Endangered Salmon Return to California Rivers in Large Numbers

Joe Pecharich had spent two decades helping with projects along the Mendocino coast when the first big counts came in. He said he was overjoyed and that everybody was just ecstatic about how many coho there are. Central California coast coho salmon had fallen to low numbers for years. Average returns sat around three thousand fish a season over the last decade. In many streams their presence had turned into little more than a memory. Before the new millennium NOAA pulled together a coalition that included timber companies, Trout Unlimited, tribes, state wildlife staff, and local groups. They started more than one hundred small projects across the North Fork Navarro, Noyo, Garcia, and Big river watersheds. Crews widened undersized road culverts, took out log jams that blocked passage, and let straightened channels return to their natural bends. Last summer NOAA and The Nature Conservancy finished their largest project yet in the Ten Mile watershed. The changes began to show results last season when thirty thousand adult coho came back, ten times the recent average and twice the total from the year before. Usal Creek saw its first live fish in ten years. The Gualala River watershed recorded its first in two decades. Peter van de Burgt noted that coho move into new habitat quickly once the work is done. He said fish start swimming in just days after the excavators leave. Joshua Fuller called the returns very good news for every partner involved. He said recovery stays difficult for a fish that travels through both fresh and salt water, yet the numbers prove it can happen when habitat, ocean, and flow conditions line up. Spring counts already point to another strong year, with four hundred fish noted so far in the North Fork Navarro alone.