California ranch donation leads to 220-acre San Joaquin floodplain restoration

Joseph Gallo was a former dairy farmer who built a successful cheese business. In 1982, he donated thousands of acres of Central Valley grasslands to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the state of California.For over 70 years, a section of California’s San Joaquin River was cut off from the land it once naturally fed. Old levees, not built to hold back a river but to hold cattle, had quietly changed the landscape. Then in 2026 crews started to undo that history. Great Valley Grasslands State Park, outside Merced, was the scene of a celebration on June 11, as dozens of scientists, Tribal leaders, state officials, conservationists and community members gathered to mark the completion of a restoration project that took more than 15 years to bring to fruition. The Grasslands Floodplain Re