How did one of the wettest winters in California history impact all the other living things in Northern California? Among the rain-soaked creepy crawlers, furry critters and lush vegetation, there are clear winners and losers emerging from the receding storm clouds.
The deluge brought distress to some creatures like deer and butterflies, but it provided long-term benefits for most of the Golden State’s flora and fauna. The increased food sources and newly created puddles were havens for Santa Cruz long-toed salamanders and mosquitoes looking to lay their eggs.
Many eggs, caterpillars and pupae — all the life stages before they become butterflies and can fly — drowned in the flooded parts of Sacramento Valley.
But the butterflies that laid eggs high off the ground fared very well. The numbers of California hairstreak butterflies, who overwinter as eggs on twigs high up in trees, increased in population.
Other species sprouting from the soil were also delighted by all the water. This year, poisonous mushrooms such as death caps and destroying angels sprouted across the Santa Cruz Mountains and so did longer and greener pieces of grass — serving as longer ladders for dust-sized pests.
Lurking ticks also flourished this season thanks to the late rains, which kept them from drying out. They are clinging to the tips of vegetation amid lush greenery that is inviting creatures great and small to nature’s all-you-can-eat buffet.
The vegetation also provides ample food for browsers like deer and elk. Jason Holley, a supervising wildlife biologist at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, predicts that this could lead to higher numbers in the coming years.
But some deer weren’t so lucky. In the middle of the tumultuous storms this winter, a dozen deer were found dead along the Sacramento River floodplains.
“Most of them just lost suitable habitat,” Holley said. He added that they found a dozen others looking sick and skinny.
Meanwhile, the healthy deer face another threat. Mountain lions suddenly have thick vegetation cover to hide and quietly ambush their lunch.
While these large cats bask in the increased ambush cover, another species is delighting in the lingering puddles. The Santa Cruz long-toed salamander, a federally listed endangered species, was struggling for many years because their ponds were drying out during the drought. “The only thing they were lacking was water,” Holley said.
That certainly seems to be the case at the Elkhorn Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve. Three endangered and very rare species that live at the slough — the Santa Cruz long-toed salamander, the California tiger salamander, and the California red-legged frog — not only need freshwater to lay their eggs, but they need that water to stay until summer so their tadpoles have enough time to turn into adults.
This year, the rain gave those tadpoles a chance.
“We are excited to report that all three species are once again breeding successfully in the ponds in the region,” said Kerstin Wasson, an ecologist and research coordinator at the Elkhorn Slough.
Another species also likes to visit the puddles — mosquitoes. Some able to lay eggs in containers as small as a bottle cap filled with water, these buzzing nuisances are thriving.
