the details” before hatchery managers can reintroduce the fish into habitats.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The sooner we can get started on that stuff, the better,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Golden State Salmon Association and other groups critiqued the governor’s plan. They argue that while it has some suitable components, California is also pursuing projects — a new reservoir and a 45-mile water tunnel beneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to divert more water south — that could decrease the amount of cold water in rivers where salmon need to live.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re being distracted by this smoke and mirrors scenario,” said Scott Artis, the association’s executive director. “If we don’t address the water diversions, we’re going to continue to see salmon numbers decline, and we’re going to continue to be in a situation where there are closures.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n","blocks":[],"excerpt":"Fishery managers announced a closure of the state’s commercial salmon fishing season for the second year in a row due to low fish populations.","status":"publish","parent":0,"modified":1712857008,"stats":{"hasAudio":false,"hasVideo":false,"hasChartOrMap":false,"iframeSrcs":[],"hasGoogleForm":false,"hasGallery":false,"hasHearkenModule":false,"hasPolis":false,"paragraphCount":23,"wordCount":1066},"headData":{"title":"California’s Commercial Salmon Season Is Closed Again This Year | KQED","description":"Fishery managers announced a closure of the state’s commercial salmon fishing season for the second year in a row due to low fish populations.","ogTitle":"","ogDescription":"","ogImgId":"","twTitle":"","twDescription":"","twImgId":""},"source":"Salmon","sticky":false,"excludeFromSiteSearch":"Include","articleAge":"0","path":"/science/1992309/californias-commercial-salmon-season-is-closed-again-this-year","audioTrackLength":null,"parsedContent":[{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Not enough salmon will swim up the state’s rivers to spawn this year to make a commercial salmon season viable, the Pacific Fishery Management Council announced late Wednesday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“The number of fish that could be available for harvest was so small there was risk that we wouldn’t be able to conduct a fishery and stay within our limitations,” Robin Ehlke, a staff officer with the Salmon and Pacific Halibut Pacific Fishery Management Council, told KQED. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"‘I’d rather see the fish go back up the river.’","name":"pullquote","attributes":{"named":{"size":"medium","align":"right","citation":"Matt Juanes, Bay Area fisher","label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is the second year in a row that the council voted to close the season, which hundreds of commercial fishers and tribes rely on for their livelihoods and food supplies. This year’s scarcity of Chinook salmon is tied to California’s last drought. The fish have a three-year lifecycle, so the returning fish were born when there wasn’t enough water to thrive. The issues threatening the species extend well beyond the recent dry years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"fullwidth"},"numeric":["fullwidth"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“We hope the decision gives the benefit to the fish so they can rebuild themselves and be available for fisheries in future years,” Ehlke said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California’s water management decisions have played a significant role in the species’ decline over the years — cutting off the fish from spawning grounds and decreasing the cold water the salmon need.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1984149/as-klamath-dams-come-down-a-once-in-a-generation-river-restoration-begins\">State leaders unveiled a blueprint to boost salmon populations\u003c/a> in January, including tearing down dams that block salmon from spawning grounds and restoring some river flows. However, scientists and environmental groups argue that the pace of the work is too slow and that some salmon runs may not exist by the time the state completes the projects.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘It comes down to water’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The closing of the salmon season will force Matt Juanes, who docks his green and white 36-foot-long boat, Plumeria, at San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf, to diversify his income this year. Juanes said he will likely lose nearly half his income. “This year is going to be very difficult,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1992315\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/2024/04/10/californias-commercial-salmon-season-is-closed-again-this-year/230607-salmon-closures-02-ks_qut-2/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-1992315\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1992315 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2024/04/230607-salmon-closures-02-ks_qut-1.jpg\" alt=\"A man dressed in black jacket and a black beanie stands on a boat surrounded by orange and white boating supplies. The sky behind him is purple and pink\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1277\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2024/04/230607-salmon-closures-02-ks_qut-1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2024/04/230607-salmon-closures-02-ks_qut-1-800x532.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2024/04/230607-salmon-closures-02-ks_qut-1-1020x678.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2024/04/230607-salmon-closures-02-ks_qut-1-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2024/04/230607-salmon-closures-02-ks_qut-1-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2024/04/230607-salmon-closures-02-ks_qut-1-1536x1022.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Commercial salmon fisher Matt Juanes prepares to set sail at Pier 47 in San Francisco on June 7, 2023. With California’s salmon season shut down this year, Juanes is pivoting to fish for crab and using his boat to charter tourists. (Kori Suzuki/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>He’s fished salmon for six years, and the numbers seem to dwindle each season, he said. The closure of the fishery was a gut punch, but he agreed that it was a necessary step for the species to rebound.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’d rather see the fish go back up the river,” he said. “It comes down to water. If it had rained, we probably wouldn’t be in this predicament.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Drought isn’t the only factor contributing to the demise of California’s salmon.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"‘That’s a beacon of hope for the future, but it has to happen at a faster rate. We need these habitats like yesterday.’","name":"pullquote","attributes":{"named":{"size":"medium","align":"right","citation":"Robert Lusardi, UC Davis wetlands professor","label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Also to blame is a \u003ca href=\"https://oehha.ca.gov/climate-change/epic-2022/impacts-vegetation-and-wildlife/chinook-salmon-abundance#:~:text=California%20Chinook%20salmon%20populations%20are,dramatically%20declined%20in%20recent%20years.\">warming and acidifying ocean\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1992122/toxic-dust-threatens-california-salmon-population-lawmaker-seeks-solution\">toxic dust from tires that kills the fish in hours\u003c/a>, dams blocking migration paths, managers diverting water flows for storage and climate-fueled storms complicating river systems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With all these challenges, \u003ca href=\"https://caltrout.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/SOS-II-Fish-in-Hot-Water-Report.pdf\">the state could lose nearly half of its native salmon and trout species\u003c/a> within 50 years, according to a study co-authored by UC Davis professor Robert Lusardi.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lusardi, who studies freshwater ecology and wetlands, said the closure of the salmon season is a direct result of humans’ alteration of the salmon habitat. Nearly 2 million salmon historically swam up rivers within the Central Valley. This year, Lusardi expects just over 200,000 to spawn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What we have left are small populations that I would argue are not diverse, which means they are incapable of acclimating to changing environments,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘We need these habitats like yesterday’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In January, \u003ca href=\"https://www.gov.ca.gov/2024/01/30/governor-newsom-launches-californias-salmon-strategy-for-a-hotter-drier-future/\">Gov. Gavin Newsom outlined his administration’s strategy to restore salmon populations\u003c/a> “amidst hotter and drier weather exacerbated by climate change.” The sprawling plan includes improving salmon migration pathways, tearing down dams that block fish from spawning, updating hatcheries and restoring flows in some waterways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California — alongside environmental groups, tribes and scientists — has started to restore floodplains where juvenile fish can grow into what conservationists call “\u003ca href=\"https://www.capradio.org/articles/2018/01/23/a-floating-fillet-rice-farmers-grow-bugs-to-help-restore-californias-salmon/\">floodplain fatties\u003c/a>\u003ca href=\"https://www.capradio.org/articles/2018/01/23/a-floating-fillet-rice-farmers-grow-bugs-to-help-restore-californias-salmon/\">,\u003c/a>” a nickname for the well-fed salmon that feed off bugs in flooded areas. The state is \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1984149/as-klamath-dams-come-down-a-once-in-a-generation-river-restoration-begins\">removing four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River partly so fish have more room to spawn\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s a beacon of hope for the future, but it has to happen at a faster rate,” Lusardi said. “We need these habitats like yesterday.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State scientists, including Colin Purdy, environmental program manager for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, are tasked with implementing the governor’s plan. They have a considerable feat ahead of them. While some of the actions outlined in the state’s new blueprint are already underway, Purdy said changing how fisheries operate “takes years of doing pilot studies to flesh out the details” before hatchery managers can reintroduce the fish into habitats.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The sooner we can get started on that stuff, the better,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Golden State Salmon Association and other groups critiqued the governor’s plan. They argue that while it has some suitable components, California is also pursuing projects — a new reservoir and a 45-mile water tunnel beneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to divert more water south — that could decrease the amount of cold water in rivers where salmon need to live.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re being distracted by this smoke and mirrors scenario,” said Scott Artis, the association’s executive director. “If we don’t address the water diversions, we’re going to continue to see salmon numbers decline, and we’re going to continue to be in a situation where there are closures.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}}],"link":"/science/1992309/californias-commercial-salmon-season-is-closed-again-this-year","authors":["11746"],"categories":["science_2874","science_31","science_35","science_36","science_4550","science_40","science_2873","science_4450","science_98"],"tags":["science_572","science_4417","science_4414","science_804"],"featImg":"science_1992343","label":"source_science_1992309"},"science_1992401":{"type":"posts","id":"science_1992401","meta":{"index":"posts_1591205157","site":"science","id":"1992401","found":true},"guestAuthors":[],"slug":"homeowners-insurance-market-stretched-even-thinner-as-2-more-companies-leave-california","title":"Homeowners Insurance Market Stretched Even Thinner as 2 More Companies Leave California","publishDate":1713481250,"format":"standard","headTitle":"Homeowners Insurance Market Stretched Even Thinner as 2 More Companies Leave California | KQED","labelTerm":{"site":"science"},"content":"\u003cp>Two additional insurance companies are pulling out of California. Tokio Marine America Insurance Co. and Trans Pacific Insurance Co., will not renew their customers’ home insurance policies, the California Department of Insurance confirmed to KQED in an email. The companies will begin mailing customers nonrenewal notices this summer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Compared with some high-profile departures, these companies are relatively small, together insuring around 12,000 homeowners. “Given the companies’ minimal market share, we do not expect this to affect the California market as consumers have other options,” Jazmín Ortega, deputy press secretary for the state’s insurance department, wrote to KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, their departure could worsen the insurance availability crisis at a time when more than 90% of companies within the admitted California insurance market are either not offering new property insurance or have heavy restrictions. Even among the companies listed in the California Department of Insurance’s \u003ca href=\"https://interactive.web.insurance.ca.gov/apex_extprd/f?p=400:50\">Home Insurance Finder tool\u003c/a>, the majority — about 70% — are not currently offering new plans, according to data gathered by the Susman Insurance Agency and shared with KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The companies did not specify their reasons for withdrawal in filings made with the state’s Department of Insurance as opposed to some like State Farm and Allstate which have explicitly cited wildfire risk. Both are subsidiaries of Tokio Marine Holdings, Inc., a Japanese company, and plan to get out of both the homeowners and personal umbrella insurance markets. The fact that they’re not renewing personal liability insurance as well may indicate their interest is to leave California entirely, as opposed to rebalancing their risk exposure before wading back into the market.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is bad timing,” said broker and insurance expert Karl Susman. “Because there’s no place for [customers] to go other than the FAIR Plan that is already bloated and overexposed based on what they’re designed for and what they’re financed for.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The FAIR Plan is California’s insurer of last resort, where customers can buy a policy when no other company will offer coverage. It’s expensive insurance and the policies are generally pretty lousy. Its ranks have also swelled enormously in the last few years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The FAIR Plan is getting a thousand applications per 24 hours, which is outrageous to even conceive of,” Susman said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside label=\"Related Stories\" postID=\"news_11980757,science_1985175,news_11981609\"]The FAIR Plan has more than $300 billion of assets they’re insuring, about \u003ca href=\"https://www.cfpnet.com/key-statistics-data/\">three times more than it did four years ago\u003c/a>. It has a tiny fraction of that saved in the bank, so in the event of a large-scale disaster it could become insolvent which would have \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1985175/insurance-in-california-is-changing-heres-how-it-may-affect-you\">catastrophic ripple effects\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The timing of the latest insurance company departure is also bad and, to some observers, confusing because the state is in the midst of a large overhaul of insurance regulations that are projected to ease conditions on insurance companies. The state’s insurance department is leading the effort and dubbed it the \u003ca href=\"https://www.insurance.ca.gov/01-consumers/180-climate-change/SustainableInsuranceStrategy.cfm\">Sustainable Insurance Strategy\u003c/a>. The proposed changes, many of which are desired by the insurance industry, are halfway rolled out with more being announced soon, and will go into effect at the end of the year. The \u003ca href=\"https://www.insurance.ca.gov/0250-insurers/0500-legal-info/0300-workshop-insurers/upload/Catastrophe-Modeling-and-Ratemaking-Invitation-to-Workshop.pdf\">next hearing\u003c/a>, on April 23, will consider catastrophe modeling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We literally are at the tail end of all of this [instability] before the carriers have the ability to underwrite, price, discount and do all of those things, and are able to come back and start competing again,” said Susman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n","blocks":[],"excerpt":"Tokio Marine America Insurance Co. and Trans Pacific Insurance Co. together insure around 12,000 homeowners, worsening California's insurance availability crisis.","status":"publish","parent":0,"modified":1713487105,"stats":{"hasAudio":false,"hasVideo":false,"hasChartOrMap":false,"iframeSrcs":[],"hasGoogleForm":false,"hasGallery":false,"hasHearkenModule":false,"hasPolis":false,"paragraphCount":12,"wordCount":604},"headData":{"title":"Homeowners Insurance Market Stretched Even Thinner as 2 More Companies Leave California | KQED","description":"Tokio Marine America Insurance Co. and Trans Pacific Insurance Co. together insure around 12,000 homeowners, worsening California's insurance availability crisis.","ogTitle":"","ogDescription":"","ogImgId":"","twTitle":"","twDescription":"","twImgId":""},"sticky":false,"excludeFromSiteSearch":"Include","articleAge":"0","path":"/science/1992401/homeowners-insurance-market-stretched-even-thinner-as-2-more-companies-leave-california","audioTrackLength":null,"parsedContent":[{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Two additional insurance companies are pulling out of California. Tokio Marine America Insurance Co. and Trans Pacific Insurance Co., will not renew their customers’ home insurance policies, the California Department of Insurance confirmed to KQED in an email. The companies will begin mailing customers nonrenewal notices this summer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Compared with some high-profile departures, these companies are relatively small, together insuring around 12,000 homeowners. “Given the companies’ minimal market share, we do not expect this to affect the California market as consumers have other options,” Jazmín Ortega, deputy press secretary for the state’s insurance department, wrote to KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, their departure could worsen the insurance availability crisis at a time when more than 90% of companies within the admitted California insurance market are either not offering new property insurance or have heavy restrictions. Even among the companies listed in the California Department of Insurance’s \u003ca href=\"https://interactive.web.insurance.ca.gov/apex_extprd/f?p=400:50\">Home Insurance Finder tool\u003c/a>, the majority — about 70% — are not currently offering new plans, according to data gathered by the Susman Insurance Agency and shared with KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"fullwidth"},"numeric":["fullwidth"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The companies did not specify their reasons for withdrawal in filings made with the state’s Department of Insurance as opposed to some like State Farm and Allstate which have explicitly cited wildfire risk. Both are subsidiaries of Tokio Marine Holdings, Inc., a Japanese company, and plan to get out of both the homeowners and personal umbrella insurance markets. The fact that they’re not renewing personal liability insurance as well may indicate their interest is to leave California entirely, as opposed to rebalancing their risk exposure before wading back into the market.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is bad timing,” said broker and insurance expert Karl Susman. “Because there’s no place for [customers] to go other than the FAIR Plan that is already bloated and overexposed based on what they’re designed for and what they’re financed for.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The FAIR Plan is California’s insurer of last resort, where customers can buy a policy when no other company will offer coverage. It’s expensive insurance and the policies are generally pretty lousy. Its ranks have also swelled enormously in the last few years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The FAIR Plan is getting a thousand applications per 24 hours, which is outrageous to even conceive of,” Susman said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"aside","attributes":{"named":{"label":"Related Stories ","postid":"news_11980757,science_1985175,news_11981609"},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The FAIR Plan has more than $300 billion of assets they’re insuring, about \u003ca href=\"https://www.cfpnet.com/key-statistics-data/\">three times more than it did four years ago\u003c/a>. It has a tiny fraction of that saved in the bank, so in the event of a large-scale disaster it could become insolvent which would have \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1985175/insurance-in-california-is-changing-heres-how-it-may-affect-you\">catastrophic ripple effects\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The timing of the latest insurance company departure is also bad and, to some observers, confusing because the state is in the midst of a large overhaul of insurance regulations that are projected to ease conditions on insurance companies. The state’s insurance department is leading the effort and dubbed it the \u003ca href=\"https://www.insurance.ca.gov/01-consumers/180-climate-change/SustainableInsuranceStrategy.cfm\">Sustainable Insurance Strategy\u003c/a>. The proposed changes, many of which are desired by the insurance industry, are halfway rolled out with more being announced soon, and will go into effect at the end of the year. The \u003ca href=\"https://www.insurance.ca.gov/0250-insurers/0500-legal-info/0300-workshop-insurers/upload/Catastrophe-Modeling-and-Ratemaking-Invitation-to-Workshop.pdf\">next hearing\u003c/a>, on April 23, will consider catastrophe modeling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We literally are at the tail end of all of this [instability] before the carriers have the ability to underwrite, price, discount and do all of those things, and are able to come back and start competing again,” said Susman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}}],"link":"/science/1992401/homeowners-insurance-market-stretched-even-thinner-as-2-more-companies-leave-california","authors":["11088"],"categories":["science_31","science_35","science_40","science_4450","science_3730"],"tags":["science_5275","science_5274","science_3779"],"featImg":"science_1992411","label":"science"},"science_1991791":{"type":"posts","id":"science_1991791","meta":{"index":"posts_1591205157","site":"science","id":"1991791","found":true},"guestAuthors":[],"slug":"hoping-for-a-2024-super-bloom-where-to-see-wildflowers-in-the-bay-area","title":"Hoping for a 2024 'Super Bloom'? Where to See Wildflowers in the Bay Area","publishDate":1710154846,"format":"image","headTitle":"Hoping for a 2024 ‘Super Bloom’? Where to See Wildflowers in the Bay Area | KQED","labelTerm":{"site":"science"},"content":"\u003cp>Spring is almost here. And with over 8,000 species of plants in California — more than half of them native to the state — it’s going to be an exciting place to experience the burst of colors from thousands of species of wildflowers the region has to offer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID='science_1981882,news_11733926,science_1982256' label='More guides from kqed']California’s biodiversity is thanks to our unique Mediterranean climate, geology, and geography. With a crescent of mountains, California is geographically isolated from the rest of North America.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We have the Cascade Mountains up in the north, the Sierra running along the east, and the transverse range in the south. And then, of course, bound by the ocean on the west,” said Lewis Reed, rangeland ecologist and botanist at Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This geographic isolation, Reed explained, essentially limits the dispersal of organisms and, more importantly, gene flow between related organisms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This means that over evolutionary history, we’ve ended up with a lot of unique things in California that are different than their ancestors elsewhere in North America,” Reed said, referring to the thousands of species of native plants in the state, including wildflowers.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Will we get a 2024 ‘super bloom’?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In 2023, nature lovers were thrilled by \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/outdoors/article/california-super-blooms-satellite-images-17891517.php\">images of Southern California’s “super blooms” visible from space\u003c/a>. But “super bloom” is not actually a scientific term, as Cameron Barrows, conservation ecologist at the Center for Conservation Biology at UC Riverside, told KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, it’s used — mainly by the media — to describe incredible and uncommon bloom events, when many different species of wildflowers bloom at the same time. “There might be anywhere [between] 50 to 100 different species in bloom during a super bloom event,” Barrows said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While it’s still too early to tell if the Bay Area will be blessed in 2024 with \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1981882/where-to-see-wildflowers-near-you-in-the-bay-area-plus-the-science-behind-the-super-bloom\">the same amount of beautiful blooms we had in previous years\u003c/a>, the amount of rain and how that rain is distributed relative to temperatures are factors to consider when forecasting the intensity of wildflower blooms, Reed said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1984535\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1984535\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/10/04262023_ksuzuki_warmweather-103-qut.jpg\" alt=\"Purple wildflowers blossom.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1277\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/10/04262023_ksuzuki_warmweather-103-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/10/04262023_ksuzuki_warmweather-103-qut-800x532.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/10/04262023_ksuzuki_warmweather-103-qut-1020x678.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/10/04262023_ksuzuki_warmweather-103-qut-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/10/04262023_ksuzuki_warmweather-103-qut-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/10/04262023_ksuzuki_warmweather-103-qut-1536x1022.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Stems of purple lupine blossom along Grizzly Peak Boulevard in Berkeley on April 26, 2023. \u003ccite>(Kori Suzuki/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>One way to look for signs of a big bloom is to go out early in the season once flowers start to germinate. \u003ca href=\"https://calscape.org/loc-California/Lupine%20(all)/vw-list/np-0\">Lupines,\u003c/a> a common wildflower in our region, for example, have very distinctive leaves that develop as the plant grows and are easy to recognize.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you learn your habitat of the areas that you’d like to explore and learn what to look for, you can get some hints well before those plants are going to bloom,” Reed said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.openspace.org/stories/plants-not-seen-over-century-found-coastal-preserves\">Reed recently discovered a clustered tarweed (Deinandra fasciculata)\u003c/a> in the Peninsula — a yellow-flowered plant not seen in San Mateo County for over a century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s one of the neat things about living and working in our area,” Reed said. “There’s always discovery to be made. It’s never the same from year to year.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Where and when can you see blooms in the Bay Area?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>When you’re heading out to enjoy the sight of these wildflower blooms, remember to respect the environment by staying on marked paths. Avoid picking any flowers or trampling on them — even accidentally. And remember to pack out anything you pack in on the trail.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We want to encourage folks to feel welcome, and to come out to the preserve to see this beautiful gift of biodiversity that we have,” said Ryan McCauley, public affairs specialist at Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District. “But we also really want to encourage folks to be respectful.“\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>McCauley also encouraged people to try to avoid visiting a bloom at peak times — like on the weekends. This way, you’ll be able to enjoy observing the different species of wildflowers without the large crowds, which could also raise the risk of accidentally stepping on the bright flowers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1981883\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2121px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1981883\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/GettyImages-1141101456.jpg\" alt=\"Yellow and white wildflower blooms seen in a meadow.\" width=\"2121\" height=\"1414\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/GettyImages-1141101456.jpg 2121w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/GettyImages-1141101456-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/GettyImages-1141101456-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/GettyImages-1141101456-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/GettyImages-1141101456-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/GettyImages-1141101456-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/GettyImages-1141101456-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/GettyImages-1141101456-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2121px) 100vw, 2121px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">California poppy (Eschscholzia californica) and various other wildflowers blooming in a meadow in San José. \u003ccite>(Sundry Photography/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>While out enjoying the wildflower blooms, Reed said visitors should slow down. “We’re sometimes really eager to get out and find the big showy, super bloom,” he said, but you’ll see there’s so much going on around us if you’re able to slow down and look closely. “I think almost anyone who does that will find it to be rewarding.