New Guest Blog- The Sacramento River subject of a new book

By Bob Madgic

After retiring from a career in public education, I took up writing on my passions—conservation, fly fishing, and the outdoors. My initial effort was a book detailing the outdoor ventures I have enjoyed over the decades, titled Pursuing Wild Trout. A Journey in Wilderness Values. It was followed by A Guide to California’s Freshwater Fishes and Shattered Air. A True Account of Catastrophe and Courage on Yosemite’s Half Dome. I then turned to the Sacramento River, a river that was the primary reason that my wife Diane and I moved from the Bay Area to the north state in the mid 1990s.

Although it is one of the most important rivers in the world, amazingly no comprehensive book has been published on the Sacramento River. I embarked on telling its story about six years ago through text and photos. In addition to my own photos, I was able to attract many outstanding photographers who wanted to contribute to this important project. The book contains over 190 stunning photos, most in color.

The finished book, The Sacramento. A Transcendent River, is the first comprehensive publication on the river. It covers the headwaters to the estuary, and its human history from before Euro-Americans arrived to the present.

The main theme of the book is the necessity for preserving habitat, whether retaining as many of the characteristics of the natural river itself, or the vast lands adjacent to it. Because the original floodplain encompassed the entire Sacramento Valley—once one of the most prolific bio-regions in the world—this entire valley is in a real sense the “habitat” that the book addresses.

What has become a dominant factor in the Sacramento Valley is the explosion of rice farms. As stated in The Sacramento. A Transcendent River: “Rice contributes more than $1.3 billion to the state’s economy, more than ninety-five percent of it from the Sacramento Valley. Rice fields also provide wildlife habitat, especially for waterfowl. These surrogate wetlands have almost quadrupled the acreage formerly in place. This has helped duck populations to increase, delighting hunters who pay to hunt on the rice fields, and rice farmers who have found a new source of income. It’s ironic that farmlands and rice fields which replaced riparian forests, woodlands, and grasslands are now highly valued in the face of expanding urbanization, housing tracts, and other paved uses.”

To learn more about the book and for ordering information: BobMadgic.com.

Bob Madgic
Amherst College, BA; Stanford University, MA, PhD.