Streamkeeper’s bLog – October 2017

The fish of the future

A word from CalTrout’s ED, Curtis Knight

Can wild, native steelhead thrive alongside humans in SoCal’s engineered landscape? It’s a challenging issue, but one that provokes determination for us at CalTrout. The Southern steelhead has shown amazing resiliency. Their unique genetic diversity has, so far, enabled them to adapt to higher water temperatures (up to 77°F!), low streamflows, and weather variability. Southern steelhead are the fish of the future, if we continue to fight for their recovery. In the face of a warming climate, sustaining this species is critical since they may offer clues to help their northern cousins weather hotter water.

Historically, tens of thousands of adult steelhead would return to Southern California streams. Today, only a few hundred make the pilgrimage; their numbers have declined so significantly that it is now rare to see them in the wild. Their home has been engineered to serve human needs, not taking into account the need for fish passage and headwaters residence. The aptitude of this native fish to persevere despite human impacts and climate change threats gives us great hope.

We’ve established a headwater-to-sea recovery approach focused on restoring estuaries (critical nursery areas and transition zones for steelhead), in addition to restoring riverine habitat that has become degraded and over-run with invasive species, and removing in-stream barriers such as dams, weirs, and roads that block passage and flows. These types of projects take years and more planning and permitting than you could imagine, but we are in it for the long haul. CalTrout leads two coalitions that are focused on Southern steelhead recovery, the Santa Clara River Steelhead Coalition serving Ventura and Los Angeles counties and the South Coast Steelhead Coalition working in San Diego, Orange, and Riverside counties. We work with Coalition partners– non-profits, government agencies, tribes, and interested stakeholders– to re-establish steelhead populations in high priority watersheds.

It’s hard to imagine that at one time, the San Gabriel River in L.A. County was known as one of the best steelhead fishing rivers in the state. We may not reach that point ever again, but we will continue our work until spotting a steelhead in SoCal waters is no longer at the same level as spotting Big Foot.

Tight lines,