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some parks require advanced booking for tickets, so be sure to visit the park’s website to get the most updated information. For safety purposes, stay informed about park closures and weather conditions. For those with allergies, don’t forget to bring medicine and take preventative measures before you leave home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can share your \u003ca href=\"https://www.inaturalist.org/\">sightings on the iNaturalist app\u003c/a>. This data will help experts in the field of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1981882/where-to-see-wildflowers-near-you-in-the-bay-area-plus-the-science-behind-the-super-bloom#phenology\">phenology\u003c/a> to track invasive species or animals in places where they weren’t seen before.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of the spots listed below will bloom during the spring and summer months, and the number of flowers that actually bloom will vary every year, depending on how much rain and dry weather we get. So, if you can’t make it out into nature soon, don’t worry: You’ve got time to spot some beautiful blooms over the next months.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Wildflower guided tours and events:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.ebparks.org/calendar/month?terms=wildflower\">Wildflower events at East Bay Regional Parks\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=30077\">Spring flower bloom updates by California State Parks\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.cnps-scv.org/events/wildflower-shows\">Wildflower shows at California Native Plant Society, Santa Clara Valley Chapter\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>San Francisco:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://sfrecpark.org/facilities/facility/details/Bernal-Heights-Park-151\">Bernal Heights\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://sfrecpark.org/facilities/facility/details/coronaheightspark-328\">Corona Heights\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://sfrecpark.org/facilities/facility/details/Grandview-Park-Trail-400\">Grandview Park\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.sfparksalliance.org/our-parks/parks/tank-hill\">Tank Hill\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://sfrecpark.org/716/McLaren-Park\">McLaren Park\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/goga/planyourvisit/landsend.htm\">Land’s End\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://presidio.gov/explore/attractions/batteries-to-bluffs-trail\">Batteries to Bluff Trail in Presidio\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://sfrecpark.org/511/Glen-Canyon-Park\">Glen Canyon Park\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://sfrecpark.org/facilities/facility/details/Balboa-Natural-Area-325\">Balboa Natural Area\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://sfrecpark.org/facilities/facility/details/Mt-Davidson-Park-190\">Mount Davidson\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>North Bay:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/pore/\">Point Reyes National Seashore\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>East Bay:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Hills\">Berkeley Hills\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.ebparks.org/parks/tilden\">Tilden Regional Park\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.ebparks.org/parks/coyote-hills\">Coyote Hills Regional Park\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.ebparks.org/parks/sunol\">Sunol Wilderness Regional Preserve\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>South Bay:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://parks.sccgov.org/santa-clara-county-parks/santa-teresa-county-park\">Stile Ranch Trail at Santa Teresa County Park\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://parks.sccgov.org/santa-clara-county-parks/calero-county-park\">Calero County Park\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://parks.sccgov.org/santa-clara-county-parks/coyote-lake-harvey-bear-ranch-park\">Coyote Lake Harvey Bear County Park\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://parks.sccgov.org/santa-clara-county-parks/almaden-quicksilver-county-park\">Almaden Quicksilver County Park\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://parks.sccgov.org/santa-clara-county-parks/joseph-d-grant-county-park\">Joseph D. Grant County Park\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://parks.sccgov.org/santa-clara-county-parks/uvas-canyon-county-park\">Uvas Canyon County Park\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"http://parks.ca.gov/henrycoe/\">Henry W. Coe State Park\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=517\">Mount Hamilton\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.openspaceauthority.org/preserves/rancho.html\">Rancho Cañada del Oro Open Space Preserve\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.openspaceauthority.org/preserves/coyotevalley.html\">Coyote Valley Open Space Preserve\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.openspace.org/preserves/sierra-azul\">Mount Umunhum, Sierra Azul Preserve\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.openspace.org/preserves/st-josephs-hill\">Manzanita Trail, St. Joseph’s Hill Preserve\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.sanjoseca.gov/Home/Components/FacilityDirectory/FacilityDirectory/2088/2028\">Alum Rock Park\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peninsula:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/goga/planyourvisit/moripoint.htm\">Mori Point, Pacifica\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.smcgov.org/parks/san-bruno-mountain-state-county-park\">San Bruno Mountain Park\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.smcgov.org/parks/edgewood-park-natural-preserve\">Edgewood Park and Natural Preserve\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.openspace.org/preserves/pulgas-ridge\">Pulgas Ridge Reserve\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.openspace.org/preserves/russian-ridge\">Russian Ridge Preserve\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Further from the Bay Area:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/pinn/\">Pinnacles National Park\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n","blocks":[],"excerpt":"While it's too soon know if California will get a 'super bloom' this year, there are still many options for beautiful wildflower hikes near you in the Bay Area. Here's where to find them, and what causes these seasonal blooms.","status":"publish","parent":0,"modified":1710189648,"stats":{"hasAudio":false,"hasVideo":false,"hasChartOrMap":false,"iframeSrcs":[],"hasGoogleForm":false,"hasGallery":false,"hasHearkenModule":false,"hasPolis":false,"paragraphCount":28,"wordCount":1123},"headData":{"title":"Hoping for a 2024 'Super Bloom'? Where to See Wildflowers in the Bay Area | KQED","description":"While it's too soon know if California will get a 'super bloom' this year, there are still many options for beautiful wildflower hikes near you in the Bay Area. Here's where to find them, and what causes these seasonal blooms.","ogTitle":"","ogDescription":"","ogImgId":"","twTitle":"","twDescription":"","twImgId":""},"sticky":false,"excludeFromSiteSearch":"Include","articleAge":"0","path":"/science/1991791/hoping-for-a-2024-super-bloom-where-to-see-wildflowers-in-the-bay-area","audioTrackLength":null,"parsedContent":[{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Spring is almost here. And with over 8,000 species of plants in California — more than half of them native to the state — it’s going to be an exciting place to experience the burst of colors from thousands of species of wildflowers the region has to offer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"aside","attributes":{"named":{"postid":"science_1981882,news_11733926,science_1982256","label":"More guides from kqed "},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>California’s biodiversity is thanks to our unique Mediterranean climate, geology, and geography. With a crescent of mountains, California is geographically isolated from the rest of North America.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We have the Cascade Mountains up in the north, the Sierra running along the east, and the transverse range in the south. And then, of course, bound by the ocean on the west,” said Lewis Reed, rangeland ecologist and botanist at Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This geographic isolation, Reed explained, essentially limits the dispersal of organisms and, more importantly, gene flow between related organisms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This means that over evolutionary history, we’ve ended up with a lot of unique things in California that are different than their ancestors elsewhere in North America,” Reed said, referring to the thousands of species of native plants in the state, including wildflowers.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Will we get a 2024 ‘super bloom’?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In 2023, nature lovers were thrilled by \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/outdoors/article/california-super-blooms-satellite-images-17891517.php\">images of Southern California’s “super blooms” visible from space\u003c/a>. But “super bloom” is not actually a scientific term, as Cameron Barrows, conservation ecologist at the Center for Conservation Biology at UC Riverside, told KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, it’s used — mainly by the media — to describe incredible and uncommon bloom events, when many different species of wildflowers bloom at the same time. “There might be anywhere [between] 50 to 100 different species in bloom during a super bloom event,” Barrows said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While it’s still too early to tell if the Bay Area will be blessed in 2024 with \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1981882/where-to-see-wildflowers-near-you-in-the-bay-area-plus-the-science-behind-the-super-bloom\">the same amount of beautiful blooms we had in previous years\u003c/a>, the amount of rain and how that rain is distributed relative to temperatures are factors to consider when forecasting the intensity of wildflower blooms, Reed said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1984535\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1984535\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/10/04262023_ksuzuki_warmweather-103-qut.jpg\" alt=\"Purple wildflowers blossom.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1277\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/10/04262023_ksuzuki_warmweather-103-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/10/04262023_ksuzuki_warmweather-103-qut-800x532.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/10/04262023_ksuzuki_warmweather-103-qut-1020x678.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/10/04262023_ksuzuki_warmweather-103-qut-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/10/04262023_ksuzuki_warmweather-103-qut-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/10/04262023_ksuzuki_warmweather-103-qut-1536x1022.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Stems of purple lupine blossom along Grizzly Peak Boulevard in Berkeley on April 26, 2023. \u003ccite>(Kori Suzuki/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>One way to look for signs of a big bloom is to go out early in the season once flowers start to germinate. \u003ca href=\"https://calscape.org/loc-California/Lupine%20(all)/vw-list/np-0\">Lupines,\u003c/a> a common wildflower in our region, for example, have very distinctive leaves that develop as the plant grows and are easy to recognize.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you learn your habitat of the areas that you’d like to explore and learn what to look for, you can get some hints well before those plants are going to bloom,” Reed said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.openspace.org/stories/plants-not-seen-over-century-found-coastal-preserves\">Reed recently discovered a clustered tarweed (Deinandra fasciculata)\u003c/a> in the Peninsula — a yellow-flowered plant not seen in San Mateo County for over a century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s one of the neat things about living and working in our area,” Reed said. “There’s always discovery to be made. It’s never the same from year to year.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"fullwidth"},"numeric":["fullwidth"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Where and when can you see blooms in the Bay Area?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>When you’re heading out to enjoy the sight of these wildflower blooms, remember to respect the environment by staying on marked paths. Avoid picking any flowers or trampling on them — even accidentally. And remember to pack out anything you pack in on the trail.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We want to encourage folks to feel welcome, and to come out to the preserve to see this beautiful gift of biodiversity that we have,” said Ryan McCauley, public affairs specialist at Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District. “But we also really want to encourage folks to be respectful.“\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>McCauley also encouraged people to try to avoid visiting a bloom at peak times — like on the weekends. This way, you’ll be able to enjoy observing the different species of wildflowers without the large crowds, which could also raise the risk of accidentally stepping on the bright flowers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1981883\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2121px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1981883\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/GettyImages-1141101456.jpg\" alt=\"Yellow and white wildflower blooms seen in a meadow.\" width=\"2121\" height=\"1414\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/GettyImages-1141101456.jpg 2121w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/GettyImages-1141101456-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/GettyImages-1141101456-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/GettyImages-1141101456-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/GettyImages-1141101456-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/GettyImages-1141101456-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/GettyImages-1141101456-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/GettyImages-1141101456-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2121px) 100vw, 2121px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">California poppy (Eschscholzia californica) and various other wildflowers blooming in a meadow in San José. \u003ccite>(Sundry Photography/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>While out enjoying the wildflower blooms, Reed said visitors should slow down. “We’re sometimes really eager to get out and find the big showy, super bloom,” he said, but you’ll see there’s so much going on around us if you’re able to slow down and look closely. “I think almost anyone who does that will find it to be rewarding.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some parks require advanced booking for tickets, so be sure to visit the park’s website to get the most updated information. For safety purposes, stay informed about park closures and weather conditions. For those with allergies, don’t forget to bring medicine and take preventative measures before you leave home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can share your \u003ca href=\"https://www.inaturalist.org/\">sightings on the iNaturalist app\u003c/a>. This data will help experts in the field of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1981882/where-to-see-wildflowers-near-you-in-the-bay-area-plus-the-science-behind-the-super-bloom#phenology\">phenology\u003c/a> to track invasive species or animals in places where they weren’t seen before.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of the spots listed below will bloom during the spring and summer months, and the number of flowers that actually bloom will vary every year, depending on how much rain and dry weather we get. So, if you can’t make it out into nature soon, don’t worry: You’ve got time to spot some beautiful blooms over the next months.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Wildflower guided tours and events:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.ebparks.org/calendar/month?terms=wildflower\">Wildflower events at East Bay Regional Parks\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=30077\">Spring flower bloom updates by California State Parks\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.cnps-scv.org/events/wildflower-shows\">Wildflower shows at California Native Plant Society, Santa Clara Valley Chapter\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>San Francisco:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://sfrecpark.org/facilities/facility/details/Bernal-Heights-Park-151\">Bernal Heights\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://sfrecpark.org/facilities/facility/details/coronaheightspark-328\">Corona Heights\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://sfrecpark.org/facilities/facility/details/Grandview-Park-Trail-400\">Grandview Park\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.sfparksalliance.org/our-parks/parks/tank-hill\">Tank Hill\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://sfrecpark.org/716/McLaren-Park\">McLaren Park\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/goga/planyourvisit/landsend.htm\">Land’s End\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://presidio.gov/explore/attractions/batteries-to-bluffs-trail\">Batteries to Bluff Trail in Presidio\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://sfrecpark.org/511/Glen-Canyon-Park\">Glen Canyon Park\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://sfrecpark.org/facilities/facility/details/Balboa-Natural-Area-325\">Balboa Natural Area\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://sfrecpark.org/facilities/facility/details/Mt-Davidson-Park-190\">Mount Davidson\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>North Bay:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/pore/\">Point Reyes National Seashore\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>East Bay:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Hills\">Berkeley Hills\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.ebparks.org/parks/tilden\">Tilden Regional Park\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.ebparks.org/parks/coyote-hills\">Coyote Hills Regional Park\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.ebparks.org/parks/sunol\">Sunol Wilderness Regional Preserve\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>South Bay:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://parks.sccgov.org/santa-clara-county-parks/santa-teresa-county-park\">Stile Ranch Trail at Santa Teresa County Park\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://parks.sccgov.org/santa-clara-county-parks/calero-county-park\">Calero County Park\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://parks.sccgov.org/santa-clara-county-parks/coyote-lake-harvey-bear-ranch-park\">Coyote Lake Harvey Bear County Park\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://parks.sccgov.org/santa-clara-county-parks/almaden-quicksilver-county-park\">Almaden Quicksilver County Park\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://parks.sccgov.org/santa-clara-county-parks/joseph-d-grant-county-park\">Joseph D. Grant County Park\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://parks.sccgov.org/santa-clara-county-parks/uvas-canyon-county-park\">Uvas Canyon County Park\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"http://parks.ca.gov/henrycoe/\">Henry W. Coe State Park\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=517\">Mount Hamilton\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.openspaceauthority.org/preserves/rancho.html\">Rancho Cañada del Oro Open Space Preserve\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.openspaceauthority.org/preserves/coyotevalley.html\">Coyote Valley Open Space Preserve\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.openspace.org/preserves/sierra-azul\">Mount Umunhum, Sierra Azul Preserve\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.openspace.org/preserves/st-josephs-hill\">Manzanita Trail, St. Joseph’s Hill Preserve\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.sanjoseca.gov/Home/Components/FacilityDirectory/FacilityDirectory/2088/2028\">Alum Rock Park\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peninsula:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/goga/planyourvisit/moripoint.htm\">Mori Point, Pacifica\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.smcgov.org/parks/san-bruno-mountain-state-county-park\">San Bruno Mountain Park\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.smcgov.org/parks/edgewood-park-natural-preserve\">Edgewood Park and Natural Preserve\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.openspace.org/preserves/pulgas-ridge\">Pulgas Ridge Reserve\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.openspace.org/preserves/russian-ridge\">Russian Ridge Preserve\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Further from the Bay Area:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/pinn/\">Pinnacles National Park\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"floatright"},"numeric":["floatright"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}}],"link":"/science/1991791/hoping-for-a-2024-super-bloom-where-to-see-wildflowers-in-the-bay-area","authors":["11631"],"categories":["science_40","science_4450"],"tags":["science_4992","science_4417","science_4414","science_179","science_3338","science_2371"],"featImg":"science_1991798","label":"science"},"science_1992348":{"type":"posts","id":"science_1992348","meta":{"index":"posts_1591205157","site":"science","id":"1992348","found":true},"guestAuthors":[],"slug":"is-it-time-for-an-essential-california-energy-code-to-get-a-climate-edit","title":"Is It Time for an Essential California Energy Code to Get a Climate Edit?","publishDate":1712878384,"format":"standard","headTitle":"Is It Time for an Essential California Energy Code to Get a Climate Edit? | KQED","labelTerm":{"site":"science"},"content":"\u003cp>Reducing gas use in buildings is tricky for lots of reasons. One of them is a California public utility code that you’ve probably never given much thought to. It’s referred to as the “\u003ca href=\"https://law.justia.com/codes/california/2022/code-puc/division-1/part-1/chapter-3/article-1/section-451/\">obligation to serve.\u003c/a>”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California requires that its public utilities provide service — whether that’s gas or electricity — to every customer who wants it at rates regulated by the California Public Utilities Commission.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The crux of the code is only a few words: “Every public utility shall furnish and maintain such adequate, efficient, just, and reasonable service.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Sen. Dave Min (D-Irvine)\"]‘It allows utilities, when reasonable, to phase out natural gas provision and switch over to all-electric when that makes economic sense when most of the residents want that.’[/pullquote]But it’s important because even if you live far from other homes, in a high-wildfire-risk area, for example, utilities must serve you, despite how much it will cost them. In turn, the state grants utilities a monopoly in a specific region.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But as the state races to cut greenhouse gas emissions from homes and commercial buildings, this code — born of good intention — has become a roadblock.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the simple reason of the holdout, if nearly an entire neighborhood wants to go electric and swap their gas appliances for equivalent electric ones, but one person does not, utilities will maintain the entire gas line for this community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=\"science_1991664,science_1992085,forum_2010101894437\" label=\"Related Stories\"]That’s because utilities worry courts will interpret the obligation to serve to mean that they must offer both gas and electricity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://law.stanford.edu/publications/removing-legal-barriers-to-building-electrification/\">Stanford legal scholars wrote, \u003c/a>“Precedent in California has not precisely outlined whether and how utilities can substitute electricity service for natural gas service.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“[The obligation to serve] is a major impediment to electrification, or at least trying to do it in an orderly way that avoids unneeded new investments in gas pipelines,” Matt Vespa, senior attorney at Earthjustice, told KQED in an email.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>How do we address this challenge?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>“The legislature probably needs to pass a law to clarify it,” said lawyer Michael Wara, Director of the Climate and Energy Policy Program at Stanford, “to create the kind of certainty that you’re going to need for companies to be okay abandoning [gas] infrastructure in the way that they’re going to have to.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1992352\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 683px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2024/04/GettyImages-1495707498.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1992352\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2024/04/GettyImages-1495707498.jpg\" alt=\"An aerial view of gas and oil pipelines by a small body of water and grassy landscape.\" width=\"683\" height=\"1024\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2024/04/GettyImages-1495707498.jpg 683w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2024/04/GettyImages-1495707498-160x240.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 683px) 100vw, 683px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Oil and gas pipelines run through the Delta near the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers as viewed from the air on May 22, 2023, near Rio Vista. \u003ccite>(George Rose/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For the past two years, Senator Dave Min (D-Irvine) has introduced \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240SB1221\">legislation \u003c/a>to do just that. The bill he introduced last year started broadly but narrowed its scope as it went through the legislature and ultimately died.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240SB1221\">This year’s newly introduced bill\u003c/a>, in its current form, would add a specific line to the state’s public utility code saying that a gas corporation could “cease providing service if adequate substitute energy service is reasonably available” that would support the end use the customer wants, like heating or cooling their home or cooking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It phases out some of the regulatory obstacles of switching to all-electric,” Min said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This basically allows us to start shifting over,” Min said. “It allows utilities, when reasonable, to phase out natural gas provision and switch over to all-electric when that makes economic sense when most of the residents want that. But it addresses the holdout problem.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The background\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>California homes and buildings are typically powered in two ways: by electricity and gas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But those systems are increasingly duplicative. Electric heat pumps can replace gas-powered space and water heaters. Electric clothes dryers can do the job of gas-powered ones. And electric and induction stoves, though wrapped up in the whirlwind of a culture war, are an alternative to their gas counterparts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/building-decarbonization\">A quarter of California’s carbon emissions come from homes\u003c/a>, businesses and the energy used to power them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the state moves towards its goal of \u003ca href=\"https://www.gov.ca.gov/2022/11/16/california-releases-worlds-first-plan-to-achieve-net-zero-carbon-pollution/\">carbon neutrality by 2045\u003c/a>, researchers and advocates are advising policymakers, regulators and utilities to facilitate significant reductions in the use of gas to power buildings.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A haphazard approach to electrification will lead to higher gas bills… mostly for low-income people\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Building electrification is mostly happening disjointedly right now. It’s based on the desires and finances of building owners. There have been a few projects where \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1984963/electric-avenue-one-oakland-blocks-improbable-journey-to-ditch-gas\">communities have tried to ditch gas altogether\u003c/a>, but these efforts are nascent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As more people electrify, fewer people use the gas system, which operates at a high, fixed cost that consumers pay. A high cost spread across fewer people means more enormous bills, largely for low-income people who rent or cannot afford to electrify their homes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One approach to managing costs for ratepayers on the gas system is to strategically retire gas lines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If every other home in California is electrified, you would still have to have the same size gas system,” said Mike Florio, former CPUC Commissioner and current energy consultant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But if you can electrify an entire neighborhood or community, then those pipes can be retired and you shrink the system and lower the cost of the system,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Each year, hundreds of miles of gas pipelines must be replaced for safety. And in some cases, it would be cheaper for the utility to pay the full cost of electrifying homes along that line rather than spend millions to replace it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sound like something that will never happen? PG&E has quietly executed more than a hundred of these projects since 2018. The idea is called “targeted electrification” and has been mostly limited to a small number of homes or businesses in rural locations at the end of long gas lines in need of repair. In most cases, it is cheaper for PG&E, and therefore their ratepayers, if the company pays to fully electrify customers on these lines and retire rather than replace them.\u003c/p>\n\n","blocks":[],"excerpt":"California’s 'obligation to serve' requires utilities to supply people with energy. However, in its current form, some think this code stands in the way of rapid, equitable and cost-effective decarbonization. New legislation may be the answer.","status":"publish","parent":0,"modified":1712937464,"stats":{"hasAudio":false,"hasVideo":false,"hasChartOrMap":false,"iframeSrcs":[],"hasGoogleForm":false,"hasGallery":false,"hasHearkenModule":false,"hasPolis":false,"paragraphCount":27,"wordCount":1049},"headData":{"title":"Is It Time for an Essential California Energy Code to Get a Climate Edit? | KQED","description":"California’s 'obligation to serve' requires utilities to supply people with energy. However, in its current form, some think this code stands in the way of rapid, equitable and cost-effective decarbonization. New legislation may be the answer.","ogTitle":"","ogDescription":"","ogImgId":"","twTitle":"","twDescription":"","twImgId":""},"sticky":false,"excludeFromSiteSearch":"Include","articleAge":"0","path":"/science/1992348/is-it-time-for-an-essential-california-energy-code-to-get-a-climate-edit","audioTrackLength":null,"parsedContent":[{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Reducing gas use in buildings is tricky for lots of reasons. One of them is a California public utility code that you’ve probably never given much thought to. It’s referred to as the “\u003ca href=\"https://law.justia.com/codes/california/2022/code-puc/division-1/part-1/chapter-3/article-1/section-451/\">obligation to serve.