AUDASE

Recent rains give wildlife chance this spring

Tom Stienstra San Francisco Chronicle

From my hiding spot behind a small hill, I watched a pregnant doe, about 70 yards below in a ravine, feast on fresh-sprouted grass. Water streamed off my hat from a steady rain.

Nearby, in a bare patch along a manzanita thicket, another fat doe buried her nose in the wet soil and burrowed for truffles, mushroom-like fungi that are like deer candy.

Standing water pooled up in every depression for miles across the foothills. In a valley, thousands of frogs chirped away. With a windless rain as backdrop, it had a sweet collective sound, like a frog symphony. Grosbeaks and towhees hopped around on the hardwood forest floor, scratched and pecked for food.

For deer and all wildlife, the spring rains are a savior sweeping through the Bay Area and Northern California.

In the next month, roughly 400,000 fawns will be born in California. They will enter a world where their mothers will be healthy and nourished, and the landscape is filled with food and water. Survival rates of fawns have a chance to be very high compared with many past years.

What many people call "the balance of nature" is what scientists call "carrying capacity of habitat." I ran a private wildlife preserve for 15 years and saw the rises and falls of wildlife populations, year after year, based more on weather than anything.

Carrying capacity is the amount of food, water and protective cover that is available for wildlife in a specific habitat. In years with wet, mild springs, the carrying capacity is high, and wildlife health, breeding success and overall nutrition is also high. In severe winters, either drought or an extended hard freeze, the opposite occurs.

With a drought in December and January, the fear was the lack of rain would continue into spring and that plants, grass and trees could induce artificial hibernation and not emerge with fresh growth in February, March and April.

Like in the winter of '92-93, we were looking at catastrophic habitat conditions and low carrying capacity. With that comes stressed pregnant deer, poor nutrition of all wildlife, and disastrous survival rates of fawns and other newborn animals.

The amount of rain this past week has turned the year around for wildlife. The best examples are in the Bay Area's foothills and parks, and in the foothills spanning the Sierra Nevada. Fresh grass, wildflowers and budding hardwoods are exploding across the range. There is unlimited food and water.

During years with heavy rains, scientists have a saying that goes, "Good time to be a plant." For the next month, it is also: "Good time to be a deer."

Fate of the parks director

In the one year and four months since Gov. Jerry Brown was elected, State Parks Director Ruth Coleman faced a long, cold winter over her future. She has emerged this spring with a string of victories and good reason to be reappointed for the duration of Brown's term.

Coleman, who has worked for both Republican and Democratic governors, had a budget imposed on her that would close 70 parks starting July 1 and allow no vacant ranger positions to be filled.

With no new budget money, she and her staff helped negotiate agreements last week that will keep open Castle Rock State Park on the south Peninsula, Plumas-Eureka in the Sierra Nevada and Jug Handle at Fort Bragg. That makes 12 parks taken off the closure list. Coleman also started a search last week for new concession agreements to keep five others open, and outreach continues across the state.

She won many over this past winter when she said limited access would still be permitted at closed parks, and the department will help volunteers look after the parks, similar to U.S. Forest Service trailheads and many regional, county and city parks where rangers are not present.