As climate change exacerbates drought, it can often feel like there is not enough water to go around to protect the interests of both humans and wildlife. However, CalTrout takes a unique role in the conservation space to balance those interests and bring about benefits for both farmers and fish. How? In the Sacramento Valley, we work with a coalition of partners to reactivate floodplains. A floodplain is a low-laying area of ground adjacent to a river, subject to routine (you guessed it!) flooding. Cyclical flooding allows river ecosystem access to the tremendous food web of resources produced in floodplain wetlands. It is the act of the river expanding to inundate these nutrient-rich lands that allows the river food web access to the solar energy stored in floodplain plants and soils.