\u003c/a>”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California requires that its public utilities provide service — whether that’s gas or electricity — to every customer who wants it at rates regulated by the California Public Utilities Commission.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The crux of the code is only a few words: “Every public utility shall furnish and maintain such adequate, efficient, just, and reasonable service.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"‘It allows utilities, when reasonable, to phase out natural gas provision and switch over to all-electric when that makes economic sense when most of the residents want that.’","name":"pullquote","attributes":{"named":{"size":"medium","align":"right","citation":"Sen. Dave Min (D-Irvine)","label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>But it’s important because even if you live far from other homes, in a high-wildfire-risk area, for example, utilities must serve you, despite how much it will cost them. In turn, the state grants utilities a monopoly in a specific region.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But as the state races to cut greenhouse gas emissions from homes and commercial buildings, this code — born of good intention — has become a roadblock.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"fullwidth"},"numeric":["fullwidth"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the simple reason of the holdout, if nearly an entire neighborhood wants to go electric and swap their gas appliances for equivalent electric ones, but one person does not, utilities will maintain the entire gas line for this community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"aside","attributes":{"named":{"postid":"science_1991664,science_1992085,forum_2010101894437","label":"Related Stories "},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>That’s because utilities worry courts will interpret the obligation to serve to mean that they must offer both gas and electricity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://law.stanford.edu/publications/removing-legal-barriers-to-building-electrification/\">Stanford legal scholars wrote, \u003c/a>“Precedent in California has not precisely outlined whether and how utilities can substitute electricity service for natural gas service.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“[The obligation to serve] is a major impediment to electrification, or at least trying to do it in an orderly way that avoids unneeded new investments in gas pipelines,” Matt Vespa, senior attorney at Earthjustice, told KQED in an email.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>How do we address this challenge?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>“The legislature probably needs to pass a law to clarify it,” said lawyer Michael Wara, Director of the Climate and Energy Policy Program at Stanford, “to create the kind of certainty that you’re going to need for companies to be okay abandoning [gas] infrastructure in the way that they’re going to have to.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1992352\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 683px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2024/04/GettyImages-1495707498.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1992352\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2024/04/GettyImages-1495707498.jpg\" alt=\"An aerial view of gas and oil pipelines by a small body of water and grassy landscape.\" width=\"683\" height=\"1024\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2024/04/GettyImages-1495707498.jpg 683w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2024/04/GettyImages-1495707498-160x240.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 683px) 100vw, 683px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Oil and gas pipelines run through the Delta near the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers as viewed from the air on May 22, 2023, near Rio Vista. \u003ccite>(George Rose/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For the past two years, Senator Dave Min (D-Irvine) has introduced \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240SB1221\">legislation \u003c/a>to do just that. The bill he introduced last year started broadly but narrowed its scope as it went through the legislature and ultimately died.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240SB1221\">This year’s newly introduced bill\u003c/a>, in its current form, would add a specific line to the state’s public utility code saying that a gas corporation could “cease providing service if adequate substitute energy service is reasonably available” that would support the end use the customer wants, like heating or cooling their home or cooking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It phases out some of the regulatory obstacles of switching to all-electric,” Min said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This basically allows us to start shifting over,” Min said. “It allows utilities, when reasonable, to phase out natural gas provision and switch over to all-electric when that makes economic sense when most of the residents want that. But it addresses the holdout problem.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The background\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>California homes and buildings are typically powered in two ways: by electricity and gas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But those systems are increasingly duplicative. Electric heat pumps can replace gas-powered space and water heaters. Electric clothes dryers can do the job of gas-powered ones. And electric and induction stoves, though wrapped up in the whirlwind of a culture war, are an alternative to their gas counterparts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/building-decarbonization\">A quarter of California’s carbon emissions come from homes\u003c/a>, businesses and the energy used to power them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the state moves towards its goal of \u003ca href=\"https://www.gov.ca.gov/2022/11/16/california-releases-worlds-first-plan-to-achieve-net-zero-carbon-pollution/\">carbon neutrality by 2045\u003c/a>, researchers and advocates are advising policymakers, regulators and utilities to facilitate significant reductions in the use of gas to power buildings.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A haphazard approach to electrification will lead to higher gas bills… mostly for low-income people\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Building electrification is mostly happening disjointedly right now. It’s based on the desires and finances of building owners. There have been a few projects where \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1984963/electric-avenue-one-oakland-blocks-improbable-journey-to-ditch-gas\">communities have tried to ditch gas altogether\u003c/a>, but these efforts are nascent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As more people electrify, fewer people use the gas system, which operates at a high, fixed cost that consumers pay. A high cost spread across fewer people means more enormous bills, largely for low-income people who rent or cannot afford to electrify their homes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One approach to managing costs for ratepayers on the gas system is to strategically retire gas lines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If every other home in California is electrified, you would still have to have the same size gas system,” said Mike Florio, former CPUC Commissioner and current energy consultant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But if you can electrify an entire neighborhood or community, then those pipes can be retired and you shrink the system and lower the cost of the system,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Each year, hundreds of miles of gas pipelines must be replaced for safety. And in some cases, it would be cheaper for the utility to pay the full cost of electrifying homes along that line rather than spend millions to replace it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sound like something that will never happen? PG&E has quietly executed more than a hundred of these projects since 2018. The idea is called “targeted electrification” and has been mostly limited to a small number of homes or businesses in rural locations at the end of long gas lines in need of repair. In most cases, it is cheaper for PG&E, and therefore their ratepayers, if the company pays to fully electrify customers on these lines and retire rather than replace them.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}}],"link":"/science/1992348/is-it-time-for-an-essential-california-energy-code-to-get-a-climate-edit","authors":["8648"],"categories":["science_33","science_35","science_40","science_4450"],"tags":["science_135","science_4417","science_4414","science_2164","science_1041"],"featImg":"science_1992354","label":"science"},"science_1985175":{"type":"posts","id":"science_1985175","meta":{"index":"posts_1591205157","site":"science","id":"1985175","found":true},"guestAuthors":[],"slug":"insurance-in-california-is-changing-heres-how-it-may-affect-you","title":"Insurance In California Is Changing. Here's How It May Affect You","publishDate":1699887607,"format":"image","headTitle":"Insurance In California Is Changing. Here’s How It May Affect You | KQED","labelTerm":{},"content":"\u003cp>\u003cem>This story is part of the third season of KQED’s podcast Sold Out: Rethinking Housing in America. You can \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/podcasts/soldout\">find that series here\u003c/a> and read about why \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1984697/why-kqed-focused-a-season-of-its-housing-podcast-on-climate-change#:~:text=Sold%20Out%20Is%20Back%20With%20Season%203&text=Host%20Erin%20Baldassari%20leads%20a,an%20affordable%20place%20to%20live.\">KQED chose to focus a season of its housing podcast on climate change\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For most people, insurance is the first line of defense against climate change. When struck by wildfire, flooding or other calamity, an adequate insurance policy can come to the rescue. It’s like a financial first responder, an ambulance full of money to help people back onto their feet. Insurance is the reason something bad happening to you, like losing your home in a wildfire, doesn’t guarantee a slide into poverty.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the industry is in serious trouble. Climate disasters around the state, especially worsening wildfires, threaten the current business model and millions of middle-class Californians. Climate risks exist everywhere. However, California is notable for companies racing out of Dodge. Seven of the top 12 insurance companies in the state, including Allstate, State Farm, Farmers Insurance and American International Group (AIG), have left California or pulled back from offering new policies in the last year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the Golden State grapples with the devastating consequences of increasingly frequent and intense wildfires, California officials are crafting a major overhaul to insurance regulations. It is meant to stop the exodus of companies and promote market stability, but it will almost certainly mean that insurance premiums will rise. Here is what we know, what to expect, and how it may affect you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=KQINC3046460401&light=true\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>Jump straight to:\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli style=\"list-style-type: none\">\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\n\u003ch5>\u003ca href=\"#action\">\u003cstrong>California announces action, at last\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003c/h5>\n\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\n\u003ch5>\u003ca href=\"#trouble\">\u003cstrong>Why the insurance market is in trouble\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003c/h5>\n\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\n\u003ch5>\u003ca href=\"#afoot\">\u003cstrong>Change is afoot\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003c/h5>\n\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\n\u003ch5>\u003ca href=\"#deep\">\u003cstrong>Dive deep: How insurance works\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003c/h5>\n\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\n\u003ch5>\u003ca href=\"#fair\">\u003cstrong>The FAIR plan: California’s least-loved insurer\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003c/h5>\n\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\n\u003ch5>\u003ca href=\"#mean\">\u003cstrong>What will the changes mean?\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003c/h5>\n\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\n\u003ch5>\u003ca href=\"#next\">\u003cstrong>What comes next\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003c/h5>\n\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003ch3>\u003ca id=\"action\">\u003c/a>California announces action, at last\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>For the better part of the last year, California did not make any structural changes to its insurance marketplace despite the ballooning crisis and the urgency of the problem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Structural changes are not sexy,” said Sashi Sabaratnam, former mayor of Mill Valley and manager of Sonoma County’s UC Cooperative Extension wildfire vegetation mitigation program. “Making those changes [won’t] win anybody big fans or win elections. You need somebody with the kind of political courage to look at the problem and really be able to take the heat for making those structural changes.”[pullquote align='right' citation='State Sen. Bill Dodd']‘To state the obvious, we do not have a stable insurance market. And when you don’t have that, a lot of things can go awfully wrong.’[/pullquote]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some members of the state legislature considered putting forth a bill to fix some of the many problems. But the effort dissolved at the last minute before the close of the legislative session. Some officials were reportedly afraid they would not be seen as being tough enough on insurance companies and felt that maintaining the status quo would be politically safer.[pullquote align='right' citation='Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara']‘Modernizing our insurance market is not going to be easy or happen overnight. We are in really unchartered territory, and we must make difficult choices when the world is changing rapidly.’[/pullquote]State Sen. Bill Dodd (D-Napa) said he was disappointed when the legislative effort fell through.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“To state the obvious, we do not have a stable insurance market. And when you don’t have that, a lot of things can go awfully wrong,” he said in the hours after the legislative collapse. “High costs force people to go naked without insurance. That’s happening all over my district. It’s going to affect home and business mortgages because if you can’t get insurance, your mortgages will get called in.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the state legislature stepped back from the problem, it placed increased pressure on California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara, who had mostly avoided talking about making big regulatory changes all year. Instead, he largely focused on talking about reducing the risk of wildfire through mitigation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As important as mitigation is, Sabaratnam said, “It means nothing if you do not deal with those structural issues.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Insurance commissioner is an elected position, but Lara was re-elected in 2022, so his seat is secure until his term ends in 2026. That ought to give him a little room to breathe, suggested Sabaratnam.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, an \u003ca href=\"https://www.gov.ca.gov/2023/09/21/governor-newsom-signs-executive-order-to-strengthen-property-insurance-market/\">executive order from Gov. Gavin Newsom urging the insurance commission to take swift action\u003c/a> to strengthen the property market apparently gave Lara enough political cover to announce changes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In September, he announced that a significant regulatory overhaul would be in place by the end of next year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“California’s current regulatory framework does not meet our needs,” Lara said. “We need to update regulations.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All that is to say, policymakers felt strongly that someone needed to do something. Just who would do what took the better part of a year to figure out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And, as anticipated by policy experts, few people cheered. Some TV news outlets framed the announced changes as a win for the insurance industry. Advocacy groups personally attacked Lara. The powerful Consumer Watchdog even attacked other advocacy groups who expressed some support for Lara’s changes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1985224\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1985224\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/11/IMG_9350-qut.jpg\" alt=\"A couple embraces next to a Weed Community Center sign made of wood.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1440\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/11/IMG_9350-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/11/IMG_9350-qut-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/11/IMG_9350-qut-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/11/IMG_9350-qut-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/11/IMG_9350-qut-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/11/IMG_9350-qut-1536x1152.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">After losing two homes in the Mill Fire of 2022, Chester and Denise Hopkins are working to help the Lincoln Heights neighborhood of Weed rebuild. Many of their neighbors were underinsured or had no insurance. That’s part of what’s determining who can stay and rebuild. They’re committed to staying but don’t know how many of their neighbors will. “We’re putting our trust in God that we have at least 50 % [coming back],” Denise Hopkins said. \u003ccite>(Danielle Venton/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch3>\u003ca id=\"trouble\">\u003c/a>Why the insurance market is in trouble\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Perhaps curiously, home insurance in California \u003ca href=\"https://www.forbes.com/advisor/homeowners-insurance/average-cost-homeowners-insurance/\">actually costs less than in other states with the same sorts of climate risks\u003c/a>. From the insurance industry’s point of view, this is a sign that risk in California is not priced accurately.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Companies trace this situation back to 1988, when voters approved a law limiting how much insurance companies could raise rates and said the state has to approve. It was a voter-backed initiative that attempted to improve insurance for consumers, protecting them from arbitrary insurance rate hikes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Groups that did not like a proposed rate hike could intervene and recoup the legal and administrative costs of doing so. Insurance companies had to set rates tied to historical data from the past 20 years of losses, but they could not look forward to estimates of future losses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The 1988 measure — Proposition 103 — was prompted by skyrocketing auto insurance, but it also worked on home insurance. The \u003ca href=\"https://consumerfed.org/press_release/30-years-and-154-billion-of-savings-californias-proposition-103-insurance-reforms-still-saving-drivers-money/\">law has saved Californians billions of dollars\u003c/a>, but insurance companies, who have had to shell out tens of billions of dollars to cover losses from the Camp, Tubbs, Thomas, LNU Lightning Complex, Dixie and other major fires in recent years, hate this rule. Many have effectively said, ‘Hey, we are not doing this anymore.’\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Parr Schoolman, Allstate’s chief risk officer, told California insurance officials at a hearing this year that the company needs to be able to raise prices or else it would drop more individual customers or even totally leave the state’s home insurance market.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The current system makes it very difficult for insurance companies to get rate increases of anything more than 7%. It can take years. Typically, the state does not grant requests in total.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, from an insurance company’s perspective, their rates lag years behind the actual price of the risk they are insuring. Meanwhile, reinsurance, which is insurance for insurers, has skyrocketed, along with construction costs and other expenses impacted by inflation. That is all laid against the backdrop of jaw-slackening wildfire losses, which have wiped out decades of profits, particularly in 2017 and 2018.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003ca id=\"afoot\">\u003c/a>Change is afoot\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>The big elements of Lara’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.insurance.ca.gov/0400-news/0100-press-releases/2023/release051-2023.cfm\">announced changes\u003c/a> include:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli style=\"list-style-type: none\">\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>An agreement with insurance companies to write more policies and collectively offer coverage to at least 85% of homeowners in high wildfire-risk areas. This would allow homeowners currently on the state’s insurer of last resort, the FAIR plan, to transition back to the normal market.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Allowing insurance companies to use forward-looking climate catastrophe models instead of historical data about risk.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Letting companies pass on California-related reinsurance costs.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Increase California Department of Insurance staffing to allow rate increases to be approved faster.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Some consumer advocates and ensuing news coverage suggested it was a victory and bailout for the insurance industry. One of the most strident opposing voices comes from Consumer Watchdog, which has spent years attacking not only the insurance industry but the insurance commissioner himself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The consumer protection organizations painted Lara as an industry insider and said the deal would not guarantee coverage and would increase premiums. In response, the commission pointed out in recently released data that Consumer Watchdog has also benefited from collecting $8.9 million over a decade in compensation for its work-challenging rate increases. Proposition 103 allows members of the public to intervene on behalf of ratepayers and apply for compensation for the expenses of doing so. That money \u003ca href=\"https://www.insurance.ca.gov/01-consumers/150-other-prog/01-intervenor/upload/CDI_Public-Chart_Total-Compensations-Awarder-to-Intervenors.pdf\">comes from insurers, who pass those costs on to their customers\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Amy Bach, executive director of United Policyholders, an organization that advocates for insurance customers, dismissed Consumer Watchdog’s view as ignoring the very real threats to the market. Some of the announced changes will likely mean higher premiums. But what is most important, Bach said, was that a compromise would be workable for both consumers and insurers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t like [all the changes],” Bach said. “Using catastrophe models and passing on some reinsurance costs? As far as I know, every other state in the union does that — it is not the end of the world. But what is the end of the world if [the insurance flight] keeps going on like this?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While public utilities are legally required to serve customers, insurance companies can do business in the state or not, as they please.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“To stop selling insurance entirely the way that [insurance companies are] doing suggests to me that they are genuinely worried about the adequacy of their rates,” Bach said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If the insurance market collapses in the state, people can’t buy homes or sell homes. Most homes have mortgages, and banks won’t lend money unless it’s insured. If the real estate industry collapses, it will reverberate through the entire economy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California is not the only market with insurance troubles. Around the nation, climate-driven disasters are accelerating price hikes, coverage withdrawals and instability.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If insurance market trends continue on the current path, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island), speaking at a congressional hearing this year, said it puts the global economy at systemic risk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The term “global systemic risk,” he said, “has a rather bland quality to it. But it describes something that is anything but bland.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is bland in the way talking about subprime mortgages seemed in 2007, just before they triggered a global financial meltdown. The current insurance market situation poses the same kind of risk to the economy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1983896\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1983896\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/08/230810-JASON-MAJORS-DV-KQED_1.jpg\" alt=\"A man in sunglasses stands in an outdoor setting.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/08/230810-JASON-MAJORS-DV-KQED_1.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/08/230810-JASON-MAJORS-DV-KQED_1-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/08/230810-JASON-MAJORS-DV-KQED_1-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/08/230810-JASON-MAJORS-DV-KQED_1-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/08/230810-JASON-MAJORS-DV-KQED_1-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/08/230810-JASON-MAJORS-DV-KQED_1-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/08/230810-JASON-MAJORS-DV-KQED_1-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jason Majors in front of the creek bordering his former property. His home outside Santa Rosa survived nearly half a dozen fires in recent years. Despite his efforts to mitigate hazards around his house, Majors was dropped by insurance carriers numerous times. And when he decided to sell his house, prospective buyers had trouble finding insurance coverage. He had to drop the price four times before the home was sold. \u003ccite>(Danielle Venton/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch3>\u003ca id=\"deep\">\u003c/a>Dive deep: How insurance works\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>There are three different ways you can get home insurance in California. By way of a high school lunchroom analogy: You can eat with the “the cool kids,” the “not-cool kids,” or the vice principal, who is your last choice, but it might be better than having lunch alone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The cool kids are the “admitted market.” They are licensed to sell in the state, California has to approve rate increases, and if the company fails, California will pay out the claims. Being a cool kid comes with a lot of rules, but if you are a company that wants to sell in bulk to Californians, this is the route you need to go. These companies, like Allstate, State Farm or Farmers, are generally best to have your insurance with. But they have scaled back their offerings in wildfire-prone parts of the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then there’s the “not-cool-kids.” These are specialty or surplus lines of coverage from companies such as Lloyds of London, Chubb Custom Insurance Company or Spinnaker Specialty Insurance. They’ll write riskier policies for homeowners or businesses, but they are also more high-risk themselves. They’re not guaranteed if they fail, which means more exposure for a consumer. And they can basically charge what they want. These rates are typically more expensive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The vice principal is the FAIR Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort. It is expensive, and the coverage is lousy. But you can get some coverage when no one else will take you.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003ca id=\"fair\">\u003c/a>The FAIR plan: California’s least-loved insurer\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://www.cfpnet.com/about-fair-plan/\">FAIR plan\u003c/a> stands for Fair Access to Insurance Requirements, and it’s derisively known as “the un-fair plan” by some of its customers, who feel frustrated they have to use it. It was one of those well-intentioned solutions created to fill a need, but it has ballooned and taken on the dimensions of its own problem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The FAIR plan now has 330,000 policyholders. That’s up from 140,000 in 2018 before insurance companies began their flight from California. More people are using it today than were ever intended to. This places the financial foundation of the plan on really shaky ground. And the more people who join, the worse it gets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The FAIR plan is regulated by the state but it’s funding is guaranteed by private insurers. California\u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-watts-riots-explainer-20150715-htmlstory.html\"> created it after the Watts Riots in the 1960s\u003c/a>, when years of simmering anger and distrust had built up between mostly Black residents of the Watts neighborhood and police around Los Angeles exploded for days of unrest. Following those days, \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/1992/05/04/business/riots-raise-concerns-about-insurance-redlining.html\">insurance companies began canceling policies for homeowners and businesses\u003c/a>. The FAIR plan was crafted to provide homeowners and businesses some coverage when nothing else was available. Most states have their own version.