California Coast & Ocean

In 2001, a small miracle occurred in a stream south of the city of Arcata: the salmon came back. Lots of them. The stream, called Morrison Gulch, flows into Jacoby Creek, which empties into Humboldt Bay. Biologists knew it had once been spawning ground for salmon, because for several years they had counted hundreds trying to make their way upstream to mate--600 in one winter alone. But an old culvert under Quarry Road blocked the way; not one fish could make the jump into it from the pool below. Faced with such a barrier, some fish will try to find other places to spawn; others will die of exhaustion from their futile attempt to reach historic spawning grounds.

Then, in August 2001, the County replaced the Quarry Road culvert with a wider one and regraded the stream above and below to raise the channel, allowing the fish to move freely through the new culvert. With the barrier gone, the salmon moved right back into the stream. That winter, biologists counted 70 coho returning to spawn, and the following winter they observed 238 adults and 116 redds (spawning nests).

What happened in the Jacoby Creek watershed is happening, or beginning to happen, in many watersheds along the coast from Del Norte County to Monterey. In the past ten years, through collaborative efforts by counties, state and federal agencies, private landowners, and nonprofit organizations, almost 300 miles of streams have been reopened to salmon and restored to conditions favorable to the fishes’ survival. At a time when everything else seems to be going wrong for West Coast salmon, this achievement is a ray of sunshine.

Locked Out
Culverts and other small stream barriers may seem trivial compared to the large and intractable difficulties salmon face--drought, water diversions, hydropower dams, changes in ocean productivity--but there are so many of them that they have effectively locked fish out of huge areas of spawning habitat. A 2004 report by the Coastal Conservancy identified more than 19,000 barriers in California’s coastal watersheds, at least 1,400 of them severe or impassable.

Even obstacles that are not completely impassable to adult salmon can exhaust the fish before they reach spawning grounds, or keep juveniles, which can’t jump as high as adults, from reaching tributaries that serve as safe havens during floods. “It’s a huge problem,” said Tom Weseloh, North Coast manager for California Trout. “If you’ve got a barrier at the mouth of a watershed, the whole watershed is impaired.”

Long before people knew about the life cycles of anadromous fish, they understood that salmon needed to be able to move freely up- and downstream. In his 2003 book King of Fish: The Thousand-Year Run of Salmon, geologist David R. Montgomery wrote of a 12th-century English statute requiring that English rivers “be kept free of obstructions so that a well-fed three-year-old pig could stand sideways in the stream without touching either side.” Pigs were not at issue; the purpose was to protect salmon.

Despite many such laws and restrictions over the centuries, the needs of fish have rarely been considered when roads and other structures were built, until recently. In California’s early days, many coastal roads were cut right next to creeks for the logging industry, and streams were constricted and blocked by pipes and culverts. In 1935, federal fisheries biologists surveying streams in the Klamath and Shasta National Forests reported that culverts were cutting off salmon from the Klamath River and other main streams, and recommended that small bridges be used instead. They were ignored.

Those roads, usually built quickly and cheaply, have eroded over the years, spilling sediment into the creeks and causing creekbanks to fail. During heavy rains, the old culverts block water and sediment flow, causing floods. But quick fixes cost less up front than bringing back a more natural streamflow, and because there are so many barriers, removing any one of them seemed a waste of time and money--until 1996 and 1997, when coho salmon on the North and Central Coasts were listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

Counties Collaborate
North Coast counties, remembering the economic and social turmoil that followed the spotted owl listing in 1990 and nervous about their vulnerability to lawsuits, moved first. Shortly after the North Coast ESA listing in 1997, Del Norte, Humboldt, Trinity, Siskiyou, and Mendocino Counties agreed to work together on watershed-wide strategies to help save the fish. That same year, they created the Five Counties Salmonid Conservation Program (5C) to focus on county land-use policies, general plans, and roads projects that would provide immediate benefits to salmon. In the past 12 years these counties have removed or modified 53 barriers--about 45 percent of their high-priority sites--opening up 130 miles of stream. Morrison Gulch was one of the first four projects completed.

