If you have been curious about those wetlands as you cross the Yolo Causeway, look no further than the Yolo Basin Foundation for guidance into the history, the inhabitants, the farming, the flooding. The 25 square miles - approximately 16,000 acres - lend beautifully to the environmental education and the wildlife and wetlands programs that the Foundation supports. Whether you refer to it as the Yolo Bypass or the Yolo Basin or, more correctly, the Vic Fazio Yolo Wildlife Area, it is an area well worth visiting whether as an individual, with a friend, or family, or the classroom.

Robin Kulakow, executive director for Yolo Basin Foundation, shared with us some history of both the bypass and the Foundation. "The Yolo Bypass is the flood control facility that protects Sacramento as the Sacramento River rises," she said. "The Yolo Basin is the historic geographic area. Northern California is composed of a whole set of basins: Butte Basin, Sutter Basin, Natomas Basin, Yolo Basin, and they parallel the river. So, in years of very high water - this is before Europeans came in and changed the landscape - they flooded." Robin noted