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The Fair Plan, which is supposed to be sort of a temporary last resort insurance policy, is becoming a permanent insurance policy for many people in high fire risk areas in California,” said Michael Wara, a climate and energy lawyer and researcher at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The economic structure of the FAIR plan is that homeowners pay a lot more money for less insurance,” he added. “And hopefully that’s enough. The reality is it’s not.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Apart from offering fairly poor coverage, the FAIR plan is just about one big disaster away from not having enough money to pay claims to its customers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If the FAIR plan were a regular insurer, the insurance department would have to step in and shut it down because it’s so undercapitalized,” Wara said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If there were a big fire, something on the scale of the Tubbs Fire or Camp Fire, in an area where the FAIR Plan covered many homes, the plan would then charge insurers in the admitted market, aka the “cool kids,” for the rest of the money. In insurance jargon, this is called “levying an assessment.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here is the scary thing: insurance companies do not have the money saved for this, and they are not allowed to make up the deficit by charging their customers more, so many of them would probably go bankrupt. Other companies would offload policies, basically firing their customers, to try to become financially stable again. The whole market could collapse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That would stop the buying and selling of homes and also the building of any new ones. California is doing a lot to build more houses, but if the insurance market collapses, that progress will evaporate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One entity that is going to sell a lot of houses is a builder,” Wara said. “And if they can’t sell their houses because the people that want to buy them with a mortgage can’t get insurance. It threatens everything that we’re trying to do to make the state more affordable and more equitable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1985222\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1985222\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/11/230815-BlueForestInitiative-29-BL-qut.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/11/230815-BlueForestInitiative-29-BL-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/11/230815-BlueForestInitiative-29-BL-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/11/230815-BlueForestInitiative-29-BL-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/11/230815-BlueForestInitiative-29-BL-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/11/230815-BlueForestInitiative-29-BL-qut-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/11/230815-BlueForestInitiative-29-BL-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An area of the National Forest is thinned as a fuel management technique, removing brush and understory vegetation and allowing water to go into ground storage rather than feeding vegetation, near Camptonville, Calif., on Aug. 15, 2023. Fuel management includes thinning, chipping, burning, and removing fuels to reduce the amount of burnable vegetation. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch3>\u003ca id=\"mean\">\u003c/a>What will the changes mean?\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>The changes coming to California’s market are a start, but no one seems to think they’re sufficient on their own, least of all officials at the state’s insurance department.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Modernizing our insurance market is not going to be easy or happen overnight,” Lara said. “We are in really unchartered territory, and we must make difficult choices when the world is changing rapidly.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While no consumers, elected officials, or consumer advocates want to see prices increase, there is a sense that the era of cheap insurance is over for good.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Do I like the days when people were paying a thousand bucks a year for their home insurance? Of course, everybody liked it,” said Bach from United Policyholders. “But we don’t have that option anymore, so something has to change.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, how much rates may increase is an open question. One of the few people who has studied how rates rise using historical data versus catastrophic data is \u003ca href=\"https://www.milliman.com/en/insight/wildfire-catastrophe-models-california-ratemaking\">Nancy Watkins, an actuary at Milliman, an independent consulting firm\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"https://www.milliman.com/-/media/milliman/pdfs/2022-articles/10-19-22_pci-pifc-cdi-summary.ashx\">2022 study she did indicated that using catastrophic models did not necessarily mean higher rates\u003c/a>. Her work also found that rates were more stable using modeling and, crucially, that models could incorporate wildfire preparation into risk estimates — something historic data fails at.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That can \u003ca href=\"https://www.carriermanagement.com/features/2023/08/29/252411.htm?bypass=9c98e38eb4bd3d9fa4d836afcadbaa24\">incentivize home- and community-level fire mitigation work\u003c/a>, something she and many fire and insurance experts hope is the way of the future.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1985179\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1985179\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/11/Bear-Trap-Prescribed-Burn_Nevada-County_05-qut.jpg\" alt=\"A person in a yellow jacket brings a hand tool down in a sweeping motion to the ground. \" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/11/Bear-Trap-Prescribed-Burn_Nevada-County_05-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/11/Bear-Trap-Prescribed-Burn_Nevada-County_05-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/11/Bear-Trap-Prescribed-Burn_Nevada-County_05-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/11/Bear-Trap-Prescribed-Burn_Nevada-County_05-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/11/Bear-Trap-Prescribed-Burn_Nevada-County_05-qut-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/11/Bear-Trap-Prescribed-Burn_Nevada-County_05-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Crewmembers from the Fire Safe Council of Nevada County walk to the site where they performed ” mop-up” after a prescribed burn on June 21, 2023. Controlled burns like this are one of the best ways communities can reduce the risk from megafire. \u003ccite>(Erin Baldassari/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch3>\u003ca id=\"next\">\u003c/a>What comes next\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>In the coming months, the state’s insurance department will shape the new regulations and implement reforms. Michael Soller, spokesperson for the department, said this work would focus on a couple of fronts, with some tasks being administrative in nature and some taking place through public meetings and hearings. The state will:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli style=\"list-style-type: none\">\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>Create maps of where they will require insurance companies to write more policies, offering coverage to 85% of homeowners.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Evaluate catastrophe models and consider the creation of a new public model, owned by the state, versus adopting existing models made by companies.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Consider incorporating some California-related reinsurance costs into rates.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Hire more staff.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Deny intervenor petitions by advocacy groups that replicate the work already being done by staff.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Bach said following the announcement of coming reforms, she hoped the exodus would be staunched. But she said many companies still seem wary of offering coverage. She thinks they’re afraid advocates, like Consumer Watchdog, will sue to block the changes. “I think that’s part of the problem of why nothing has really shifted since the announcement,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The nature of hard problems is that there are no easy, short-term wins, policy expert Sabratnam said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If these changes are made and people’s rates go up and some people still lose their insurance and some people still go on the FAIR Plan, people will then turn around and say, ‘Well look, you didn’t succeed, you failed,’” Sabaratnam said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But, she added, structural change is what is needed, even if it is unpopular.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Everything else is just a Band-Aid,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\n","blocks":[],"excerpt":"California insurance officials are crafting a major overhaul to regulations following an exodus of companies fleeing the state as climate change amplifies wildfire risk.","status":"publish","parent":0,"modified":1704845835,"stats":{"hasAudio":true,"hasVideo":false,"hasChartOrMap":false,"iframeSrcs":[],"hasGoogleForm":false,"hasGallery":false,"hasHearkenModule":false,"hasPolis":false,"paragraphCount":66,"wordCount":3490},"headData":{"title":"Insurance In California Is Changing. Here's How It May Affect You | KQED","description":"California insurance officials are crafting a major overhaul to regulations following an exodus of companies fleeing the state as climate change amplifies wildfire risk.","ogTitle":"","ogDescription":"","ogImgId":"","twTitle":"","twDescription":"","twImgId":""},"source":"Sold Out","sticky":false,"excludeFromSiteSearch":"Include","articleAge":"0","path":"/science/1985175/insurance-in-california-is-changing-heres-how-it-may-affect-you","audioTrackLength":null,"parsedContent":[{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>This story is part of the third season of KQED’s podcast Sold Out: Rethinking Housing in America. You can \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/podcasts/soldout\">find that series here\u003c/a> and read about why \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1984697/why-kqed-focused-a-season-of-its-housing-podcast-on-climate-change#:~:text=Sold%20Out%20Is%20Back%20With%20Season%203&text=Host%20Erin%20Baldassari%20leads%20a,an%20affordable%20place%20to%20live.\">KQED chose to focus a season of its housing podcast on climate change\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For most people, insurance is the first line of defense against climate change. When struck by wildfire, flooding or other calamity, an adequate insurance policy can come to the rescue. It’s like a financial first responder, an ambulance full of money to help people back onto their feet. Insurance is the reason something bad happening to you, like losing your home in a wildfire, doesn’t guarantee a slide into poverty.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the industry is in serious trouble. Climate disasters around the state, especially worsening wildfires, threaten the current business model and millions of middle-class Californians. Climate risks exist everywhere. However, California is notable for companies racing out of Dodge. Seven of the top 12 insurance companies in the state, including Allstate, State Farm, Farmers Insurance and American International Group (AIG), have left California or pulled back from offering new policies in the last year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the Golden State grapples with the devastating consequences of increasingly frequent and intense wildfires, California officials are crafting a major overhaul to insurance regulations. It is meant to stop the exodus of companies and promote market stability, but it will almost certainly mean that insurance premiums will rise. Here is what we know, what to expect, and how it may affect you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=KQINC3046460401&light=true\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>Jump straight to:\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli style=\"list-style-type: none\">\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\n\u003ch5>\u003ca href=\"#action\">\u003cstrong>California announces action, at last\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003c/h5>\n\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\n\u003ch5>\u003ca href=\"#trouble\">\u003cstrong>Why the insurance market is in trouble\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003c/h5>\n\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\n\u003ch5>\u003ca href=\"#afoot\">\u003cstrong>Change is afoot\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003c/h5>\n\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\n\u003ch5>\u003ca href=\"#deep\">\u003cstrong>Dive deep: How insurance works\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003c/h5>\n\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\n\u003ch5>\u003ca href=\"#fair\">\u003cstrong>The FAIR plan: California’s least-loved insurer\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003c/h5>\n\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\n\u003ch5>\u003ca href=\"#mean\">\u003cstrong>What will the changes mean?\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003c/h5>\n\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\n\u003ch5>\u003ca href=\"#next\">\u003cstrong>What comes next\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003c/h5>\n\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003ch3>\u003ca id=\"action\">\u003c/a>California announces action, at last\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>For the better part of the last year, California did not make any structural changes to its insurance marketplace despite the ballooning crisis and the urgency of the problem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"fullwidth"},"numeric":["fullwidth"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Structural changes are not sexy,” said Sashi Sabaratnam, former mayor of Mill Valley and manager of Sonoma County’s UC Cooperative Extension wildfire vegetation mitigation program. “Making those changes [won’t] win anybody big fans or win elections. You need somebody with the kind of political courage to look at the problem and really be able to take the heat for making those structural changes.”\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"‘To state the obvious, we do not have a stable insurance market. And when you don’t have that, a lot of things can go awfully wrong.’","name":"pullquote","attributes":{"named":{"align":"right","citation":"State Sen. Bill Dodd","label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some members of the state legislature considered putting forth a bill to fix some of the many problems. But the effort dissolved at the last minute before the close of the legislative session. Some officials were reportedly afraid they would not be seen as being tough enough on insurance companies and felt that maintaining the status quo would be politically safer.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"‘Modernizing our insurance market is not going to be easy or happen overnight. We are in really unchartered territory, and we must make difficult choices when the world is changing rapidly.’","name":"pullquote","attributes":{"named":{"align":"right","citation":"Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara","label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>State Sen. Bill Dodd (D-Napa) said he was disappointed when the legislative effort fell through.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“To state the obvious, we do not have a stable insurance market. And when you don’t have that, a lot of things can go awfully wrong,” he said in the hours after the legislative collapse. “High costs force people to go naked without insurance. That’s happening all over my district. It’s going to affect home and business mortgages because if you can’t get insurance, your mortgages will get called in.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the state legislature stepped back from the problem, it placed increased pressure on California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara, who had mostly avoided talking about making big regulatory changes all year. Instead, he largely focused on talking about reducing the risk of wildfire through mitigation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As important as mitigation is, Sabaratnam said, “It means nothing if you do not deal with those structural issues.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Insurance commissioner is an elected position, but Lara was re-elected in 2022, so his seat is secure until his term ends in 2026. That ought to give him a little room to breathe, suggested Sabaratnam.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, an \u003ca href=\"https://www.gov.ca.gov/2023/09/21/governor-newsom-signs-executive-order-to-strengthen-property-insurance-market/\">executive order from Gov. Gavin Newsom urging the insurance commission to take swift action\u003c/a> to strengthen the property market apparently gave Lara enough political cover to announce changes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In September, he announced that a significant regulatory overhaul would be in place by the end of next year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“California’s current regulatory framework does not meet our needs,” Lara said. “We need to update regulations.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All that is to say, policymakers felt strongly that someone needed to do something. Just who would do what took the better part of a year to figure out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And, as anticipated by policy experts, few people cheered. Some TV news outlets framed the announced changes as a win for the insurance industry. Advocacy groups personally attacked Lara. The powerful Consumer Watchdog even attacked other advocacy groups who expressed some support for Lara’s changes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1985224\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1985224\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/11/IMG_9350-qut.jpg\" alt=\"A couple embraces next to a Weed Community Center sign made of wood.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1440\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/11/IMG_9350-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/11/IMG_9350-qut-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/11/IMG_9350-qut-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/11/IMG_9350-qut-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/11/IMG_9350-qut-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/11/IMG_9350-qut-1536x1152.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">After losing two homes in the Mill Fire of 2022, Chester and Denise Hopkins are working to help the Lincoln Heights neighborhood of Weed rebuild. Many of their neighbors were underinsured or had no insurance. That’s part of what’s determining who can stay and rebuild. They’re committed to staying but don’t know how many of their neighbors will. “We’re putting our trust in God that we have at least 50 % [coming back],” Denise Hopkins said. \u003ccite>(Danielle Venton/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch3>\u003ca id=\"trouble\">\u003c/a>Why the insurance market is in trouble\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Perhaps curiously, home insurance in California \u003ca href=\"https://www.forbes.com/advisor/homeowners-insurance/average-cost-homeowners-insurance/\">actually costs less than in other states with the same sorts of climate risks\u003c/a>. From the insurance industry’s point of view, this is a sign that risk in California is not priced accurately.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Companies trace this situation back to 1988, when voters approved a law limiting how much insurance companies could raise rates and said the state has to approve. It was a voter-backed initiative that attempted to improve insurance for consumers, protecting them from arbitrary insurance rate hikes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Groups that did not like a proposed rate hike could intervene and recoup the legal and administrative costs of doing so. Insurance companies had to set rates tied to historical data from the past 20 years of losses, but they could not look forward to estimates of future losses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The 1988 measure — Proposition 103 — was prompted by skyrocketing auto insurance, but it also worked on home insurance. The \u003ca href=\"https://consumerfed.org/press_release/30-years-and-154-billion-of-savings-californias-proposition-103-insurance-reforms-still-saving-drivers-money/\">law has saved Californians billions of dollars\u003c/a>, but insurance companies, who have had to shell out tens of billions of dollars to cover losses from the Camp, Tubbs, Thomas, LNU Lightning Complex, Dixie and other major fires in recent years, hate this rule. Many have effectively said, ‘Hey, we are not doing this anymore.’\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Parr Schoolman, Allstate’s chief risk officer, told California insurance officials at a hearing this year that the company needs to be able to raise prices or else it would drop more individual customers or even totally leave the state’s home insurance market.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The current system makes it very difficult for insurance companies to get rate increases of anything more than 7%. It can take years. Typically, the state does not grant requests in total.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, from an insurance company’s perspective, their rates lag years behind the actual price of the risk they are insuring. Meanwhile, reinsurance, which is insurance for insurers, has skyrocketed, along with construction costs and other expenses impacted by inflation. That is all laid against the backdrop of jaw-slackening wildfire losses, which have wiped out decades of profits, particularly in 2017 and 2018.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003ca id=\"afoot\">\u003c/a>Change is afoot\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>The big elements of Lara’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.insurance.ca.gov/0400-news/0100-press-releases/2023/release051-2023.cfm\">announced changes\u003c/a> include:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli style=\"list-style-type: none\">\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>An agreement with insurance companies to write more policies and collectively offer coverage to at least 85% of homeowners in high wildfire-risk areas. This would allow homeowners currently on the state’s insurer of last resort, the FAIR plan, to transition back to the normal market.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Allowing insurance companies to use forward-looking climate catastrophe models instead of historical data about risk.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Letting companies pass on California-related reinsurance costs.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Increase California Department of Insurance staffing to allow rate increases to be approved faster.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Some consumer advocates and ensuing news coverage suggested it was a victory and bailout for the insurance industry. One of the most strident opposing voices comes from Consumer Watchdog, which has spent years attacking not only the insurance industry but the insurance commissioner himself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The consumer protection organizations painted Lara as an industry insider and said the deal would not guarantee coverage and would increase premiums. In response, the commission pointed out in recently released data that Consumer Watchdog has also benefited from collecting $8.9 million over a decade in compensation for its work-challenging rate increases. Proposition 103 allows members of the public to intervene on behalf of ratepayers and apply for compensation for the expenses of doing so. That money \u003ca href=\"https://www.insurance.ca.gov/01-consumers/150-other-prog/01-intervenor/upload/CDI_Public-Chart_Total-Compensations-Awarder-to-Intervenors.pdf\">comes from insurers, who pass those costs on to their customers\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Amy Bach, executive director of United Policyholders, an organization that advocates for insurance customers, dismissed Consumer Watchdog’s view as ignoring the very real threats to the market. Some of the announced changes will likely mean higher premiums. But what is most important, Bach said, was that a compromise would be workable for both consumers and insurers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t like [all the changes],” Bach said. “Using catastrophe models and passing on some reinsurance costs? As far as I know, every other state in the union does that — it is not the end of the world. But what is the end of the world if [the insurance flight] keeps going on like this?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While public utilities are legally required to serve customers, insurance companies can do business in the state or not, as they please.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“To stop selling insurance entirely the way that [insurance companies are] doing suggests to me that they are genuinely worried about the adequacy of their rates,” Bach said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If the insurance market collapses in the state, people can’t buy homes or sell homes. Most homes have mortgages, and banks won’t lend money unless it’s insured. If the real estate industry collapses, it will reverberate through the entire economy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California is not the only market with insurance troubles. Around the nation, climate-driven disasters are accelerating price hikes, coverage withdrawals and instability.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If insurance market trends continue on the current path, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island), speaking at a congressional hearing this year, said it puts the global economy at systemic risk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The term “global systemic risk,” he said, “has a rather bland quality to it. But it describes something that is anything but bland.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is bland in the way talking about subprime mortgages seemed in 2007, just before they triggered a global financial meltdown. The current insurance market situation poses the same kind of risk to the economy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1983896\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1983896\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/08/230810-JASON-MAJORS-DV-KQED_1.jpg\" alt=\"A man in sunglasses stands in an outdoor setting.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/08/230810-JASON-MAJORS-DV-KQED_1.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/08/230810-JASON-MAJORS-DV-KQED_1-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/08/230810-JASON-MAJORS-DV-KQED_1-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/08/230810-JASON-MAJORS-DV-KQED_1-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/08/230810-JASON-MAJORS-DV-KQED_1-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/08/230810-JASON-MAJORS-DV-KQED_1-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/08/230810-JASON-MAJORS-DV-KQED_1-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jason Majors in front of the creek bordering his former property. His home outside Santa Rosa survived nearly half a dozen fires in recent years. Despite his efforts to mitigate hazards around his house, Majors was dropped by insurance carriers numerous times. And when he decided to sell his house, prospective buyers had trouble finding insurance coverage. He had to drop the price four times before the home was sold. \u003ccite>(Danielle Venton/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch3>\u003ca id=\"deep\">\u003c/a>Dive deep: How insurance works\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>There are three different ways you can get home insurance in California. By way of a high school lunchroom analogy: You can eat with the “the cool kids,” the “not-cool kids,” or the vice principal, who is your last choice, but it might be better than having lunch alone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The cool kids are the “admitted market.” They are licensed to sell in the state, California has to approve rate increases, and if the company fails, California will pay out the claims. Being a cool kid comes with a lot of rules, but if you are a company that wants to sell in bulk to Californians, this is the route you need to go. These companies, like Allstate, State Farm or Farmers, are generally best to have your insurance with. But they have scaled back their offerings in wildfire-prone parts of the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then there’s the “not-cool-kids.” These are specialty or surplus lines of coverage from companies such as Lloyds of London, Chubb Custom Insurance Company or Spinnaker Specialty Insurance. They’ll write riskier policies for homeowners or businesses, but they are also more high-risk themselves. They’re not guaranteed if they fail, which means more exposure for a consumer. And they can basically charge what they want. These rates are typically more expensive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The vice principal is the FAIR Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort. It is expensive, and the coverage is lousy. But you can get some coverage when no one else will take you.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003ca id=\"fair\">\u003c/a>The FAIR plan: California’s least-loved insurer\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://www.cfpnet.com/about-fair-plan/\">FAIR plan\u003c/a> stands for Fair Access to Insurance Requirements, and it’s derisively known as “the un-fair plan” by some of its customers, who feel frustrated they have to use it. It was one of those well-intentioned solutions created to fill a need, but it has ballooned and taken on the dimensions of its own problem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The FAIR plan now has 330,000 policyholders. That’s up from 140,000 in 2018 before insurance companies began their flight from California. More people are using it today than were ever intended to. This places the financial foundation of the plan on really shaky ground. And the more people who join, the worse it gets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The FAIR plan is regulated by the state but it’s funding is guaranteed by private insurers. California\u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-watts-riots-explainer-20150715-htmlstory.html\"> created it after the Watts Riots in the 1960s\u003c/a>, when years of simmering anger and distrust had built up between mostly Black residents of the Watts neighborhood and police around Los Angeles exploded for days of unrest. Following those days, \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/1992/05/04/business/riots-raise-concerns-about-insurance-redlining.html\">insurance companies began canceling policies for homeowners and businesses\u003c/a>. The FAIR plan was crafted to provide homeowners and businesses some coverage when nothing else was available. Most states have their own version.