“The 5C program largely pioneered the field of fish passage improvement in California, particularly in coastal watersheds and on county roads,” said Michael Bowen, the Coastal Conservancy’s North Coast project manager.

In 1998, Bay Area and Central Coast county supervisors established FishNet 4C in response to federal listings of their own coho and steelhead runs. Bringing together Sonoma, Marin, San Mateo, Santa Cruz, and Monterey Counties, and part of southern Mendocino County, FishNet 4C has to date helped remove 58 barriers, opening 162 miles of stream.

In 2002, federal, state, and local watershed restoration partners in Santa Cruz County, including the Coastal Conservancy, established the Integrated Watershed Restoration Program (IWRP) to help prioritize restoration projects and provide funding and technical advice for project designs. In addition, the group helps coordinate permits and approvals, and negotiates with public and private landholders. Since then projects have moved more swiftly, allowing 67 fish barriers to be removed in Santa Cruz County, with 14 more projects ready for construction. IWRP is helping to coordinate projects in San Mateo and Monterey Counties as well.

All along the North and Central Coasts, the counties and IWRP have been doing more than remove fish barriers. They have worked to reduce runoff from roads into streams and wetlands, to restore marsh habitat, and have trained county road crews in fish-friendly construction and maintenance practices. “We have people on our road crews now who are red-legged frog experts,” said Kallie Kull, senior planner for Marin County Department of Public Works’ Fish Passage Program.

The Coastal Conservancy has been a key source of assistance in all these coastal areas, funding not only construction but also project design and permitting, which other agencies and organizations typically have been reluctant to do. The Conservancy also compiled the first comprehensive inventory of passage barriers along the coast, a key step in helping counties determine which should be fixed first.

“The counties love these programs now,” said Weseloh, “because they have so many benefits.” When stream flow is restored for salmon, counties also save money on road maintenance and flood control. The projects also bring some jobs and new business opportunities to rural areas. “There are tremendous benefits, a lot of them things you don’t see,” said Mark Lancaster, program director of 5C. “And at an average [cost] of $110,000 per mile of habitat restored, it’s some of the cheapest habitat restoration out there.”

Private landowners have been increasingly interested in participating. “The demand far exceeds the resources we have,” said Karen Christensen, executive director of Santa Cruz’s Resource Conservation District and a founder of IWRP. “People see fish in the streams on their land and get excited,” said Weseloh. “They want to know if they can get help fixing their driveway culvert.” Part of what gets people so excited is that “It’s instant gratification. Whenever you remove a barrier, you generally see fish upstream in the first season.”

An Uncertain Future
Despite the success and cost effectiveness of the barrier removal programs, their future is uncertain during the current severe recession. Many barrier-removal projects are funded by voter-approved State bonds, which were frozen in December 2008 (see Coast & Ocean, Winter 2008-2009 ). Although many bond-funded projects that were under way before the freeze can now be restarted, there is no guarantee they will get all the funds needed to finish construction. No bond funds will be available for new projects for at least another year.

Despite an unpromising future, many people who have been working on these projects are trying to forge ahead because they care deeply about salmon. The 5C program on the North Coast, once under the aegis of Trinity County, has shifted to nonprofit status to allow it to compete more effectively for grants. Central Coast and Bay Area counties are also searching for new funding sources. “The 5C success is as much about the huge dedication of my two coworkers as anything else--the quiet, heroic work of the people who care enough to make it happen,” said Mark Lancaster. “I admire them every day.” At one point Lancaster stopped cashing his paychecks to make sure the organization would have cash on hand.

Times are even worse for the salmon than for their helpers, and global warming is likely to bring only more bad news. Lancaster, however, chooses to focus on the progress that has been made. “The good news is that we’ve opened up habitat, including some places where fish had never been recorded,” he said. With all the challenges that salmon have to overcome, “it’s important to open as much habitat as possible, to allow them to move as much as possible.”