Valley Grassland

Grasslands include pine/oak woodlands are found throughout the valleys and foothills of Kern County. Grasslands in California are much different today than 200 years ago. Some parts of the golden hills of California were once green year-round with perennial bunchgrasses. Today, bunchgrasses are quite rare. Most of the grasses found now are non-native invaders from the Mediterranean region of Europe. These grasses out-compete many of our native plants. Untold numbers of natives have gone extinct due to this competition. Valley grasslands are one of the most highly sought areas for housing development and agriculture and even many foothill grasslands are now being destroyed via the plow.

An exception to this is the Carrizo Plain in nearby San Luis Obispo County. Many years of struggle to maintain this relatively pristine ecosystem culminated with The Nature Conservancy's purchase of over 100-thousand acres. Now owned by the federal government, George Bush is trying his best, by drilling for oil and mining for minerals, to destroy something that we paid to protect. The great valley grassland ecosystem has become too rare and endangered to let even one more acre be developed. Grasslands in the central valley and foothills provide some of the most spectacular wildflowers displays in the world (when spring rainfall is abundant, yet gentle).

Surrounded by mountains, grassland habitats occur in valleys, across rolling hills, and along mountain foothills. They can be high altitude and meadow-like or valley basins which slow the runoff from nearby mountains and hills.  A unique part of grasslands are vernal pools. These shallow basins hold water like shallow lakes for much of the spring and then go completely dry in summer. They occur within rolling grassland support some of the rarest and most unique flora and fauna in the state.

Grasslands are home to a large number of ungulates, rodents, and carnivores. They support hundreds of species of birds, reptiles, and invertebrates. The Great Valley's grasslands, marshes, and lakes supported over one million pronghorn, 1/2 million Tule elk, California grizzly bear, long-eared fox, and Yokuts Indians that were extirpated or driven to extinction by Gold Rush era hunters, trappers, miners, and soldiers trying to drive out the native peoples in the 1850's.

Restoration efforts have returned pronghorn and tule elk to the southern end of the great valley and the Carrizo Plain.