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The Fair Plan, which is supposed to be sort of a temporary last resort insurance policy, is becoming a permanent insurance policy for many people in high fire risk areas in California,” said Michael Wara, a climate and energy lawyer and researcher at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The economic structure of the FAIR plan is that homeowners pay a lot more money for less insurance,” he added. “And hopefully that’s enough. The reality is it’s not.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Apart from offering fairly poor coverage, the FAIR plan is just about one big disaster away from not having enough money to pay claims to its customers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If the FAIR plan were a regular insurer, the insurance department would have to step in and shut it down because it’s so undercapitalized,” Wara said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If there were a big fire, something on the scale of the Tubbs Fire or Camp Fire, in an area where the FAIR Plan covered many homes, the plan would then charge insurers in the admitted market, aka the “cool kids,” for the rest of the money. In insurance jargon, this is called “levying an assessment.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here is the scary thing: insurance companies do not have the money saved for this, and they are not allowed to make up the deficit by charging their customers more, so many of them would probably go bankrupt. Other companies would offload policies, basically firing their customers, to try to become financially stable again. The whole market could collapse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That would stop the buying and selling of homes and also the building of any new ones. California is doing a lot to build more houses, but if the insurance market collapses, that progress will evaporate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One entity that is going to sell a lot of houses is a builder,” Wara said. “And if they can’t sell their houses because the people that want to buy them with a mortgage can’t get insurance. It threatens everything that we’re trying to do to make the state more affordable and more equitable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1985222\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1985222\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/11/230815-BlueForestInitiative-29-BL-qut.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/11/230815-BlueForestInitiative-29-BL-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/11/230815-BlueForestInitiative-29-BL-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/11/230815-BlueForestInitiative-29-BL-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/11/230815-BlueForestInitiative-29-BL-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/11/230815-BlueForestInitiative-29-BL-qut-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/11/230815-BlueForestInitiative-29-BL-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An area of the National Forest is thinned as a fuel management technique, removing brush and understory vegetation and allowing water to go into ground storage rather than feeding vegetation, near Camptonville, Calif., on Aug. 15, 2023. Fuel management includes thinning, chipping, burning, and removing fuels to reduce the amount of burnable vegetation. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch3>\u003ca id=\"mean\">\u003c/a>What will the changes mean?\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>The changes coming to California’s market are a start, but no one seems to think they’re sufficient on their own, least of all officials at the state’s insurance department.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Modernizing our insurance market is not going to be easy or happen overnight,” Lara said. “We are in really unchartered territory, and we must make difficult choices when the world is changing rapidly.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While no consumers, elected officials, or consumer advocates want to see prices increase, there is a sense that the era of cheap insurance is over for good.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Do I like the days when people were paying a thousand bucks a year for their home insurance? Of course, everybody liked it,” said Bach from United Policyholders. “But we don’t have that option anymore, so something has to change.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, how much rates may increase is an open question. One of the few people who has studied how rates rise using historical data versus catastrophic data is \u003ca href=\"https://www.milliman.com/en/insight/wildfire-catastrophe-models-california-ratemaking\">Nancy Watkins, an actuary at Milliman, an independent consulting firm\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"https://www.milliman.com/-/media/milliman/pdfs/2022-articles/10-19-22_pci-pifc-cdi-summary.ashx\">2022 study she did indicated that using catastrophic models did not necessarily mean higher rates\u003c/a>. Her work also found that rates were more stable using modeling and, crucially, that models could incorporate wildfire preparation into risk estimates — something historic data fails at.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That can \u003ca href=\"https://www.carriermanagement.com/features/2023/08/29/252411.htm?bypass=9c98e38eb4bd3d9fa4d836afcadbaa24\">incentivize home- and community-level fire mitigation work\u003c/a>, something she and many fire and insurance experts hope is the way of the future.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1985179\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1985179\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/11/Bear-Trap-Prescribed-Burn_Nevada-County_05-qut.jpg\" alt=\"A person in a yellow jacket brings a hand tool down in a sweeping motion to the ground. \" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/11/Bear-Trap-Prescribed-Burn_Nevada-County_05-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/11/Bear-Trap-Prescribed-Burn_Nevada-County_05-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/11/Bear-Trap-Prescribed-Burn_Nevada-County_05-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/11/Bear-Trap-Prescribed-Burn_Nevada-County_05-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/11/Bear-Trap-Prescribed-Burn_Nevada-County_05-qut-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/11/Bear-Trap-Prescribed-Burn_Nevada-County_05-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Crewmembers from the Fire Safe Council of Nevada County walk to the site where they performed ” mop-up” after a prescribed burn on June 21, 2023. Controlled burns like this are one of the best ways communities can reduce the risk from megafire. \u003ccite>(Erin Baldassari/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch3>\u003ca id=\"next\">\u003c/a>What comes next\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>In the coming months, the state’s insurance department will shape the new regulations and implement reforms. Michael Soller, spokesperson for the department, said this work would focus on a couple of fronts, with some tasks being administrative in nature and some taking place through public meetings and hearings. The state will:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli style=\"list-style-type: none\">\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>Create maps of where they will require insurance companies to write more policies, offering coverage to 85% of homeowners.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Evaluate catastrophe models and consider the creation of a new public model, owned by the state, versus adopting existing models made by companies.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Consider incorporating some California-related reinsurance costs into rates.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Hire more staff.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Deny intervenor petitions by advocacy groups that replicate the work already being done by staff.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Bach said following the announcement of coming reforms, she hoped the exodus would be staunched. But she said many companies still seem wary of offering coverage. She thinks they’re afraid advocates, like Consumer Watchdog, will sue to block the changes. “I think that’s part of the problem of why nothing has really shifted since the announcement,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The nature of hard problems is that there are no easy, short-term wins, policy expert Sabratnam said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If these changes are made and people’s rates go up and some people still lose their insurance and some people still go on the FAIR Plan, people will then turn around and say, ‘Well look, you didn’t succeed, you failed,’” Sabaratnam said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But, she added, structural change is what is needed, even if it is unpopular.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"floatright"},"numeric":["floatright"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Everything else is just a Band-Aid,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}}],"link":"/science/1985175/insurance-in-california-is-changing-heres-how-it-may-affect-you","authors":["11088"],"categories":["science_31","science_40","science_4450"],"tags":["science_194","science_4417","science_4414","science_5072","science_5094","science_5073","science_113"],"featImg":"science_1985180","label":"source_science_1985175"},"science_1982750":{"type":"posts","id":"science_1982750","meta":{"index":"posts_1591205157","site":"science","id":"1982750","found":true},"guestAuthors":[],"slug":"blue-jellyfish-like-creatures-ride-california-waves-a-climate-change-indicator","title":"Blue Jellyfish-Like Creatures Ride California Waves: A Climate Change Indicator?","publishDate":1684529976,"format":"standard","headTitle":"Blue Jellyfish-Like Creatures Ride California Waves: A Climate Change Indicator? | KQED","labelTerm":{"site":"science"},"content":"\u003cp>Surfers and beachgoers across the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/california-coast\">California coast\u003c/a> have recently been treated to a mesmerizing spectacle: countless blue jellyfish-like creatures riding waves and washing up on sandy beaches.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These captivating organisms, known as “by-the-wind sailors,” are Velella velella and they possess striking blue translucent bodies. They thrive in large numbers, primarily in the northern hemisphere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They have a little stiff sail that sticks up from their floats and they use these little sails to capture the wind,” said Chrissy Piotrowski, senior collections manager of invertebrate zoology at the California Academy of Sciences.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[ad fullwidth]\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They are related to the fearsome Portuguese man o’ war, often mistakenly identified as jellyfish. Still, unlike their notorious cousins, Velella velella stings are relatively mild, according to Steven Haddock, a senior scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“From our human point of view, we think of them as invading our shorelines, but that doesn’t necessarily reflect the actual populations that are offshore,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982754\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1982754\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/003_KQED_OBVelellaVelella_05182023.jpg\" alt=\"A shot of a sandy beach with scattered seaweed and shells. Nearby, a blue, translucent organism similar to a jellyfish rests on the sand. Two people in the distance walk along the ocean.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/003_KQED_OBVelellaVelella_05182023.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/003_KQED_OBVelellaVelella_05182023-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/003_KQED_OBVelellaVelella_05182023-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/003_KQED_OBVelellaVelella_05182023-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/003_KQED_OBVelellaVelella_05182023-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/003_KQED_OBVelellaVelella_05182023-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Blue, translucent Velella velella is seen washed ashore on Ocean Beach in San Francisco on May 18, 2023. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>These ethereal beings resemble little sailboats and wash up on shore when ocean temperatures warm up and onshore wind events occur. The recent surge in the strandings of the see-through blue sea creatures could be a consequence of human-caused climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we see them a lot, it’s sort of like they’re putting up a huge billboard that says, ‘Hey, pay attention, things are changing,’” said Julia K. Parrish, a marine biologist and a professor at the University of Washington, who examined the creatures in a 2021 study.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her research utilized community science data, analyzed stranding reports and found a potential association between rising ocean temperatures and the frequency of these events. Although concrete proof is yet to emerge, the warming trend in sea surface temperatures with links to human-caused climate change could mean more sightings of these azure, disc-like creatures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A warmer ocean along the coastline means that those organisms that normally live around California are going to start to move north,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982760\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2048px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1982760\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/iStock-531994550.jpg\" alt=\"Dozens of light blue, translucent organisms comparable to jellyfish are washed ashore a sandy beach. Droplets of water and sand are sprinkled over the beings.\" width=\"2048\" height=\"1536\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/iStock-531994550.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/iStock-531994550-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/iStock-531994550-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/iStock-531994550-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/iStock-531994550-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/iStock-531994550-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/iStock-531994550-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Stranded Velella velella on the Oregon Coast on June 13, 2016. \u003ccite>((jsseattle/iStock))\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>She said one instance of a mass stranding isn’t enough to attach climate change as the reason behind the organism washing ashore. But when looking at an increase in strandings over the past two decades, Parrish said the case for the climate link is growing and more research is warranted to gain a greater understanding of the impact anthropogenic climate change has on the species.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Julia K. Parrish, marine biologist, professor University of Washington\"]‘When we see signals coming from the ocean to the coast, we should pay attention. The Velella velella is an early-warning bell that we may be seeing some shifts.’[/pullquote]\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we see signals coming from the ocean to the coast, we should pay attention,” she said. “The Velella velella is an early-warning bell that we may be seeing some shifts.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Conditions for Velella velella strandings may increase over the next year. Brian Garcia, warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service Bay Area and Monterey regions, said the current onshore wind events would likely become more robust.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you just pull back a little bit and blur your eyes, it’s been pretty much onshore for months,” he said. “We’ll see warm waters sticking around with us probably until next spring into next summer.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\">KQED’s Sarah Mohamad contributed to this story.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n","blocks":[],"excerpt":"Mesmerizing blue creatures, known as \"by-the-wind sailors,\" ride waves along the California coast. Their presence hints at climate change's impact on marine ecosystems, urging us to pay attention to these subtle indicators of environmental shifts.","status":"publish","parent":0,"modified":1704846007,"stats":{"hasAudio":false,"hasVideo":false,"hasChartOrMap":false,"iframeSrcs":[],"hasGoogleForm":false,"hasGallery":false,"hasHearkenModule":false,"hasPolis":false,"paragraphCount":17,"wordCount":626},"headData":{"title":"Blue Jellyfish-Like Creatures Ride California Waves: A Climate Change Indicator? | KQED","description":"Mesmerizing blue creatures, known as "by-the-wind sailors," ride waves along the California coast. Their presence hints at climate change's impact on marine ecosystems, urging us to pay attention to these subtle indicators of environmental shifts.","ogTitle":"","ogDescription":"","ogImgId":"","twTitle":"","twDescription":"","twImgId":""},"sticky":false,"excludeFromSiteSearch":"Include","articleAge":"0","path":"/science/1982750/blue-jellyfish-like-creatures-ride-california-waves-a-climate-change-indicator","audioTrackLength":null,"parsedContent":[{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Surfers and beachgoers across the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/california-coast\">California coast\u003c/a> have recently been treated to a mesmerizing spectacle: countless blue jellyfish-like creatures riding waves and washing up on sandy beaches.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These captivating organisms, known as “by-the-wind sailors,” are Velella velella and they possess striking blue translucent bodies. They thrive in large numbers, primarily in the northern hemisphere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They have a little stiff sail that sticks up from their floats and they use these little sails to capture the wind,” said Chrissy Piotrowski, senior collections manager of invertebrate zoology at the California Academy of Sciences.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"fullwidth"},"numeric":["fullwidth"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They are related to the fearsome Portuguese man o’ war, often mistakenly identified as jellyfish. Still, unlike their notorious cousins, Velella velella stings are relatively mild, according to Steven Haddock, a senior scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“From our human point of view, we think of them as invading our shorelines, but that doesn’t necessarily reflect the actual populations that are offshore,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982754\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1982754\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/003_KQED_OBVelellaVelella_05182023.jpg\" alt=\"A shot of a sandy beach with scattered seaweed and shells. Nearby, a blue, translucent organism similar to a jellyfish rests on the sand. Two people in the distance walk along the ocean.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/003_KQED_OBVelellaVelella_05182023.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/003_KQED_OBVelellaVelella_05182023-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/003_KQED_OBVelellaVelella_05182023-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/003_KQED_OBVelellaVelella_05182023-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/003_KQED_OBVelellaVelella_05182023-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/003_KQED_OBVelellaVelella_05182023-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Blue, translucent Velella velella is seen washed ashore on Ocean Beach in San Francisco on May 18, 2023. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>These ethereal beings resemble little sailboats and wash up on shore when ocean temperatures warm up and onshore wind events occur. The recent surge in the strandings of the see-through blue sea creatures could be a consequence of human-caused climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we see them a lot, it’s sort of like they’re putting up a huge billboard that says, ‘Hey, pay attention, things are changing,’” said Julia K. Parrish, a marine biologist and a professor at the University of Washington, who examined the creatures in a 2021 study.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her research utilized community science data, analyzed stranding reports and found a potential association between rising ocean temperatures and the frequency of these events. Although concrete proof is yet to emerge, the warming trend in sea surface temperatures with links to human-caused climate change could mean more sightings of these azure, disc-like creatures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A warmer ocean along the coastline means that those organisms that normally live around California are going to start to move north,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982760\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2048px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1982760\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/iStock-531994550.jpg\" alt=\"Dozens of light blue, translucent organisms comparable to jellyfish are washed ashore a sandy beach. Droplets of water and sand are sprinkled over the beings.\" width=\"2048\" height=\"1536\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/iStock-531994550.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/iStock-531994550-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/iStock-531994550-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/iStock-531994550-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/iStock-531994550-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/iStock-531994550-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/iStock-531994550-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Stranded Velella velella on the Oregon Coast on June 13, 2016. \u003ccite>((jsseattle/iStock))\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>She said one instance of a mass stranding isn’t enough to attach climate change as the reason behind the organism washing ashore. But when looking at an increase in strandings over the past two decades, Parrish said the case for the climate link is growing and more research is warranted to gain a greater understanding of the impact anthropogenic climate change has on the species.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"‘When we see signals coming from the ocean to the coast, we should pay attention. The Velella velella is an early-warning bell that we may be seeing some shifts.’","name":"pullquote","attributes":{"named":{"size":"medium","align":"right","citation":"Julia K. Parrish, marine biologist, professor University of Washington","label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we see signals coming from the ocean to the coast, we should pay attention,” she said. “The Velella velella is an early-warning bell that we may be seeing some shifts.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Conditions for Velella velella strandings may increase over the next year. Brian Garcia, warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service Bay Area and Monterey regions, said the current onshore wind events would likely become more robust.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you just pull back a little bit and blur your eyes, it’s been pretty much onshore for months,” he said. “We’ll see warm waters sticking around with us probably until next spring into next summer.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\">KQED’s Sarah Mohamad contributed to this story.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}}],"link":"/science/1982750/blue-jellyfish-like-creatures-ride-california-waves-a-climate-change-indicator","authors":["11746"],"categories":["science_40","science_2873","science_4450"],"tags":["science_986","science_2455","science_194","science_2409","science_813","science_5183"],"featImg":"science_1982755","label":"science"},"science_1941506":{"type":"posts","id":"science_1941506","meta":{"index":"posts_1591205157","site":"science","id":"1941506","found":true},"guestAuthors":[],"slug":"these-face-mites-really-grow-on-you","title":"These Face Mites Really Grow on You","publishDate":1558443627,"format":"video","headTitle":"These Face Mites Really Grow on You | KQED","labelTerm":{"term":1935,"site":"science"},"content":"\u003cp>[dl_subscribe]I hate to break this to you, but you almost certainly have tiny mites living in the pores in your face right now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They’re called Demodex. And pretty much every adult human alive has a population of these mites living on them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Also called eyelash mites, they’re too small to see with the naked eye. They’re mostly transparent, and at about .3 millimeters long, it would take about five face adult mites laid end to end to stretch across the head of a pin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They look like kind of like stubby little worms,” said Michelle Trautwein, an entomologist at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Trautwein studies our relationship with these microscopic stowaways by looking at their DNA. Her findings so far show that people in different parts of the world have different face mites living in the skin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They tell a story of your own ancestry and also a story of more ancient human history and migration,” said Trautwein.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941539\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_MichelleTrautwein_microscope.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1941539\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_MichelleTrautwein_microscope.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Michelle Trautwein of the California Academy of Sciences studies face mites using microscopes and genetic testing. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We use a little spoon and scrape it across the kind of greasier parts of someone’s face — which isn’t as bad as it sounds,” said Trautwein.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once she has collected the samples, she takes them back to the lab to look at the genetics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Trautwein has found DNA evidence of face mites on every one of more than 2,000 people she has tested, including tourists from all around the world who make their way to the California Academy of Sciences.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“No one is thrilled at the initial notion that they have arachnids on their face,” Trautwein said. “But people are often curious — even in their revulsion.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But how could these creatures live on so many people and still go unnoticed?\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941533\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_PeachFuzz_male.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1941533 size-large\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_PeachFuzz_male-1020x574.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_PeachFuzz_male-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_PeachFuzz_male-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_PeachFuzz_male-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_PeachFuzz_male-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_PeachFuzz_male-1200x675.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_PeachFuzz_male-1920x1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_PeachFuzz_male.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Face mites make their home in the follicles found at the root of the peach fuzz that covers most human skin. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Look closely and you’ll see that in addition to the more obvious body and head hair, human skin is covered in a thin, barely visible layer of peach fuzz called vellus hairs. There are a few notable exceptions, such as the palms of our hands and soles of our feet, but other than that our entire bodies are covered in that fuzz. The shaft of each one of those tiny hairs grows out of its own follicle.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Face mites spend their days face-down inside your hair follicles nestled up against the hair shaft.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They eat sebum, that greasy oil your skin makes to protect itself and keep it from drying out. The sebum is produced in sebaceous glands, which empty into the hair follicles, coating both the hair shaft and face mites.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s why the greasiest parts of your body — like around the eyes, nose and mouth — likely harbor a higher concentration of mites than other areas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They live about two weeks. They spend most of their time tucked inside our pores. But while we’re sleeping, they crawl out onto the surface of our skin to mate before crawling back into our pores to lay their eggs. Fun!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since they live inside your pores, you can’t scrub them off by washing. It’s basically impossible to get rid of all of your face mites.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So how does Trautwein study them? With glue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941540\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_SlideCollection_LindsayPalaima.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1941540\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_SlideCollection_LindsayPalaima.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lindsay Palaima bravely volunteers to have a slide covered in glue stuck to her forehead in order to capture face mites growing in her pores. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I actually put glue on a glass microscope slide and stick it onto a person’s forehead,” she said. “Then I slowly peel it off. I look under a microscope for mites that are stuck in the follicles that stick up from the thin layer of skin that got peeled off.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It can be pretty addictive and exciting,” she added. “It’s sort of a meditative process of looking through this microforest of follicles and hairs, and looking for just the right potential movement or shape.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941538\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_InFollicle.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1941538 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_InFollicle.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Demodex face mite seen writhing around in the root of a human hair follicle, observed under a microscope. