Capital Region Cares Capital Region Cares 2018-2019 | Page 38

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all cottonwoods cast their morning shadows over the hope to reinvent the state’s salmon recovery programs with
Sacramento River at a wetland riparian preserve sev- an eye toward the nursery and rearing habitat so critical to
eral miles north of Colusa. Eddies turn in the brown- baby salmon in their first months. They have identified nu-
ish water and swirling currents billow just under the merous opportunities for rebuilding floodplain habitat —
surface. When a fish splashes near the opposite shore, such as the site just upstream of Colusa called Willow Bend.
three men standing on the bank look up in unison.
Here, Henery has met with Dion and Cook, both with River
Each wants to believe it was a salmon. Rene Henery, Ger- Partners, a habitat restoration group. Their plan is to cut a
ald Dion and Michael Cook are core members of Central Val- notch into a riverside berm in such a way that floodwaters
ley Salmon Habitat Partnership, a new coalition formed and will routinely inundate a 70-acre plain beside the river and
funded by more than 20 organizations and agencies that con- remain there for weeks, providing important shelter and an
vene monthly in downtown Sacramento, brandishing fresh abundance of food for newly born salmon smolts.
enthusiasm for doing what no other conservation measures
Ted Sommer, a biologist with the California Department
have succeeded at doing: bringing back California’s wild of Water Resources, has been studying the importance of
Chinook salmon. The fish, once phenomenally abundant in floodplains to salmon since the 1990s.
the Central Valley’s watersheds and historically a major food
“We’ve learned that survival of the young fish is almost
source for many indigenous Californians, have been flagging zero when they enter these rivers with deep, fast riprap chan-
for decades thanks to dams, water diversions and degraded nels and no floodplains,” Sommer says.
habitat in the rivers where they spawn. Last year’s tally of
Even though the state’s leading watershed biologists now
fall-run Chinook was the second lowest on record, with just understand clearly which ecological components are missing
44,242 adults returning to lay
from the Central Valley’s rivers,
and fertilize their eggs in the
meaningful action has remained
Sacramento and San Joaquin
mostly a subject of talk and po-
river systems. Prior to the Gold
litical debates, and Chinook
Rush, between 1 million and
salmon continue to dwindle.
2 million Chinook spawned in
Only with the support of fish
the Central Valley each year,
hatcheries, which rear baby fish
according to the best scientific
in concrete basins and release
estimates.
them into the wild — often di-
“What’s being done now
rectly into the ocean — are there
to help the fish obviously isn’t
enough salmon to catch each
working,” says Henery, a local
year. The state’s Chinook salmon
biologist with the Arlington,
fishery industry is estimated to
— John McManus, president, Golden Gate
Virginia-based nonprofit con-
be worth $1.4 billion.
Salmon Association
servation group Trout Unlimit-
John McManus, president of
ed. “In Sacramento on any given
the Golden Gate Salmon Associ-
day, there is a huge amount of money, time and energy be- ation, says he is “cautiously optimistic” that the habitat salm-
ing wasted in regulatory processes, in boardrooms, in NGO on need can be restored through the partnership.
meeting rooms, in lobbying businesses on salmon and how
to increase salmon returns.”
GOOD FOR THE FOWL, GOOD FOR THE FISH
There are laws in place mandating that the populations While agricultural and ecological interests have long found
be stabilized and even rebooted to historic highs.
themselves pitted against one another in one-dimensional
political feuds over water allocations and divisive arguments
A NEW APPROACH
over how best to use river water, the Central Valley Salmon
For decades, the state’s salmon support programs have pri- Habitat Partnership is trying to move stakeholders past such
marily focused on the river conditions in which salmon conflicts and into an arena of collaboration.
spawn — neglecting the migration needs of younger salmon
“The partnership represents a relatively new strategy of
en route to the ocean. Levees have disconnected floodplains, working with people who own the land, and that’s the farm-
which once provided food and refuge for young fish, from the ers,” McManus says.
Central Valley’s rivers — meaning less food and increased
“Waterfowl had been at all-time lows when the joint ven-
danger of being eaten. Thus, even though millions of baby ture was created,” Henery says. “They got all the stakehold-
salmon hatch each year in the Sacramento River and its trib- ers together, they figured out how much habitat they needed
utaries, few of them make it to the ocean.
to feed birds, they worked with private landowners and rice
This is precisely why Henery and biologist Jacob Katz, of growers, and now they’ve recorded some of the highest wa-
San Francisco-based California Trout, founded the Central terfowl counts for certain species, ever.”
Valley Salmon Habitat Partnership in 2017. Along with oth-
Henery and Katz have modeled their salmon recovery vi-
er scientists working with the new salmon partnership, they sion after the waterfowl joint venture, and for the partner-
“The partnership
represents a relatively new
strategy of working with
people who own the land,
and that’s the farmers.”
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