Grayson muralist Jose Muñóz hand-painted this sign welcoming visitors to Dos Rios. Geloy Concepcion for NPR
California has a new protected area, complete with a Native Use Garden. Visit the website for the Dos Rios, described by National Public Radio (USA) as follows:
The sun rises, shedding light onto an oak grove along the western edge of Dos Rios. Geloy Concepcion for NPR
California’s newest state park is like a time machine
At the crack of dawn in California’s Central Valley, birds sing their morning songs and critters chirp unabashedly. In a shady grove next to a river, an owl swoops down from the spindling branches of an oak tree that has stood its ground for centuries.
A few feet above the tree’s base, its massive trunk is lined with a white ring, indicating how high the San Joaquin River rose during a flood last year. Dos Rios is supposed to flood — it’s a floodplain, recently transformed into California’s newest state park.
The Native Use Garden is a place where, with permission from Dos Rios staff, tribal members can go to gather native plants for ceremonial use and other cultural practices. Geloy Concepcion for NPR
The park opened this summer, emerging among the never-ending rows of agriculture the valley is known for. It’s a lush 2.5 square miles now bursting with hundreds of thousands of native trees, bushes and animals.
Dos Rios, named for the Tuolumne and San Joaquin rivers that meet at the edge of the park, is the first new California state park in more than a decade.
But it isn’t like most state parks. In addition to bringing much-needed green space to an underserved area, its unusual design uses nature-based climate solutions that reinvigorate native wildlife.
By restoring the natural floodplain, the park will also help mitigate flooding that threatens residents in the area.
Transforming farm fields back to a floodplain
Dos Rios is like a time machine. Just 15 years ago, this plot of land looked much like its surroundings.
“These floodplains were once laser-leveled fields that grew alfalfa, or a rotation of corn and winter wheat, which would be harvested and moved over to where the dairies are to feed the cows,” says conservationist Julie Rentner.
Now, the land looks more like it did hundreds of years ago, before farms and towns cropped up, before the Central Valley became an agricultural hub of America…
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