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>These Demodex face mites got their name from the Greek words for “fat” and “boring worm,” but they’re not really worms at all. They’re actually arachnids — related to ticks — and more distantly to spiders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most people have face mites on them and never notice. It seems that our immune system is able to keep their numbers in check. But some people can experience problems with them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When you tell patients that they have face mites, first of all, they freak out,” said Dr. Kanade Shinkai, a dermatologist at UCSF.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shinkai occasionally treats patients who have an overload of face mites, which results in a condition called demodicosis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There is a very particular look to people suffering from demodicosis. We call it the Demodex frost,” she said. “It’s sort of a white sheen on the skin. And if you look really closely, you can see coming out of every pore. If you scrape those pores, you can see it frothing with little Demodex face mites.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a pretty rare condition and it’s often connected to a change in someone’s immune system, such as receiving immunosuppressive drugs after transplant surgery, chemotherapy or immunodeficiency diseases like HIV.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Demodicosis can also be triggered by local suppression of the immune system, like when itch-relieving hydrocortisone cream is used on the face.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When it does happen, demodicosis usually comes on fast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Patients almost universally describe this explosive development of pustules like whiteheads on their face. It’s really dramatic,” Shinkai said. “And what’s really dramatic about it is that they’re often fine the day before, and then they develop it, overnight.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But for the vast majority of people, face mites are nothing to worry about. While some studies have found loose connections between Demodex and diseases like rosacea, the evidence hasn’t shown a strong link.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What’s really confusing is that if you go into your office and scrape everyone’s face, you would find Demodex probably on everybody,” Shinkai said. “And people who have low burden of Demodex may have no or very severe disease and vice versa.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Trautwein also sees face mites as more of a source of interest than fear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re not dangerous in a broad sense because we all have them and most of us seem to be cohabiting quite well with them,” Trautwein said. “We mostly share them within family units and it seems like you are probably initially colonized soon after birth, most likely by your mother, traditionally speaking in human history.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Looking at these mites, researchers like Trautwein can usually tell something about your geographical ancestry — what part of the world your ancestors came from.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941715\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Map_Follic_migration_nonumbers.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1941715 size-large\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Map_Follic_migration_nonumbers-1020x496.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"311\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Map_Follic_migration_nonumbers-1020x496.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Map_Follic_migration_nonumbers-160x78.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Map_Follic_migration_nonumbers-800x389.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Map_Follic_migration_nonumbers-768x374.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Map_Follic_migration_nonumbers-1200x584.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Map_Follic_migration_nonumbers.jpg 1285w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Michelle Trautwein has found that several genetically distinct groups of Demodex face mites (represented by different colors on this map) exist in different geographic areas. \u003ccite>(Michelle Trautwein/California Academy of Sciences)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Face mites are definitely the species of animal that we have the closest connection with as humans, even though most of us don’t know about them or ever see one in our lifetime,” she said. “We still have this very ancient and intimate relationship, and it seems clear that we’ve had these face mite species with us for all of our history. So they are as old as our species, as old as homo sapiens.”\u003c/p>\n\n","blocks":[],"excerpt":"Yep, you probably have Demodex mites living on your face. These tiny arachnids feast on sebum, the greasy oil in your pores. But should you be worried about your eight-legged guests? ","status":"publish","parent":0,"modified":1704848665,"stats":{"hasAudio":false,"hasVideo":false,"hasChartOrMap":false,"iframeSrcs":[],"hasGoogleForm":false,"hasGallery":false,"hasHearkenModule":false,"hasPolis":false,"paragraphCount":37,"wordCount":1341},"headData":{"title":"These Face Mites Really Grow on You | KQED","description":"Yep, you probably have Demodex mites living on your face. These tiny arachnids feast on sebum, the greasy oil in your pores. But should you be worried about your eight-legged guests? ","ogTitle":"","ogDescription":"","ogImgId":"","twTitle":"","twDescription":"","twImgId":""},"videoEmbed":"https://youtu.be/YW2eGaUzq7E","sticky":false,"path":"/science/1941506/these-face-mites-really-grow-on-you","audioTrackLength":null,"parsedContent":[{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"dl_subscribe","attributes":{"named":{"label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>I hate to break this to you, but you almost certainly have tiny mites living in the pores in your face right now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They’re called Demodex. And pretty much every adult human alive has a population of these mites living on them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Also called eyelash mites, they’re too small to see with the naked eye. They’re mostly transparent, and at about .3 millimeters long, it would take about five face adult mites laid end to end to stretch across the head of a pin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They look like kind of like stubby little worms,” said Michelle Trautwein, an entomologist at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Trautwein studies our relationship with these microscopic stowaways by looking at their DNA. Her findings so far show that people in different parts of the world have different face mites living in the skin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"fullwidth"},"numeric":["fullwidth"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They tell a story of your own ancestry and also a story of more ancient human history and migration,” said Trautwein.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941539\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_MichelleTrautwein_microscope.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1941539\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_MichelleTrautwein_microscope.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Michelle Trautwein of the California Academy of Sciences studies face mites using microscopes and genetic testing. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We use a little spoon and scrape it across the kind of greasier parts of someone’s face — which isn’t as bad as it sounds,” said Trautwein.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once she has collected the samples, she takes them back to the lab to look at the genetics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Trautwein has found DNA evidence of face mites on every one of more than 2,000 people she has tested, including tourists from all around the world who make their way to the California Academy of Sciences.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“No one is thrilled at the initial notion that they have arachnids on their face,” Trautwein said. “But people are often curious — even in their revulsion.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But how could these creatures live on so many people and still go unnoticed?\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941533\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_PeachFuzz_male.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1941533 size-large\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_PeachFuzz_male-1020x574.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_PeachFuzz_male-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_PeachFuzz_male-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_PeachFuzz_male-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_PeachFuzz_male-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_PeachFuzz_male-1200x675.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_PeachFuzz_male-1920x1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_PeachFuzz_male.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Face mites make their home in the follicles found at the root of the peach fuzz that covers most human skin. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Look closely and you’ll see that in addition to the more obvious body and head hair, human skin is covered in a thin, barely visible layer of peach fuzz called vellus hairs. There are a few notable exceptions, such as the palms of our hands and soles of our feet, but other than that our entire bodies are covered in that fuzz. The shaft of each one of those tiny hairs grows out of its own follicle.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Face mites spend their days face-down inside your hair follicles nestled up against the hair shaft.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They eat sebum, that greasy oil your skin makes to protect itself and keep it from drying out. The sebum is produced in sebaceous glands, which empty into the hair follicles, coating both the hair shaft and face mites.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s why the greasiest parts of your body — like around the eyes, nose and mouth — likely harbor a higher concentration of mites than other areas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They live about two weeks. They spend most of their time tucked inside our pores. But while we’re sleeping, they crawl out onto the surface of our skin to mate before crawling back into our pores to lay their eggs. Fun!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since they live inside your pores, you can’t scrub them off by washing. It’s basically impossible to get rid of all of your face mites.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So how does Trautwein study them? With glue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941540\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_SlideCollection_LindsayPalaima.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1941540\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_SlideCollection_LindsayPalaima.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lindsay Palaima bravely volunteers to have a slide covered in glue stuck to her forehead in order to capture face mites growing in her pores. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I actually put glue on a glass microscope slide and stick it onto a person’s forehead,” she said. “Then I slowly peel it off. I look under a microscope for mites that are stuck in the follicles that stick up from the thin layer of skin that got peeled off.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It can be pretty addictive and exciting,” she added. “It’s sort of a meditative process of looking through this microforest of follicles and hairs, and looking for just the right potential movement or shape.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941538\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_InFollicle.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1941538 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_InFollicle.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Demodex face mite seen writhing around in the root of a human hair follicle, observed under a microscope. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>These Demodex face mites got their name from the Greek words for “fat” and “boring worm,” but they’re not really worms at all. They’re actually arachnids — related to ticks — and more distantly to spiders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most people have face mites on them and never notice. It seems that our immune system is able to keep their numbers in check. But some people can experience problems with them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When you tell patients that they have face mites, first of all, they freak out,” said Dr. Kanade Shinkai, a dermatologist at UCSF.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shinkai occasionally treats patients who have an overload of face mites, which results in a condition called demodicosis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There is a very particular look to people suffering from demodicosis. We call it the Demodex frost,” she said. “It’s sort of a white sheen on the skin. And if you look really closely, you can see coming out of every pore. If you scrape those pores, you can see it frothing with little Demodex face mites.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a pretty rare condition and it’s often connected to a change in someone’s immune system, such as receiving immunosuppressive drugs after transplant surgery, chemotherapy or immunodeficiency diseases like HIV.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Demodicosis can also be triggered by local suppression of the immune system, like when itch-relieving hydrocortisone cream is used on the face.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When it does happen, demodicosis usually comes on fast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Patients almost universally describe this explosive development of pustules like whiteheads on their face. It’s really dramatic,” Shinkai said. “And what’s really dramatic about it is that they’re often fine the day before, and then they develop it, overnight.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But for the vast majority of people, face mites are nothing to worry about. While some studies have found loose connections between Demodex and diseases like rosacea, the evidence hasn’t shown a strong link.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What’s really confusing is that if you go into your office and scrape everyone’s face, you would find Demodex probably on everybody,” Shinkai said. “And people who have low burden of Demodex may have no or very severe disease and vice versa.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Trautwein also sees face mites as more of a source of interest than fear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re not dangerous in a broad sense because we all have them and most of us seem to be cohabiting quite well with them,” Trautwein said. “We mostly share them within family units and it seems like you are probably initially colonized soon after birth, most likely by your mother, traditionally speaking in human history.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Looking at these mites, researchers like Trautwein can usually tell something about your geographical ancestry — what part of the world your ancestors came from.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941715\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Map_Follic_migration_nonumbers.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1941715 size-large\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Map_Follic_migration_nonumbers-1020x496.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"311\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Map_Follic_migration_nonumbers-1020x496.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Map_Follic_migration_nonumbers-160x78.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Map_Follic_migration_nonumbers-800x389.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Map_Follic_migration_nonumbers-768x374.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Map_Follic_migration_nonumbers-1200x584.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Map_Follic_migration_nonumbers.jpg 1285w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Michelle Trautwein has found that several genetically distinct groups of Demodex face mites (represented by different colors on this map) exist in different geographic areas. \u003ccite>(Michelle Trautwein/California Academy of Sciences)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"floatright"},"numeric":["floatright"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Face mites are definitely the species of animal that we have the closest connection with as humans, even though most of us don’t know about them or ever see one in our lifetime,” she said. “We still have this very ancient and intimate relationship, and it seems clear that we’ve had these face mite species with us for all of our history. So they are as old as our species, as old as homo sapiens.”\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}}],"link":"/science/1941506/these-face-mites-really-grow-on-you","authors":["6219"],"series":["science_1935"],"categories":["science_2874","science_30","science_3890","science_86"],"tags":["science_3370"],"featImg":"science_1942008","label":"science_1935"},"science_1949166":{"type":"posts","id":"science_1949166","meta":{"index":"posts_1591205157","site":"science","id":"1949166","found":true},"guestAuthors":[],"slug":"photos-what-san-franciscos-marina-looked-like-after-loma-prieta-and-now","title":"Photos: What San Francisco's Marina District Looked Like After Loma Prieta and Now","publishDate":1571321069,"format":"aside","headTitle":"Photos: What San Francisco’s Marina District Looked Like After Loma Prieta and Now | KQED","labelTerm":{},"content":"\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">On Tuesday, Oct. 17, 1989, as evening rush hour was getting underway, a 6.9 magnitude earthquake with an epicenter near the Loma Prieta peak of the Santa Cruz Mountains shook the entire Bay Area. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The quake killed at least 63 people and injured about 3,700. After the quake, thousands of buildings became uninhabitable, including dozens in \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">San Francisco’s \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Marina District\u003c/span>.\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Below are photos of what four locations in the neighborhood looked like both after the quake and today.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ctable border=\"0\" width=\"98%\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\">\n\u003ctbody>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd>\n\u003ctable border=\"0\" width=\"98%\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\">\n\u003ctbody>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd style=\"text-align: left;\">\n\u003ch3> Divisadero north of Beach Street\u003c/h3>\n\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/01A.jpg\" alt=\"Loma Prieta 1989\" width=\"98%\">\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd style=\"text-align: left;\">Oct. 21, 1989. \u003cem>Photo by Getty\u003c/em>\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/01B.jpg\" alt=\"Loma Prieta 2019\" width=\"98%\">\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd style=\"text-align: left;\">Oct. 4, 2019. \u003cem>Photo by Lindsey Moore\u003c/em>\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003c/tbody>\n\u003c/table>\n\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003c/tbody>\n\u003c/table>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003ctable border=\"0\" width=\"98%\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\">\n\u003ctbody>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd>\n\u003ctable border=\"0\" width=\"98%\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\">\n\u003ctbody>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd style=\"text-align: left;\">\n\u003ch3>Fillmore Street near Cervantes Boulevard\u003c/h3>\n\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/02A.jpg\" alt=\"Loma Prieta 1989\" width=\"98%\">\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd style=\"text-align: left;\">Oct. 17, 1989. \u003cem>Photo by Getty\u003c/em>\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/02B.jpg\" alt=\"Loma Prieta 2019\" width=\"98%\">\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd style=\"text-align: left;\">Oct. 4, 2019. \u003cem>Photo by Lindsey Moore\u003c/em>\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003c/tbody>\n\u003c/table>\n\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003c/tbody>\n\u003c/table>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003ctable border=\"0\" width=\"98%\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\">\n\u003ctbody>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd>\n\u003ctable border=\"0\" width=\"98%\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\">\n\u003ctbody>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd style=\"text-align: left;\">\n\u003ch3>Corner of Jefferson and Divisadero streets\u003c/h3>\n\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/03A.jpg\" alt=\"Loma Prieta 1989\" width=\"98%\">\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd style=\"text-align: left;\">Oct. 21, 1989. \u003cem>Photo by Getty\u003c/em>\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/03B.jpg\" alt=\"Loma Prieta 2019\" width=\"98%\">\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd style=\"text-align: left;\">Oct. 4 2019. \u003cem>Photo by Lindsey Moore\u003c/em>\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003c/tbody>\n\u003c/table>\n\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003c/tbody>\n\u003c/table>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003ctable border=\"0\" width=\"98%\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\">\n\u003ctbody>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd>\n\u003ctable border=\"0\" width=\"98%\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\">\n\u003ctbody>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd style=\"text-align: left;\">\n\u003ch3>Corner of Beach and Divisadero streets\u003c/h3>\n\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/G01A.jpg\" alt=\"Loma Prieta 1989\" width=\"98%\">\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd style=\"text-align: left;\">Oct. 17, 1989. \u003cem>Photo by Getty\u003c/em>\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/G01B.jpg\" alt=\"Loma Prieta 2019\" width=\"98%\">\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd style=\"text-align: left;\">Oct. 15, 2019. \u003cem>Photo by Getty\u003c/em>.\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003c/tbody>\n\u003c/table>\n\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003c/tbody>\n\u003c/table>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n","blocks":[],"excerpt":"Afer the quake, thousands of buildings became uninhabitable, including dozens in San Francisco’s Marina District.","status":"publish","parent":0,"modified":1704848232,"stats":{"hasAudio":false,"hasVideo":false,"hasChartOrMap":false,"iframeSrcs":[],"hasGoogleForm":false,"hasGallery":false,"hasHearkenModule":false,"hasPolis":false,"paragraphCount":3,"wordCount":165},"headData":{"title":"Photos: What San Francisco's Marina District Looked Like After Loma Prieta and Now | KQED","description":"Afer the quake, thousands of buildings became uninhabitable, including dozens in San Francisco’s Marina District.","ogTitle":"","ogDescription":"","ogImgId":"","twTitle":"","twDescription":"","twImgId":""},"source":"Loma Prieta Anniversary","sticky":false,"path":"/science/1949166/photos-what-san-franciscos-marina-looked-like-after-loma-prieta-and-now","audioTrackLength":null,"parsedContent":[{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">On Tuesday, Oct. 17, 1989, as evening rush hour was getting underway, a 6.9 magnitude earthquake with an epicenter near the Loma Prieta peak of the Santa Cruz Mountains shook the entire Bay Area. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The quake killed at least 63 people and injured about 3,700. After the quake, thousands of buildings became uninhabitable, including dozens in \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">San Francisco’s \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Marina District\u003c/span>.\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Below are photos of what four locations in the neighborhood looked like both after the quake and today.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ctable border=\"0\" width=\"98%\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\">\n\u003ctbody>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd>\n\u003ctable border=\"0\" width=\"98%\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\">\n\u003ctbody>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd style=\"text-align: left;\">\n\u003ch3> Divisadero north of Beach Street\u003c/h3>\n\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/01A.jpg\" alt=\"Loma Prieta 1989\" width=\"98%\">\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd style=\"text-align: left;\">Oct. 21, 1989. \u003cem>Photo by Getty\u003c/em>\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/01B.jpg\" alt=\"Loma Prieta 2019\" width=\"98%\">\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd style=\"text-align: left;\">Oct. 4, 2019. \u003cem>Photo by Lindsey Moore\u003c/em>\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003c/tbody>\n\u003c/table>\n\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003c/tbody>\n\u003c/table>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003ctable border=\"0\" width=\"98%\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\">\n\u003ctbody>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd>\n\u003ctable border=\"0\" width=\"98%\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\">\n\u003ctbody>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd style=\"text-align: left;\">\n\u003ch3>Fillmore Street near Cervantes Boulevard\u003c/h3>\n\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/02A.jpg\" alt=\"Loma Prieta 1989\" width=\"98%\">\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd style=\"text-align: left;\">Oct. 17, 1989. \u003cem>Photo by Getty\u003c/em>\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/02B.jpg\" alt=\"Loma Prieta 2019\" width=\"98%\">\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd style=\"text-align: left;\">Oct. 4, 2019. \u003cem>Photo by Lindsey Moore\u003c/em>\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003c/tbody>\n\u003c/table>\n\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003c/tbody>\n\u003c/table>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003ctable border=\"0\" width=\"98%\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\">\n\u003ctbody>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd>\n\u003ctable border=\"0\" width=\"98%\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\">\n\u003ctbody>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd style=\"text-align: left;\">\n\u003ch3>Corner of Jefferson and Divisadero streets\u003c/h3>\n\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/03A.jpg\" alt=\"Loma Prieta 1989\" width=\"98%\">\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd style=\"text-align: left;\">Oct. 21, 1989. \u003cem>Photo by Getty\u003c/em>\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/03B.jpg\" alt=\"Loma Prieta 2019\" width=\"98%\">\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd style=\"text-align: left;\">Oct. 4 2019. \u003cem>Photo by Lindsey Moore\u003c/em>\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003c/tbody>\n\u003c/table>\n\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003c/tbody>\n\u003c/table>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003ctable border=\"0\" width=\"98%\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\">\n\u003ctbody>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd>\n\u003ctable border=\"0\" width=\"98%\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\">\n\u003ctbody>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd style=\"text-align: left;\">\n\u003ch3>Corner of Beach and Divisadero streets\u003c/h3>\n\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/G01A.jpg\" alt=\"Loma Prieta 1989\" width=\"98%\">\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd style=\"text-align: left;\">Oct. 17, 1989. \u003cem>Photo by Getty\u003c/em>\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/10/G01B.jpg\" alt=\"Loma Prieta 2019\" width=\"98%\">\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003ctr>\n\u003ctd style=\"text-align: left;\">Oct. 15, 2019. \u003cem>Photo by Getty\u003c/em>.\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003c/tbody>\n\u003c/table>\n\u003c/td>\n\u003c/tr>\n\u003c/tbody>\n\u003c/table>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"fullwidth"},"numeric":["fullwidth"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}}],"link":"/science/1949166/photos-what-san-franciscos-marina-looked-like-after-loma-prieta-and-now","authors":["11577"],"categories":["science_38","science_40"],"tags":["science_427"],"featImg":"science_1949150","label":"source_science_1949166"},"science_1951205":{"type":"posts","id":"science_1951205","meta":{"index":"posts_1591205157","site":"science","id":"1951205","found":true},"guestAuthors":[],"slug":"farmers-give-beleaguered-salmon-a-boost-by-flooding-fields","title":"Farmers Flood Fields to Give Beleaguered Salmon a Boost","publishDate":1575584913,"format":"video","headTitle":"Farmers Flood Fields to Give Beleaguered Salmon a Boost | KQED","labelTerm":{},"content":"\u003cp>\u003cem>This story originally appeared in \u003ca href=\"https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/XRVyCNk8PyfNj41KT4udQM?domain=biographic.com\">bioGraphic\u003c/a>, an online magazine about nature and sustainability powered by the California Academy of Sciences.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Snow geese erupt against a blue sky trimmed with fresh, white clouds. The air is so clear you can see for miles, east to the distant peaks of the Sierra Nevada and west to the gentle slopes of the Coast Ranges. But Carson Jeffres and Jacob Katz are less interested in the view above them than the one at their feet. Standing knee-deep in a flooded field at Knaggs Ranch, a rice farm near Sacramento, they peer into a floating cage made of PVC pipe and mesh and prepare to check on its unusual inhabitants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jeffres opens the top of the cage and dips in a small net. When he pulls it out, a pair of plump fish, each the size of a pinky finger, wriggle inside. These are young Chinook salmon—a species imperiled in California. He holds up his catch for Katz to admire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The two men are fish ecologists—Jeffres at the University of California, Davis, and Katz at the conservation-based non-profit California Trout—and they are testing a wild idea. To help save the Chinook, they are using rice fields as winter nurseries for young salmon migrating from their natal streams to the ocean.