California Trout is a proud environmental grantee of Patagonia. Patagonia supports environmental organizations with bold, direct-action agendas and a commitment to long-term change. Recently, CalTrout was featured in Patagonia’s The Cleanest Line blog post titled There’s More Than One Way To Give. The blog post highlighted us and 3 other grantees to learn more about how they’ve used The Patagonia Action Works tool to be more effective and do more good.
Last Stand for the Salmonids–Signing Up to Take Action*
*Article excerpt from Patagonia’s blog
Not so long ago, an angler’s paramount concern was whether the beer cache had floated away. But in 2017, California Trout Inc. and UC Davis published a scientific report together entitled State of the Salmonids II: Fish in Hot Water. Its findings: 45 percent of our native salmon, steelhead trout and trout will be extinct in 50 years if present trends continue. The report identifies climate change as the major, overarching human-caused threat affecting salmonids in California. Another key contributor to this sobering statistic is migration blockage by California’s thousands of dams that impedes the access of salmon and steelhead to their native upstream spawning habitats.
For 48 years, CalTrout has stayed true to its core belief that abundant wild fish indicate healthy waters and that healthy waters make for a better California. While balancing the needs of wild fish and people, CalTrout works to solve the state’s complex resource issues through scientific credibility. As a strong and respected voice on statewide water and fish policy, CalTrout has developed an enduring legacy of on-the-ground projects and measurable outcomes.
Through Patagonia Action Works, CalTrout has generated 424 letters signed in opposition to raising the height of the Shasta Dam and 232 letters signed to prevent rolling back regulations to the Endangered Species Act. In the next few months, CalTrout plans to use Patagonia Action Works in seeking volunteers to gather California Department of Fish and Wildlife surveys in their efforts to help designate Pescadero Creek, a major steelhead spawning stream, as a Wild Trout Water under the Heritage and Wild Trout Program.
Major barrier-removal projects to reconnect habitat on the horizon include: four dams on the Klamath River, Potter Valley Project’s Scott Dam on the Eel River, the Matilija Dam on the Ventura River, and a barrier on Trabuco Creek under Interstate 5 in San Diego.
