Coho Recovery On The Shasta River Key to Klamath Salmon Recovery
Coho Recovery On The Shasta River Key to Klamath Salmon Recovery
Northern California’s Shasta River is a ‘keystone’ watershed in the Klamath Basin; its rich waters help grow large juvenile coho salmon, and it’s the last major watershed open to salmon on the troubled Klamath river prior to the Iron Gate dam.
CalTrout has been partnering with UC Davis to collect data on the factors which have been limiting coho salmon survival in the Shasta River, and as the video below suggests, the coho do pretty well when water temperatures, flows and food supplies align.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fD-Gdy-ZkyI[/youtube]
(You can find more information about the video — shot in Big Springs Creek, a spring-fed tributary to the Shasta River recently restored after the Nature Conservancy purchased the property — at the California Water blog.)
Between now and 2020 — the year the Klamath Basin dams may finally be removed — CalTrout is focused on gathering the best available scientific data and implementing priority restoration projects in tributaries below the dams, including the Shasta River.
1 Comment
Why is the Klamath so troubled?
Its interesting how suction dredge miners were demonized as “trout killers” while the Karuk indians harvest (and spear!) trout by the netful. While running a dredge, I have had rainbow trout come right up and lay next to me. People spew about the silt and riverbed damage that dredges cause. My advice is to visit the Klamath during flood stage runoff. Pacific rainstorms cloud this water far more than an army of dredges. Those floods move boulders the size of a car.
My suggestion is to cut off the Karuk’s wonton overfishing and finish removing the dams from the Klamath and allow the dredge permitting process to return. Towns like Happy Camp that depend on miners are ghost towns now and miners like me now go to Oregon to dredge on the Rogue. Wish we could come back to CA!