quail hound
Moderator
I want to live in a valley, untamed and wild, where rivers and streams run freely. Their channels natural, not ditched and straightened by man and where he believes they should flow. Hers banks wild, un leveed providing the perfect place for the mighty valley oaks to reside and give mast to the creatures who call its shade home. Willows and elderberry enjoying their riparian habitats as well. Native grasslands and wetlands that provide habitat for numbers of wildlife no sanitary landscape could ever sustain. A place where great herds of Tule elk, prong horns and mule deer roam their own heaven. The winter sun blocked out by massive wintering flocks of migrating ducks and geese looking for their favorite marsh. A majestic bald eagle soaring over head hunting his preferred stretch of river, feasting on winter run salmon or the condor circling a yearling buck who never saw his first rut. Shore birds wade and song birds sing. Valley quail group in numbers unknown by modern man, the sentinel giving his alarm "pip" at the approach of a stalking kit fox. Where the mighty California grizzly is safe to roam and enjoy his place as the apex predator. Though he is now lost to us forever he played a critical role in this ecosystem, everything does. From the biggest predator to the smallest invertebrate, from the mightiest oak to the simplest algae blooms. Though the size and scope of the valley in my dreams will never again be realised one only needs to seek wild places like the north grasslands or Carrizo plains to see what it may have been like. We have lost much, like the Tulare Basin and the grizzly who called its shores home, forever but much work is being done to keep what we have not lost and to restore places to their former glory where possible. These are our treasures in this hostile land and we must hold on to them at all cost and preserve their wildness forever.
