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Fish swim dramatically through a river

Why Fish?

Trout, salmon, and steelhead matter — not just as iconic species, but as some of the clearest signals we have of a watershed’s health. Where they thrive, watersheds are healthy, water is clean, communities are resilient, and ecosystems are functioning. Where they disappear, something larger is breaking down. At CalTrout, our work is not just about the fish. It’s about everything their presence, or their absence, tells us about the rivers, communities, and future we all depend on.

Explore State of the Salmonids
Photo: Chris Nonell

It’s not about the fish

Why this matters now

When Fish Are Healthy, Everything Else Follows

California’s trout, salmon, and steelhead are iconic and culturally significant — but they also serve as critical indicators of ecosystem health. As indicator species, their presence or absence reflects the condition of the entire watershed: water temperature, flow, habitat complexity, food web integrity, and more. A river healthy enough to support wild fish is a river healthy enough to support biodiversity, other wildlife, and the communities we live in.

Their influence extends well beyond the water’s edge. When salmon return from the ocean to spawn, they carry marine nutrients deep into forested landscapes — feeding everything from streamside vegetation to bears to songbirds. A single salmon can fertilize up to 5,000 square feet of forest, more than four tennis courts’ worth of nutrients in one fish. When rivers run cold and clear through intact floodplains, they recharge the groundwater that sustains farms, communities, and fire-resilient landscapes long after the rains stop. The fish are the signal. The ecosystem is the story.

Water Security

Healthy watersheds that support wild fish filter and store water naturally. One healthy river system with strong salmon runs filters more than 250 million gallons of water daily — enough to fill 380 Olympic swimming pools. Functioning floodplains recharge aquifers, a key source of California’s drinking water. Cold, shaded streams naturally stay clean. Restoring rivers for fish means building the water infrastructure California will need as the climate shifts.

Climate Resilience

Intact riparian corridors sequester carbon, buffer against flood and drought, and moderate stream temperatures. Fish passage projects and dam removals reconnect rivers to their floodplains, restoring natural processes that no engineered system can fully replicate or sustain without constant human intervention.

Community Health

The rivers where steelhead spawn are the same rivers that flow through backyards, supply municipal water systems, and define the character of the places we call home. When those rivers degrade, communities feel it — through degraded water quality, increased flood risk, diminished recreation, and the loss of a landscape that once felt alive.

Cultural Continuity

For Tribal Nations across California, salmon and steelhead are central to identity, ceremony, and sovereignty. Their decline is not just an ecological threat, but a cultural one. The recovery of healthy fish populations is inseparable from justice.

Economic Vitality

Commercial fishing, recreational angling, tourism, and outdoor recreation industries — worth over a trillion dollars — all depend on healthy rivers and native fish populations. So do the farming communities that rely on water flowing from intact watersheds. Protecting California’s watersheds is as much an economic imperative as an ecological one.

Native Salmonids

Explore California’s native fish.

From steelhead to coastal cutthroat, California’s native fish are essential to healthy rivers and thriving ecosystems.

Exlore all native fish
Photo: Lee Duckwall

We Protect Fish Because Protecting Fish Means Protecting California

CalTrout was founded more than 50 years ago by a group of anglers who knew that everything they loved about California was tied to healthy fish populations. Wild fish abundance might be the goal, but that’s because we know what it means for California as a whole. Every dam we remove, every culvert we replace, every instream flow we restore, every acre of riparian habitat we bring back strengthens the communities that make California incredible. It cleans water. It reduces flood risk. It stores carbon. It honors Tribal relationships with land and water that predate statehood by millennia. It makes the places people live more resilient to the climate change impacts already being felt today.

The vision behind everything we do is science-driven conservation that recovers fish populations and, in doing so, revives the health of entire watersheds, landscapes, and communities. The fish tell us how we’re doing. We must listen — California’s future depends on it.

Our work in action

Restoring California’s wild fish through statewide watershed restoration work

Support WILD FISH

Wild fish cannot help themselves — they need us and they need you.

Nearly half of our fish are likely to be extinct within 50 years if current trends continue, and when fish collapse it means our water systems are at risk too. We can all play a role in protecting California’s wild fish and our state’s water future.

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Photo: Lee Duckwall

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