Jeff Hart leads ecotours through the Delta, offering insight into the natural history of the estuary. Hart also operates a native plant nursery and habitat restoration business west of Walnut Grove. (Brian Feulner/News-Sentinel)

Delta naturalist opens watery world to public

WALNUT GROVE — No one label adequately defines Jeff Hart; a half-dozen titles might not do the job, either.

The 59-year-old is a biologist, businessman, boat captain, storyteller, voracious reader and hiker.

Enthusiastic naturalist might be his most fitting description.

Watching him lead ecotours on the Delta, it's clear that"Captain Tule," as he calls himself, has a sense of humor, too.

"Welcome aboard the Tule Queen II," Hart announced Saturday morning, greeting the "Hilltoppers," a group of nearly 40 seniors from a Fair Oaks church, as they shuffled down the gangway and onto Hart's sturdy catamaran.

"Should there be some catastrophe — an earthquake, the Second Coming — there's a lot of life jackets," Hart quipped, gaining a few laughs.

The Harvard-trained evolutionary biologist has led tours through the Delta's meandering sloughs and river channels for about four years now.

Like a professor delivering a favorite lecture, he thrusts his arms through the air describing in a throaty voice the natural history of the estuary, from its geology to wildlife to the first human contacts with the region.

Then, suddenly, life on the Delta interrupts:

"Oh, what kind of bird is that? It's a barn owl! And it's being harassed by another bird!" Hart exclaimed as the tour group watched from their cushioned seats, soaking in the sun and a gentle breeze. Seamlessly, Hart returns to a tale of one of California's early explorers: "So anyway, this one captain shipwrecked and …"

On his tours, Hart makes clear his love for the Delta.

He leaves, however, his opinions on hot-button topics like the area's proposed peripheral canal to himself.

His aim, he said, is to share the beauty of the 700,000-acre estuary with the public, not necessarily to champion policy.

"Unless people can love and appreciate nature, they won't protect it," Hart said as his boat gently rumbled up the green waters of Steamboat Slough, a few miles west of Walnut Grove. "I'm trying to be an agent of change by introducing people to the Delta."

'Totally immersed with nature'

Hart's affinity for nature started long ago.

He grew up near Colusa along the Sacramento River and helped his parents run a fishing resort near the town of Grimes.

"This is a natural outcome of living on the river," said Hart, a trim man who wears a full white and gray beard. "My boyhood was kind of a Huck Finn/Tom Sawyer kind of thing ... helping my dad on the river, launching boats ... We were totally immersed with nature."

After stints as a molecular biologist, arborist and environmental consultant, Hart found one of his greatest passions late in his career: Habitat restoration.

He not only advocates for restoring native plants along the Delta's levees, he grows them at his 10-acre nursery and farm on Grand Island.

Row after neatly-lined row of Black Island sage, coyote mint and gray pine saplings cover the nursery, which is maintained by Hart's wife, Toni.

After just a few hours with him, many of the seniors on the tour remarked at Hart's wealth of knowledge.

"Reading is a hobby," Hart replied to one man, after receiving a compliment from him regarding his tales of California history.

Others in the Delta describe Hart as a one-of-a-kind businessman and environmental advocate.

"He offers a vital service for the Delta," said Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Campaign Director for Restore the Delta, a coalition of Delta stakeholders interested in improving the health of the estuary. "People don't understand the Delta, and he gets them out on the Delta and gives them a new appreciation for what the Delta's all about."

A sustainable future

While ecotours and habitat restoration aren't abundant in the Delta, Hart believes they can be.

His tours have increased steadily from about 20 or 25 per year his first year to roughly 50 per year now.

No one else offers such a service, noted Bill Wells, executive director of the Isleton-based California Delta Chambers and Visitor's Bureau.

If there's one set of policies Hart does champion, it's using nature to solve man's problems.

He believes that native plants should be embraced by the Delta's many reclamation districts, which have authority over levee maintenance and construction. Those plants, like the thin, tall tules and rugged live oaks, hold the key to strengthening the estuary's levees, he said.

"The Delta was once a sustaining, stable environment with the tules and these (other native) plants," Hart explained, toward the end of Saturday's tour, noting it would take just "a minor earthquake" to destroy the man-made levees that some have proposed. "Nature is more resilient ... We should be designed with nature."

Hart hopes to continue his ecotours as long as possible. In the future, he'd like to host agricultural homestays at his farm.

Chefs would be invited to speak with visitors and cook organic products grown at the farm.

Also on Hart's agenda is to complete a book about California's natural history and cultures. He's particularly interested in how different cultures treat their natural surroundings.

After a long spring and summer of tours, however, Hart has made plans to venture back to nature, on his own.

He left Sunday for a solo 70-mile hike along the John Muir Trail in the Sierra Nevada.

As Hart said aboard the Tule Queen II: "It's an incredible, incredible geography we have in California!"

Contact reporter Chris Nichols at chrisn@lodinews.com.