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the last century, water agencies have built levees along most of the state’s rivers to control floods and supply water to communities and farmers alike. But these levees also bar young Chinook from the floodplains that historically provided safe, food-rich places to grow on their journey to the Pacific. Today, more than half a million acres of these former floodplains in California’s immense interior valley are occupied by rice farms. Repurposing them as surrogate floodplains during the months they would otherwise lie fallow could be key to restoring endangered populations of wild-spawning Chinook.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We can’t restore those floodplains,” says Rene Henery, California science director for the conservation non-profit Trout Unlimited, “but we can recover the functionality that the fish evolved with.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California’s Central Valley is a flat expanse, flanked on either side by mountain ranges, that extends 400 miles down the middle of the state. Salmon once flourished in the streams and rivers that course through it. “One or two million came back every year,” says Peter Moyle, a fish ecologist at UC Davis. “They were up to 60 pounds and close to a meter long.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For millennia, adult Chinook in California returned to spawn in the upper reaches of waterways that flow down from mountains surrounding the valley. Then, when the winter rainy season caused their natal streams to swell, the next generation of young fish would all swim downstream toward the sea, taking advantage of the many floodplains along the way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The final stretch of their long journey would begin when the fish hit the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, where the water slows, twisting and turning around the Delta’s many islands. Migrating young salmon have to navigate these braided waterways before making their way across the San Francisco Bay and through the Golden Gate Strait, the iconic narrow opening spanned by the Golden Gate Bridge that leads to the ocean.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1951349\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1951349 size-complete_open_graph\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2019/12/20190326_A_0785_full-1200x800.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"427\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jacob Katz examining the siphon after collecting a water sample to measure zooplankton in the floodplain near the Sacramento River. \u003ccite>(Jak Wonderly/bioGraphic)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Habitat Loss\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, few Central Valley salmon spawn in the wild. The region’s waterways have been completely remade into a system that includes 20 major dams and more than 1,600 miles of riverbank levees. While this engineered set-up tames flooding and supplies drinking and irrigation water, these benefits to people come at a cost to salmon. Dams block entry to the mountain streams where the fish once spawned, and levees block access to the valley-floor floodplains where young salmon once found plentiful food and shelter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Across their range, Central Valley Chinook are all classified as a single species, but for management purposes the fish are divided into four runs according to the season when adults return from the Pacific Ocean to spawn. Two of those runs are listed under the federal Endangered Species Act, while the other two are considered federal populations of concern.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Engineered rivers are almost completely to blame. “Just as we’ve lost almost all the floodplain habitat, we’ve also lost pretty much all of the spawning habitat,” says Brian Ellrott, the Central Valley salmon recovery coordinator at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which leads the efforts to restore populations of these fish.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re just straggling along right now,” Jeffres says. “They’re propped up by hatcheries.” State hatcheries release more than 32 million young salmon annually, and these fish dominate all four runs of Central Valley Chinook.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The best way to restore Chinook salmon, fish biologists say, is to give them back some of what they’ve lost. To provide more spawning grounds, NOAA plans to start transporting migrating adults past Central Valley dams―from the downstream side to the upstream reaches―as is done by wildlife agencies in the states of Washington and Oregon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Restoration of degraded spawning grounds below dams will also be critical to their recovery. While most salmon return to their natal waters to spawn, a few stray in search of new homes. This penchant for exploration allows them to revisit waterways where they had previously been extinct for decades. Recent restoration efforts are starting to pay off: After an absence of 70 years, Chinook now return by the hundreds to spawn in Putah Creek, a tributary of the Sacramento River. Likewise, for the first time in more than half a century, a couple dozen Chinook have found their way back to historical spawning grounds in the San Joaquin River, which flows from the Sierra Nevada to the Delta.[pullquote align='right' citation='Jacob Katz, fish ecologist']‘Fish abundance equals water security. It doesn’t have to be fish versus farms―it can be fish and farms.’[/pullquote]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Restoring floodplain nurseries is a harder problem to solve, since this habitat has been more dramatically altered and requires changes on a much larger scale. Repurposing rice fields in the off-season may be a big part of the answer, and NOAA is supportive of the effort. “We’re pushing to make that happen,” Ellrott says. “Salmon are really resilient―I’m optimistic that if we give them the right nudge, we can restore them in the valley.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Restorationists have good reason to think that prime nursery grounds are vital to the long-term survival of the region’s salmon. The most robust population of spring-run Chinook originates in Butte Creek, which runs along a wildlife refuge that contains some of the valley’s few remaining floodplains. The Butte Creek salmon population is wild-spawning and self-sustaining. “It’s the one successful population of spring-run salmon,” Jeffres says. Young salmon here are more likely to make it out to sea, and the adults more likely to return and spawn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A probable reason for Butte Creek’s success is that it gives Chinook a place to grow and thrive. The creek’s young fish are larger than those elsewhere in the valley, and being bigger presumably boosts survival. “It makes the salmon more resilient,” Katz says, just like packing lunch before a long trip.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1951231\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 540px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1951231\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2019/12/RS40320__20190311_dji_0341_full-sfi.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"540\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/12/RS40320__20190311_dji_0341_full-sfi.jpg 540w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/12/RS40320__20190311_dji_0341_full-sfi-160x107.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 540px) 100vw, 540px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Restored wetlands from the air. This area is adjacent to the sample area. \u003ccite>(Jak Wonderly/bioGraphic)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Understanding Floodplain Value\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"et_pb_section et_pb_section_13 et_pb_section_parallax et_pb_with_background et_section_regular\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"et_pb_row et_pb_row_14 text_row\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"et_pb_column et_pb_column_1_2 et_pb_column_23 text_column align_text_bottom_of_bg_image et_pb_css_mix_blend_mode_passthrough\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"et_pb_module et_pb_text et_pb_text_12 et_pb_text_align_left et_pb_bg_layout_light\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"et_pb_text_inner\">\n\u003cp>Before researchers understood the value of floodplains, they considered them risky for fish. “Wildlife biologists thought floodplains were bad for salmon because they stranded them, and that levees were good for salmon because they kept them in the river,” Moyle says. “It was pretty much unquestioned.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s only in the last two decades that this conventional wisdom has been overturned. The first evidence came from scientists looking at the fate of young salmon in the Yolo Bypass. Built to contain a floodplain of the Sacramento River, the Bypass is an enormous flood control structure—about 40 miles long and two miles wide—that shunts water from the Sacramento River around the City of Sacramento. It’s bounded on either side by colossal, earthen levees that are more than 20 feet high and wide enough to drive on. When the river runs high, it overtops a weir at the north end of the levees. Water spills down inside the bypass, flooding it, then rejoins the river at the south end of the levees.\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv class=\"et_pb_section et_pb_section_14 text_section et_section_regular\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"et_pb_row et_pb_row_15 text_row et_pb_equal_columns\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"et_pb_column et_pb_column_1_2 et_pb_column_25 vertical-align-in-column text_column et_pb_css_mix_blend_mode_passthrough\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"et_pb_module et_pb_text et_pb_text_13 et_pb_text_align_left et_pb_bg_layout_light\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"et_pb_text_inner\">\n\u003cp>The Yolo Bypass only fills during the winter, and, when it does, some of the young salmon migrating downstream come along for the ride. During particularly wet winters, the bypass is so full it looks like an inland sea. “The floodplains are still there,” Katz says. “They’re just used differently, as bypasses.” A 1998 study concluded that salmon swept into the bypass grew faster than those that remained in the river.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jeffres got similar results when he looked at fish in the Cosumnes, one of the state’s rare, free-flowing rivers that still has remnants of natural floodplains. In 2004, he found that young salmon in a floodplain grew faster than those in the Cosumnes River itself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2009, the California Department of Water Resources decided to give salmon about 20,000 acres of floodplain habitat―one-third of the total acreage―in the Yolo Bypass. Most of the land there is privately owned and farmed for rice during the summer growing season. That decision caught the attention of rice farmer John Brennan, who wanted to keep fields in production in the Yolo Bypass.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Water is in short supply during the hot, dry Central Valley summers, especially during the state’s periodic severe droughts. Historically, the fight over this constrained resource has pitted growers against environmental laws that require allocating water for endangered fish like Chinook. Rather than playing this zero-sum game, Brennan has been looking for ways to integrate conservation with agriculture. “If you’re in the rice business, you’re in the water business―and if you’re in the water business, you’re in the fish business,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Katz puts it this way: “Fish abundance equals water security. It doesn’t have to be fish versus farms―it can be fish \u003cem>and\u003c/em> farms.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"et_pb_section et_pb_section_18 text_section et_section_regular\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"et_pb_row et_pb_row_20 text_row et_pb_equal_columns\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"et_pb_column et_pb_column_1_2 et_pb_column_33 vertical-align-in-column text_column et_pb_css_mix_blend_mode_passthrough\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"et_pb_module et_pb_text et_pb_text_15 et_pb_text_align_left et_pb_bg_layout_light\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"et_pb_text_inner\">\n\u003cp>In 2010, Brennan joined forces with two environmentalists to see if rice fields in the bypass could be used as salmon nurseries during the winter, when the fields are dormant and fish are migrating downstream. After scouting the Yolo Bypass for available properties, Brennan and his partners settled on the rice fields of Knaggs Ranch as a chance to put their plan into practice. They bought the ranch and assembled a research team, starting with Jacob Katz since his father is one of Brennan’s partners. Katz invited Jeffres to join him, and the pair has collaborated ever since.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the winter of 2012, the researchers flooded a five-acre corner of the ranch and released 10,000 young hatchery salmon in the fallow field. “When we first started, lots of farmers laughed and said it was the stupidest thing they’d ever heard,’” Jeffres says. He and Katz had their doubts, too. “It didn’t look like fish habitat,” Jeffres says, pointing across the ranch to their original test site. Flat brown fields stretch in all directions, and tidy mud berms divide the land into a patchwork of close-packed rice paddies. “We thought it might be the dumbest thing we’d ever done.”\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv class=\"et_pb_section et_pb_section_19 article_text_section et_section_regular\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"et_pb_row et_pb_row_21 text_row et_pb_equal_columns\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"et_pb_column et_pb_column_1_2 et_pb_column_35 text_column et_pb_css_mix_blend_mode_passthrough\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"et_pb_module et_pb_text et_pb_text_16 et_pb_text_align_left et_pb_bg_layout_light\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"et_pb_text_inner\">\n\u003cp>They worried they’d end up with a field full of dead fish. They weren’t concerned about residual pesticides, which are applied months earlier and break down relatively quickly in the environment, but they fretted about a host of other potential pitfalls. They thought the stagnant, shallow water in the field might get too warm for fish or make them easy prey for hungry birds. And they didn’t know whether the decomposition of rice stubble, which is left on the fields after the fall harvest, would deplete oxygen levels in the water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At first the researchers couldn’t tell whether anything was happening. “Out in the fields in mid-winter it looks like a mud puddle. We couldn’t see the fish,” Katz says. “Then we ran a net through the water and caught fish with little potbellies. It was amazing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Their rice-field test subjects did far more than survive. They thrived, growing five-fold―from 1 gram to more than 5―in just six weeks. “They grew at the highest rates recorded in the Central Valley,” Jeffres says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ultimately, the scientists envision that the young salmon, instead of being introduced into rice fields by humans, will leave their natal waters and migrate downstream and into the bypass on their own. To make that journey possible even if the weir hasn’t overflowed, the California Department of Water Resources wants to add gates that can be opened to let salmon swim in and out of the rice fields on their way to the ocean.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While there are still some barriers left to remove, the possibility of wild-spawning, self-sustaining Chinook runs raised on rice farms is no longer just a pipe dream. In the years since they launched their pilot project, Jeffres and Katz have expanded their effort to encompass 20 acres and 50,000 fish, proving that it can work on a real-world scale. They have also found that, on average, salmon reared in these rice-field nurseries weigh 12 times more than those that grow up in the Sacramento River. The reason for this, Jeffres says, is that there’s so much more for them to eat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1951234\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 540px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1951234\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2019/12/RS40324__20190419_A_1200_full-2-sfi.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"540\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/12/RS40324__20190419_A_1200_full-2-sfi.jpg 540w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/12/RS40324__20190419_A_1200_full-2-sfi-160x107.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 540px) 100vw, 540px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Hundreds of chinook salmon fry in a tank at the UC Davis Marine Laboratory. \u003ccite>(Jak Wonderly/bioGraphic)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Back at Knaggs Ranch\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jeffres wants to know just how much more food the rice fields contain. He casts a long, white net across the shallow water of a rice field then draws it back carefully, keeping clear of the mud. Katz tips the contents into a plastic bag and lifts it high so they can both see.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Holy shit! Holy shit! Holy moly!” Katz exclaims. “I am totally astonished.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jeffres is equally jazzed. “That’s insane!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inside the plastic bag, tiny freshwater crustaceans―or “bugs,” as the researchers call them―dart back and forth in constant motion. The water is so thick with them that it looks like a whirling cloud of pink.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These small crustaceans are the perfect food for young fish, and this haul is the best Katz and Jeffres have ever seen. Most of the bugs they netted belong to the genus \u003cem>Daphnia\u003c/em>, often dubbed water fleas for the way they swim in short hops. They’re here in such abundance because they thrive in shallow, algae-rich waters, from puddles to flooded fields to floodplains. “It’s magic when water slows down and spreads across a floodplain,” Katz says. “It’s liquid protein.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pickings are far slimmer in rivers. Katz holds up another bag, this one netted about an hour earlier from the Sacramento River. Just a few crustaceans scoot around inside it. “There’s basically nothing here,” he says. “By building levees, we’ve created rivers that are essentially food deserts.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Sacramento River has several flood control bypasses, and Katz estimates that, altogether, they contain up to 150,000 acres of rice fields that could be used as bug-rich salmon nurseries. Another 500,000 acres of rice farms lie along the Sacramento River but outside bypasses―and he thinks they may be able to help salmon, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of these is River Garden Farms, which lies a short stretch upriver from Knaggs Ranch and is managed by Roger Cornwell. Like Brennan, Cornwell wondered if his fields could benefit salmon, despite the fact that the land is not in a bypass. “I met Jacob Katz and started talking to him about what we could do,” he says. Katz proposed another wild idea, one that could solve the food-desert problem: bug farming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They wanted to know, Jeffres says, “If we can’t bring the fish to the floodplain, can we bring the floodplain to the fish?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>River Garden Farms is separated from the Sacramento River by a levee, atop which sits the Rough and Ready Pumping Plant, which was installed in 1915 to irrigate fields. The plant houses five glossy, black, massive pumps—each about six feet tall—which fill the pump house with a low roar. This past winter, the team took advantage of the setup and flooded a fallow rice field to raise bugs, then pumped the food-rich water into the Sacramento River to feed young fish as they swam through.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To test whether the bugs would reach their intended recipients, the researchers placed cages of young salmon at intervals along a mile or so of the river. The Rough and Ready pumps delivered bugs starting in late February, and Jacob Montgomery and Jennifer Kronk of California Trout took weekly measurements of the caged fish. By late March, when we visit, all the bugs have been pumped off the field. The field crew pulls on their waders and heads out to the river to see if the experiment worked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They start at a site upstream of the pumping plant, where the caged fish didn’t get any field-raised bugs. Montgomery and Kronk wrestle a cage to the river’s muddy bank. Montgomery hefts the cage above the water, revealing young salmon that flash silver as they flip back and forth in distress. The team works fast so as to get the fish back to the river as soon as possible. Montgomery places each fish in a tray with a ruler, splashing it with water to keep it calm and still, and calls out the length for Kronk to record. Then he passes it to her for weighing. When the measuring is done, he estimates that the upstream fish averaged about 55 millimeters long and weighed around 2 grams.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Moving downstream to the next site, Kronk scoops up a fish collected right by the pump outfall. This site got the most bugs delivered from the rice field―if the experiment works, they’ll see it here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Oh, he’s fat,” Kronk says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She lays it in the measuring tray. It’s 65 millimeters and 2.5 grams, considerably bigger than the upstream average. The next fish is even fatter, at 66 mm and just over 3 g, and the one after that is fatter still, at 71 mm and 4 g.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Wow, look at these guys. They’re doing great,” Montgomery says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although supplying bugs to fish in a free-flowing river doesn’t guarantee delivery, a system that monitors migrating salmon is already in place―so the researchers will know when to expect the fish and can serve them food from the fields at just the right time. “We can pump bugs into the river when fish are passing by,” Katz says. By spring, the salmon will have completed their journey, and the rice fields will be drained and ready for planting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1951235\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 540px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1951235\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2019/12/RS40325__20190424_2341_full-sfi.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"540\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/12/RS40325__20190424_2341_full-sfi.jpg 540w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/12/RS40325__20190424_2341_full-sfi-160x107.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 540px) 100vw, 540px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rachelle Tallman, UC Davis Graduate student, creating an incision in a salmon fry after inserting a tracking tag. \u003ccite>(Jak Wonderly/bioGraphic)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Fish biologists have long assumed that the larger young salmon are when they navigate the Delta, the faster they can swim and the better their chances of survival. “It’s a really dangerous place,” Trout Unlimited’s Rene Henery says. “There are lots of introduced predatory fish.” To date, however, there is no direct evidence that size is important to survival.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In the fish world, we say bigger fish are more likely to make it to the ocean. But no one has actually looked at survival,” says Rachelle Tallman, a graduate student in fish ecology at UC Davis. Tallman is now heading up a project to do just that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The project is part of an effort by the California Rice Commission to incentivize farmers to manage their rice fields in a way that benefits local wildlife. Paul Buttner, who manages environmental affairs for the commission, currently pays farmers to flood their fields for water birds migrating along the Pacific Flyway. He hopes to launch a similar program for salmon that would compensate farmers for creating floodplain nurseries for young, migrating fish. But first he needs solid proof that it works.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“How many salmon from fields survive and go out the Golden Gate?” Buttner asks. “More than those that grow up in the river?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the Rough and Ready plant was pumping bugs into the Sacramento River, Tallman was setting up a different experiment to assess how size affects a salmon’s success. She reared two sets of young salmon: some in a laboratory tank and others in rice fields in the Yolo Bypass. Now, on a warm April day near the edge of the bypass, she’s pulling fish from the rice fields and equipping them with acoustic tags so she can compare survival rates as they swim out to, and beyond, the Golden Gate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tallman stands at a fish-surgery station sheltered by a white tent. As she slips a young salmon into a bucket of anesthetic, she alerts her team that a surgery is in progress. “Dope!” she calls out. A minute later the fish has stopped wriggling and Tallman springs into action. In rapid succession, she weighs it, measures it, and places it on a foam block. Cool water streams across the fish, which lies motionless apart from flapping gills.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Surgical scissors in hand, Tallman cuts a small opening in its belly and pushes a centimeter-long tag inside. She closes the wound with a single stitch and knots both ends. “Fish out of surgery,” she calls. A crew member collects the salmon and puts it in a recovery bucket. The whole operation, including anesthesia, takes just two minutes. Then Tallman picks up another fish and starts the process anew. “Dope!” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back at the lab, another crew tags tank-reared fish. Collectively, the team tags more than 750 salmon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A day after the surgeries, Tallman releases her tagged salmon into the wild, sending some into the Sacramento River and some into the Yolo Bypass, which drains into the Sacramento. About 200 underwater acoustic receivers will track their progress.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By early May, the first tagged fish have navigated the perils of the Delta. Now, they must traverse the San Francisco Bay—a huge body of water that covers more than 500 square miles. But this part of their journey is less risky. Once they’ve gotten this far, most young salmon readily find their way across the Bay and swim through its narrow opening beneath the Golden Gate Bridge, out into the Pacific Ocean. It will likely be December before Tallman can crunch all the data and tell Buttner whether—and how much—the rice field nurseries boost survival rates for the salmon. While the final verdict is still out, Buttner says they’re all hoping for a nice Christmas present.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The fish in Tallman’s study that do make it to the Pacific and survive in the open ocean will eventually attempt to return as adults to spawn in the Central Valley’s extensive but highly altered river system. It’s a journey the scientists hope will become at least slightly less challenging in the years to come. “We’re not going to get back what we once had,” Jeffres says. “But we can mimic it.” He and Katz envision waterways that are managed for flood control and farming but also for Chinook survival, ones with rice-field nurseries and bug farms to help restore self-sustaining salmon populations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s about welcoming the wild back into human landscapes in a way that makes sense,” Katz says. “We’re reimagining the system to work with nature.”\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\n","blocks":[],"excerpt":"California’s Chinook salmon have been losing habitat to agriculture for decades. Now, the fish are getting some much-needed help.","status":"publish","parent":0,"modified":1704848061,"stats":{"hasAudio":false,"hasVideo":false,"hasChartOrMap":false,"iframeSrcs":[],"hasGoogleForm":false,"hasGallery":false,"hasHearkenModule":false,"hasPolis":false,"paragraphCount":66,"wordCount":4200},"headData":{"title":"Farmers Flood Fields to Give Beleaguered Salmon a Boost | KQED","description":"California’s Chinook salmon have been losing habitat to agriculture for decades. Now, the fish are getting some much-needed help.","ogTitle":"","ogDescription":"","ogImgId":"","twTitle":"","twDescription":"","twImgId":"","authorsData":[{"type":"authors","id":"byline_science_1951205","meta":{"override":true},"slug":"byline_science_1951205","name":" Robin Meadows \u003cbr />bioGraphic\u003cbr>","isLoading":false}],"imageData":{"ogImageSize":{"file":"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2019/12/RS40322__20190326_A_0809_full-qut-1020x720.jpg","width":1020,"height":720,"mimeType":"image/jpeg"},"twImageSize":{"file":"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2019/12/RS40322__20190326_A_0809_full-qut-1020x720.jpg","width":1020,"height":720,"mimeType":"image/jpeg"},"twitterCard":"summary_large_image"},"tagData":{"tags":["animals","California","conservation","featured","fish","ingest","water"]}},"videoEmbed":"https://youtu.be/jAJR03u248c","source":"bioGraphic","sticky":false,"nprByline":" Robin Meadows \u003cbr />bioGraphic\u003cbr>","path":"/science/1951205/farmers-give-beleaguered-salmon-a-boost-by-flooding-fields","audioTrackLength":null,"parsedContent":[{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>This story originally appeared in \u003ca href=\"https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/XRVyCNk8PyfNj41KT4udQM?domain=biographic.com\">bioGraphic\u003c/a>, an online magazine about nature and sustainability powered by the California Academy of Sciences.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Snow geese erupt against a blue sky trimmed with fresh, white clouds. The air is so clear you can see for miles, east to the distant peaks of the Sierra Nevada and west to the gentle slopes of the Coast Ranges. But Carson Jeffres and Jacob Katz are less interested in the view above them than the one at their feet. Standing knee-deep in a flooded field at Knaggs Ranch, a rice farm near Sacramento, they peer into a floating cage made of PVC pipe and mesh and prepare to check on its unusual inhabitants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jeffres opens the top of the cage and dips in a small net. When he pulls it out, a pair of plump fish, each the size of a pinky finger, wriggle inside. These are young Chinook salmon—a species imperiled in California. He holds up his catch for Katz to admire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The two men are fish ecologists—Jeffres at the University of California, Davis, and Katz at the conservation-based non-profit California Trout—and they are testing a wild idea. To help save the Chinook, they are using rice fields as winter nurseries for young salmon migrating from their natal streams to the ocean.