Yolo County Local News: Animals

From ducks and cranes to giant garter snakes and salmon, flooded rice fields in California's Central Valley offer important, often vital habitat to many wildlife species.

University of California, Davis distinguished professor emeritus Art Shapiro has done it again.

He won the 2025 Beer-for-a-Butterfly Contest, a scientific research project he has sponsored since 1972 to seek the first cabbage white butterfly of the year in the three-county area of Sacramento, Yolo and Solano.

Avian influenza, also known as bird flu and influenza A (H5N1), has been detected in a backyard poultry flock in Yolo County, according to the Yolo County Health and Human Services Agency and the Yolo County Agricultural Commissioner.

Biodiversity Museum Day, billed as a “Super Science Day” is an opportunity to see displays, engage in scores of activities, and chat with the scientists. Visitors will see everything from red-tailed hawks at the California Raptor Center, dog heartworm specimens at the nematology display, monarch butterfly specimens at the Bohart Museum, and a variety of plants at the Arboretum and Public Garden, the Botanical Conservatory, and the Center for Plant Diversity. And much more.

The California Department of Water Resources and Bureau of Reclamation broke ground on a habitat restoration project in the Delta that, when completed, will help endangered species such as Delta smelt and Chinook salmon while supporting the long-term operation of the Central Valley Project and State Water Project.

Have you ever wished you could step back in time and explore the power, majesty and magic of a world filled with dinosaurs? Now you can at Dinos Alive: An Immersive Experience in the heart of West Sacramento that opened in November and runs through January.

A lifetime of exploration and education culminates in local author Aaron N. K. Haiman’s debut publication Birds of the California Delta.