Sunset along the lower American River. Hundreds of double-crested cormorants perch high among cottonwood and black locust trees. The birds fly in nightly during winter to roost in a grove between Howe and Watt avenues.
The roost supports as many as 225 cormorants, likely the entire population on the lower American River, says Dan Airola, conservation chair with Central Valley Bird Club.
When Airola began observing the cormorants in 2019, there were 25 to 30 birds.
“It’s a very important place for this bird,” says Airola, also a member of the Sacramento Audubon Conservation Committee. “If you go anywhere along the river in the evenings, you will see cormorants flying both downstream to here and upstream to here.”
Yet, if the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ latest erosion-control work along the lower American River proceeds, hundreds of trees, including the cormorants’ roosting sites, will be bulldozed and replaced with rock and rubble.
The project, called Contract 3B, runs from the Howe Avenue bridge to east of Watt Avenue.
Although the cormorants could relocate, “they have chosen this site, which indicates that it is better for them than any available alternative site,” Airola says.
Open branches jet out over the river and provide sturdy perches for the cormorants to plunge into the water to feed on fish, dry off and rest.
“They like the trees that hang out over the water,” Airola says. “If anything disturbs them, they just dive off. They can get away quickly.”
The lower American River supports more than 200 bird species with its diverse habitats, including ponds, riparian vegetation, oak woodlands and grasslands.
The trees are important to ducks, herons and egrets who rest on logs and shorelines where foliage provides overhead protection. Birds such as hawks and magpies nest in branches. Resident, migratory and wintering birds forage in trees for insects and acorns.
Numerous species, including wood ducks and mergansers, nest in cavities of mature tree trunks near the river’s edge.
“The proposed Army Corps erosion project is slated to remove nearly all of these large, mature, streamside trees for riprap (large angular quarried rock) in this area,” says Candice Heinz, an environmental scientist who works in water resources.
The project targets more than 700 trees, including 300-year-old heritage oaks, for destruction.
“Some trees and shrubs located in the project footprint will need to be removed prior to the start of construction,” reports the Corps, adding that each site will be revegetated with “appropriate native species.”
“The proposed on-site replanting will consist primarily of small willows and coyote brush, and will not replace the habitat that these precious birds rely on,” Heinz says. “In addition, some studies suggest that the jagged riprap will likely never support the necessary root growth of large, mature trees again.”
Airola notes that mitigation plantings will take decades to replace the foraging habitats. “Oaks typically don’t begin to produce acorns until 15 to 20 years old,” he says.
Another impact on birds is the proposed removal of Urrutia Pond near Discovery Park. For mitigation, the large permanent pond will be replaced with seasonally flooded vegetation.
During the day, cormorants, gulls, geese, ducks, coots and other waterbirds feed and rest at Urrutia Pond. At dusk, hundreds of wintering birds arrive to roost on the calm water after feeding on the lower American River.
“The environmental and birding community understand and support the need for flood protection,” Airola says. “But we have not been given adequate information to convince us that the proposed flood-protection designs, which will destroy important habitat for birds and a variety of other wildlife, must be so damaging.”
After receiving more than 1,900 comments from the public and local agencies, the Corps has delayed Contract 3B until 2026. However, vegetation clearing begins this fall.
For information, visit americanrivertrees.com and spk.usace.army.mil.
Cathryn Rakich can be reached at crakich@surewest.net. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram: @insidesacramento.