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the last century, water agencies have built levees along most of the state’s rivers to control floods and supply water to communities and farmers alike. But these levees also bar young Chinook from the floodplains that historically provided safe, food-rich places to grow on their journey to the Pacific. Today, more than half a million acres of these former floodplains in California’s immense interior valley are occupied by rice farms. Repurposing them as surrogate floodplains during the months they would otherwise lie fallow could be key to restoring endangered populations of wild-spawning Chinook.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"fullwidth"},"numeric":["fullwidth"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We can’t restore those floodplains,” says Rene Henery, California science director for the conservation non-profit Trout Unlimited, “but we can recover the functionality that the fish evolved with.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California’s Central Valley is a flat expanse, flanked on either side by mountain ranges, that extends 400 miles down the middle of the state. Salmon once flourished in the streams and rivers that course through it. “One or two million came back every year,” says Peter Moyle, a fish ecologist at UC Davis. “They were up to 60 pounds and close to a meter long.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For millennia, adult Chinook in California returned to spawn in the upper reaches of waterways that flow down from mountains surrounding the valley. Then, when the winter rainy season caused their natal streams to swell, the next generation of young fish would all swim downstream toward the sea, taking advantage of the many floodplains along the way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The final stretch of their long journey would begin when the fish hit the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, where the water slows, twisting and turning around the Delta’s many islands. Migrating young salmon have to navigate these braided waterways before making their way across the San Francisco Bay and through the Golden Gate Strait, the iconic narrow opening spanned by the Golden Gate Bridge that leads to the ocean.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1951349\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1951349 size-complete_open_graph\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2019/12/20190326_A_0785_full-1200x800.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"427\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jacob Katz examining the siphon after collecting a water sample to measure zooplankton in the floodplain near the Sacramento River. \u003ccite>(Jak Wonderly/bioGraphic)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Habitat Loss\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, few Central Valley salmon spawn in the wild. The region’s waterways have been completely remade into a system that includes 20 major dams and more than 1,600 miles of riverbank levees. While this engineered set-up tames flooding and supplies drinking and irrigation water, these benefits to people come at a cost to salmon. Dams block entry to the mountain streams where the fish once spawned, and levees block access to the valley-floor floodplains where young salmon once found plentiful food and shelter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Across their range, Central Valley Chinook are all classified as a single species, but for management purposes the fish are divided into four runs according to the season when adults return from the Pacific Ocean to spawn. Two of those runs are listed under the federal Endangered Species Act, while the other two are considered federal populations of concern.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Engineered rivers are almost completely to blame. “Just as we’ve lost almost all the floodplain habitat, we’ve also lost pretty much all of the spawning habitat,” says Brian Ellrott, the Central Valley salmon recovery coordinator at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which leads the efforts to restore populations of these fish.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re just straggling along right now,” Jeffres says. “They’re propped up by hatcheries.” State hatcheries release more than 32 million young salmon annually, and these fish dominate all four runs of Central Valley Chinook.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The best way to restore Chinook salmon, fish biologists say, is to give them back some of what they’ve lost. To provide more spawning grounds, NOAA plans to start transporting migrating adults past Central Valley dams―from the downstream side to the upstream reaches―as is done by wildlife agencies in the states of Washington and Oregon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Restoration of degraded spawning grounds below dams will also be critical to their recovery. While most salmon return to their natal waters to spawn, a few stray in search of new homes. This penchant for exploration allows them to revisit waterways where they had previously been extinct for decades. Recent restoration efforts are starting to pay off: After an absence of 70 years, Chinook now return by the hundreds to spawn in Putah Creek, a tributary of the Sacramento River. Likewise, for the first time in more than half a century, a couple dozen Chinook have found their way back to historical spawning grounds in the San Joaquin River, which flows from the Sierra Nevada to the Delta.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"‘Fish abundance equals water security. It doesn’t have to be fish versus farms―it can be fish and farms.’","name":"pullquote","attributes":{"named":{"align":"right","citation":"Jacob Katz, fish ecologist","label":""},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Restoring floodplain nurseries is a harder problem to solve, since this habitat has been more dramatically altered and requires changes on a much larger scale. Repurposing rice fields in the off-season may be a big part of the answer, and NOAA is supportive of the effort. “We’re pushing to make that happen,” Ellrott says. “Salmon are really resilient―I’m optimistic that if we give them the right nudge, we can restore them in the valley.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Restorationists have good reason to think that prime nursery grounds are vital to the long-term survival of the region’s salmon. The most robust population of spring-run Chinook originates in Butte Creek, which runs along a wildlife refuge that contains some of the valley’s few remaining floodplains. The Butte Creek salmon population is wild-spawning and self-sustaining. “It’s the one successful population of spring-run salmon,” Jeffres says. Young salmon here are more likely to make it out to sea, and the adults more likely to return and spawn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A probable reason for Butte Creek’s success is that it gives Chinook a place to grow and thrive. The creek’s young fish are larger than those elsewhere in the valley, and being bigger presumably boosts survival. “It makes the salmon more resilient,” Katz says, just like packing lunch before a long trip.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1951231\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 540px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1951231\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2019/12/RS40320__20190311_dji_0341_full-sfi.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"540\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/12/RS40320__20190311_dji_0341_full-sfi.jpg 540w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/12/RS40320__20190311_dji_0341_full-sfi-160x107.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 540px) 100vw, 540px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Restored wetlands from the air. This area is adjacent to the sample area. \u003ccite>(Jak Wonderly/bioGraphic)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"floatright"},"numeric":["floatright"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Understanding Floodplain Value\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"et_pb_section et_pb_section_13 et_pb_section_parallax et_pb_with_background et_section_regular\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"et_pb_row et_pb_row_14 text_row\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"et_pb_column et_pb_column_1_2 et_pb_column_23 text_column align_text_bottom_of_bg_image et_pb_css_mix_blend_mode_passthrough\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"et_pb_module et_pb_text et_pb_text_12 et_pb_text_align_left et_pb_bg_layout_light\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"et_pb_text_inner\">\n\u003cp>Before researchers understood the value of floodplains, they considered them risky for fish. “Wildlife biologists thought floodplains were bad for salmon because they stranded them, and that levees were good for salmon because they kept them in the river,” Moyle says. “It was pretty much unquestioned.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s only in the last two decades that this conventional wisdom has been overturned. The first evidence came from scientists looking at the fate of young salmon in the Yolo Bypass. Built to contain a floodplain of the Sacramento River, the Bypass is an enormous flood control structure—about 40 miles long and two miles wide—that shunts water from the Sacramento River around the City of Sacramento. It’s bounded on either side by colossal, earthen levees that are more than 20 feet high and wide enough to drive on. When the river runs high, it overtops a weir at the north end of the levees. Water spills down inside the bypass, flooding it, then rejoins the river at the south end of the levees.\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv class=\"et_pb_section et_pb_section_14 text_section et_section_regular\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"et_pb_row et_pb_row_15 text_row et_pb_equal_columns\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"et_pb_column et_pb_column_1_2 et_pb_column_25 vertical-align-in-column text_column et_pb_css_mix_blend_mode_passthrough\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"et_pb_module et_pb_text et_pb_text_13 et_pb_text_align_left et_pb_bg_layout_light\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"et_pb_text_inner\">\n\u003cp>The Yolo Bypass only fills during the winter, and, when it does, some of the young salmon migrating downstream come along for the ride. During particularly wet winters, the bypass is so full it looks like an inland sea. “The floodplains are still there,” Katz says. “They’re just used differently, as bypasses.” A 1998 study concluded that salmon swept into the bypass grew faster than those that remained in the river.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jeffres got similar results when he looked at fish in the Cosumnes, one of the state’s rare, free-flowing rivers that still has remnants of natural floodplains. In 2004, he found that young salmon in a floodplain grew faster than those in the Cosumnes River itself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2009, the California Department of Water Resources decided to give salmon about 20,000 acres of floodplain habitat―one-third of the total acreage―in the Yolo Bypass. Most of the land there is privately owned and farmed for rice during the summer growing season. That decision caught the attention of rice farmer John Brennan, who wanted to keep fields in production in the Yolo Bypass.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Water is in short supply during the hot, dry Central Valley summers, especially during the state’s periodic severe droughts. Historically, the fight over this constrained resource has pitted growers against environmental laws that require allocating water for endangered fish like Chinook. Rather than playing this zero-sum game, Brennan has been looking for ways to integrate conservation with agriculture. “If you’re in the rice business, you’re in the water business―and if you’re in the water business, you’re in the fish business,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Katz puts it this way: “Fish abundance equals water security. It doesn’t have to be fish versus farms―it can be fish \u003cem>and\u003c/em> farms.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"et_pb_section et_pb_section_18 text_section et_section_regular\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"et_pb_row et_pb_row_20 text_row et_pb_equal_columns\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"et_pb_column et_pb_column_1_2 et_pb_column_33 vertical-align-in-column text_column et_pb_css_mix_blend_mode_passthrough\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"et_pb_module et_pb_text et_pb_text_15 et_pb_text_align_left et_pb_bg_layout_light\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"et_pb_text_inner\">\n\u003cp>In 2010, Brennan joined forces with two environmentalists to see if rice fields in the bypass could be used as salmon nurseries during the winter, when the fields are dormant and fish are migrating downstream. After scouting the Yolo Bypass for available properties, Brennan and his partners settled on the rice fields of Knaggs Ranch as a chance to put their plan into practice. They bought the ranch and assembled a research team, starting with Jacob Katz since his father is one of Brennan’s partners. Katz invited Jeffres to join him, and the pair has collaborated ever since.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the winter of 2012, the researchers flooded a five-acre corner of the ranch and released 10,000 young hatchery salmon in the fallow field. “When we first started, lots of farmers laughed and said it was the stupidest thing they’d ever heard,’” Jeffres says. He and Katz had their doubts, too. “It didn’t look like fish habitat,” Jeffres says, pointing across the ranch to their original test site. Flat brown fields stretch in all directions, and tidy mud berms divide the land into a patchwork of close-packed rice paddies. “We thought it might be the dumbest thing we’d ever done.”\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv class=\"et_pb_section et_pb_section_19 article_text_section et_section_regular\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"et_pb_row et_pb_row_21 text_row et_pb_equal_columns\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"et_pb_column et_pb_column_1_2 et_pb_column_35 text_column et_pb_css_mix_blend_mode_passthrough\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"et_pb_module et_pb_text et_pb_text_16 et_pb_text_align_left et_pb_bg_layout_light\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"et_pb_text_inner\">\n\u003cp>They worried they’d end up with a field full of dead fish. They weren’t concerned about residual pesticides, which are applied months earlier and break down relatively quickly in the environment, but they fretted about a host of other potential pitfalls. They thought the stagnant, shallow water in the field might get too warm for fish or make them easy prey for hungry birds. And they didn’t know whether the decomposition of rice stubble, which is left on the fields after the fall harvest, would deplete oxygen levels in the water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At first the researchers couldn’t tell whether anything was happening. “Out in the fields in mid-winter it looks like a mud puddle. We couldn’t see the fish,” Katz says. “Then we ran a net through the water and caught fish with little potbellies. It was amazing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Their rice-field test subjects did far more than survive. They thrived, growing five-fold―from 1 gram to more than 5―in just six weeks. “They grew at the highest rates recorded in the Central Valley,” Jeffres says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ultimately, the scientists envision that the young salmon, instead of being introduced into rice fields by humans, will leave their natal waters and migrate downstream and into the bypass on their own. To make that journey possible even if the weir hasn’t overflowed, the California Department of Water Resources wants to add gates that can be opened to let salmon swim in and out of the rice fields on their way to the ocean.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While there are still some barriers left to remove, the possibility of wild-spawning, self-sustaining Chinook runs raised on rice farms is no longer just a pipe dream. In the years since they launched their pilot project, Jeffres and Katz have expanded their effort to encompass 20 acres and 50,000 fish, proving that it can work on a real-world scale. They have also found that, on average, salmon reared in these rice-field nurseries weigh 12 times more than those that grow up in the Sacramento River. The reason for this, Jeffres says, is that there’s so much more for them to eat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1951234\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 540px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1951234\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2019/12/RS40324__20190419_A_1200_full-2-sfi.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"540\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/12/RS40324__20190419_A_1200_full-2-sfi.jpg 540w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/12/RS40324__20190419_A_1200_full-2-sfi-160x107.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 540px) 100vw, 540px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Hundreds of chinook salmon fry in a tank at the UC Davis Marine Laboratory. \u003ccite>(Jak Wonderly/bioGraphic)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Back at Knaggs Ranch\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jeffres wants to know just how much more food the rice fields contain. He casts a long, white net across the shallow water of a rice field then draws it back carefully, keeping clear of the mud. Katz tips the contents into a plastic bag and lifts it high so they can both see.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Holy shit! Holy shit! Holy moly!” Katz exclaims. “I am totally astonished.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jeffres is equally jazzed. “That’s insane!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inside the plastic bag, tiny freshwater crustaceans―or “bugs,” as the researchers call them―dart back and forth in constant motion. The water is so thick with them that it looks like a whirling cloud of pink.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These small crustaceans are the perfect food for young fish, and this haul is the best Katz and Jeffres have ever seen. Most of the bugs they netted belong to the genus \u003cem>Daphnia\u003c/em>, often dubbed water fleas for the way they swim in short hops. They’re here in such abundance because they thrive in shallow, algae-rich waters, from puddles to flooded fields to floodplains. “It’s magic when water slows down and spreads across a floodplain,” Katz says. “It’s liquid protein.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pickings are far slimmer in rivers. Katz holds up another bag, this one netted about an hour earlier from the Sacramento River. Just a few crustaceans scoot around inside it. “There’s basically nothing here,” he says. “By building levees, we’ve created rivers that are essentially food deserts.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Sacramento River has several flood control bypasses, and Katz estimates that, altogether, they contain up to 150,000 acres of rice fields that could be used as bug-rich salmon nurseries. Another 500,000 acres of rice farms lie along the Sacramento River but outside bypasses―and he thinks they may be able to help salmon, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of these is River Garden Farms, which lies a short stretch upriver from Knaggs Ranch and is managed by Roger Cornwell. Like Brennan, Cornwell wondered if his fields could benefit salmon, despite the fact that the land is not in a bypass. “I met Jacob Katz and started talking to him about what we could do,” he says. Katz proposed another wild idea, one that could solve the food-desert problem: bug farming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They wanted to know, Jeffres says, “If we can’t bring the fish to the floodplain, can we bring the floodplain to the fish?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>River Garden Farms is separated from the Sacramento River by a levee, atop which sits the Rough and Ready Pumping Plant, which was installed in 1915 to irrigate fields. The plant houses five glossy, black, massive pumps—each about six feet tall—which fill the pump house with a low roar. This past winter, the team took advantage of the setup and flooded a fallow rice field to raise bugs, then pumped the food-rich water into the Sacramento River to feed young fish as they swam through.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To test whether the bugs would reach their intended recipients, the researchers placed cages of young salmon at intervals along a mile or so of the river. The Rough and Ready pumps delivered bugs starting in late February, and Jacob Montgomery and Jennifer Kronk of California Trout took weekly measurements of the caged fish. By late March, when we visit, all the bugs have been pumped off the field. The field crew pulls on their waders and heads out to the river to see if the experiment worked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They start at a site upstream of the pumping plant, where the caged fish didn’t get any field-raised bugs. Montgomery and Kronk wrestle a cage to the river’s muddy bank. Montgomery hefts the cage above the water, revealing young salmon that flash silver as they flip back and forth in distress. The team works fast so as to get the fish back to the river as soon as possible. Montgomery places each fish in a tray with a ruler, splashing it with water to keep it calm and still, and calls out the length for Kronk to record. Then he passes it to her for weighing. When the measuring is done, he estimates that the upstream fish averaged about 55 millimeters long and weighed around 2 grams.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Moving downstream to the next site, Kronk scoops up a fish collected right by the pump outfall. This site got the most bugs delivered from the rice field―if the experiment works, they’ll see it here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Oh, he’s fat,” Kronk says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She lays it in the measuring tray. It’s 65 millimeters and 2.5 grams, considerably bigger than the upstream average. The next fish is even fatter, at 66 mm and just over 3 g, and the one after that is fatter still, at 71 mm and 4 g.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Wow, look at these guys. They’re doing great,” Montgomery says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although supplying bugs to fish in a free-flowing river doesn’t guarantee delivery, a system that monitors migrating salmon is already in place―so the researchers will know when to expect the fish and can serve them food from the fields at just the right time. “We can pump bugs into the river when fish are passing by,” Katz says. By spring, the salmon will have completed their journey, and the rice fields will be drained and ready for planting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1951235\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 540px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1951235\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2019/12/RS40325__20190424_2341_full-sfi.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"540\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/12/RS40325__20190424_2341_full-sfi.jpg 540w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/12/RS40325__20190424_2341_full-sfi-160x107.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 540px) 100vw, 540px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rachelle Tallman, UC Davis Graduate student, creating an incision in a salmon fry after inserting a tracking tag. \u003ccite>(Jak Wonderly/bioGraphic)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Fish biologists have long assumed that the larger young salmon are when they navigate the Delta, the faster they can swim and the better their chances of survival. “It’s a really dangerous place,” Trout Unlimited’s Rene Henery says. “There are lots of introduced predatory fish.” To date, however, there is no direct evidence that size is important to survival.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In the fish world, we say bigger fish are more likely to make it to the ocean. But no one has actually looked at survival,” says Rachelle Tallman, a graduate student in fish ecology at UC Davis. Tallman is now heading up a project to do just that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The project is part of an effort by the California Rice Commission to incentivize farmers to manage their rice fields in a way that benefits local wildlife. Paul Buttner, who manages environmental affairs for the commission, currently pays farmers to flood their fields for water birds migrating along the Pacific Flyway. He hopes to launch a similar program for salmon that would compensate farmers for creating floodplain nurseries for young, migrating fish. But first he needs solid proof that it works.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“How many salmon from fields survive and go out the Golden Gate?” Buttner asks. “More than those that grow up in the river?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the Rough and Ready plant was pumping bugs into the Sacramento River, Tallman was setting up a different experiment to assess how size affects a salmon’s success. She reared two sets of young salmon: some in a laboratory tank and others in rice fields in the Yolo Bypass. Now, on a warm April day near the edge of the bypass, she’s pulling fish from the rice fields and equipping them with acoustic tags so she can compare survival rates as they swim out to, and beyond, the Golden Gate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tallman stands at a fish-surgery station sheltered by a white tent. As she slips a young salmon into a bucket of anesthetic, she alerts her team that a surgery is in progress. “Dope!” she calls out. A minute later the fish has stopped wriggling and Tallman springs into action. In rapid succession, she weighs it, measures it, and places it on a foam block. Cool water streams across the fish, which lies motionless apart from flapping gills.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Surgical scissors in hand, Tallman cuts a small opening in its belly and pushes a centimeter-long tag inside. She closes the wound with a single stitch and knots both ends. “Fish out of surgery,” she calls. A crew member collects the salmon and puts it in a recovery bucket. The whole operation, including anesthesia, takes just two minutes. Then Tallman picks up another fish and starts the process anew. “Dope!” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back at the lab, another crew tags tank-reared fish. Collectively, the team tags more than 750 salmon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A day after the surgeries, Tallman releases her tagged salmon into the wild, sending some into the Sacramento River and some into the Yolo Bypass, which drains into the Sacramento. About 200 underwater acoustic receivers will track their progress.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By early May, the first tagged fish have navigated the perils of the Delta. Now, they must traverse the San Francisco Bay—a huge body of water that covers more than 500 square miles. But this part of their journey is less risky. Once they’ve gotten this far, most young salmon readily find their way across the Bay and swim through its narrow opening beneath the Golden Gate Bridge, out into the Pacific Ocean. It will likely be December before Tallman can crunch all the data and tell Buttner whether—and how much—the rice field nurseries boost survival rates for the salmon. While the final verdict is still out, Buttner says they’re all hoping for a nice Christmas present.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The fish in Tallman’s study that do make it to the Pacific and survive in the open ocean will eventually attempt to return as adults to spawn in the Central Valley’s extensive but highly altered river system. It’s a journey the scientists hope will become at least slightly less challenging in the years to come. “We’re not going to get back what we once had,” Jeffres says. “But we can mimic it.” He and Katz envision waterways that are managed for flood control and farming but also for Chinook survival, ones with rice-field nurseries and bug farms to help restore self-sustaining salmon populations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s about welcoming the wild back into human landscapes in a way that makes sense,” Katz says. “We’re reimagining the system to work with nature.”\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}}],"link":"/science/1951205/farmers-give-beleaguered-salmon-a-boost-by-flooding-fields","authors":["byline_science_1951205"],"categories":["science_2874","science_35","science_40","science_98"],"tags":["science_1120","science_5178","science_205","science_3370","science_248","science_3838","science_201"],"featImg":"science_1951230","label":"source_science_1951205","isLoading":false,"hasAllInfo":true}},"programsReducer":{"possible":{"id":"possible","title":"Possible","info":"Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. 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But is this once sleepy suburb ready for them?","imageSrc":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/American-Suburb-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg","officialWebsiteLink":"/news/series/american-suburb-podcast","meta":{"site":"news","source":"kqed","order":"13"},"link":"/news/series/american-suburb-podcast/","subscribe":{"npr":"https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/RBrW","apple":"https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?mt=2&id=1287748328","tuneIn":"https://tunein.com/radio/American-Suburb-p1086805/","rss":"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/series/american-suburb-podcast/feed/podcast","google":"https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkMzMDExODgxNjA5"}},"baycurious":{"id":"baycurious","title":"Bay Curious","tagline":"Exploring the Bay Area, one question at a time","info":"KQED’s new podcast, Bay Curious, gets to the bottom of the mysteries — both profound and peculiar — that give the Bay Area its unique identity. And we’ll do it with your help! You ask the questions. You decide what Bay Curious investigates. 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Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. 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