Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse

Back to the Land

My first view of Skaggs Island is blurred by rain, and by the confused feeling that comes when a word applied to a land feature doesn't seem to match up.

"All this is Skaggs Island," my guide says, gesturing with a sweep of his arm. From the bridge over the Napa Slough, where I stand with U.S. Fish and Wildlife manager Don Brubaker, all I see through the rain are brackish fields and a pattern of channels reaching toward the eastern horizon.

It requires some imagination to think of this as the site of an active military base, but that's exactly what Skaggs Island was for over 50 years. Since 1993, when the base was decommissioned, wildlife and habitat have been living among the ruins—the cracked concrete, dilapidated duplexes and bombed-out buildings of the military-industrial complex. Now, thanks to conservation efforts, Skaggs Island is slowly being converted back into restored wetlands.

Unlike the Marin Islands, farther out to sea and distinctly observable as dry land surrounded by water, Skaggs Island appears to the regular observer as a marsh. It's only an island as long as the pumps are working and more than 30 miles of channels are diverting water away from a site that, if left to nature, would return to the tidal swamp it was when Spanish explorers first arrived.

The Spaniards, seeing the existing pseudo-islands formed by natural tidal channels, dyked and dredged waterways to drain the land for horses and hay farming. One patch of the resulting acreage remained in farming until World War II, when the Navy took over most of it for a communications base, Naval Security Group Activity Skaggs Island. There, the Navy intercepted and decoded Soviet radio communications, transmitted special-intelligence information and carried out the American military duties of the Cold War. Today, a half-century later, evidence of the once thriving military community here has all but disappeared.

Brubaker and I leave the rainy bridge and drive a few hundred feet to the entrance to Skaggs Island, its 3,300 acres now owned by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and a key piece—about 25 percent—of the 13,000-acre San Pablo Bay National Wildlife Refuge. Skaggs Island includes natural habitat for the California clapper rail and the salt marsh harvest mouse, both federally endangered species. Brubaker unlocks the main gate that keeps unauthorized visitors out until a plan for appropriate public access is devised.

A little Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse #endangerbus action for ...

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North American rodents, status survey and conservation action plan

The Illustrated Encyclopedia Of North American Mammals, A Comprehensive Guide to Mammals of North America

The Official World Wildlife Fund Guide to Endangered Species of North America, Species Listed August 1989 to December 1991

The field guide to wildlife habitats of the western United States

Management of the California State Water Project