Where Redwood Creek meets the Pacific near Orick in Humboldt County, a 1968 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers flood control project reshaped the estuary with levees and channelization, cutting the waterway off from the natural sediment and floodplain processes that once sustained it. Decades later, the consequences are stark: roughly half of the lower estuary has since filled in with ocean-derived sediment, blocking the migrating salmon and steelhead that depend on this transition zone between saltwater and freshwater tributaries from reaching the habitat they need. The State of California has designated Redwood Creek's estuary one of the highest priorities for fish habitat restoration on the North Coast, and for good reason — the watershed supports California Coastal Chinook Salmon, Southern Oregon/Northern California Coast Coho Salmon, and Northern California Steelhead, all three federally threatened, along with eulachon and cutthroat trout.

CalTrout is working alongside the Yurok Tribe, private landowners, Humboldt County, the National Park Service, NOAA Fisheries, NOAA's Restoration Center, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Northcoast Regional Land Trust, and multiple engineering partners to reestablish the creek's historic orientation, reconnect sloughs and backwater channels, restore native vegetation, and push back invasive plant colonization that has taken hold in the altered landscape. The project is currently moving through planning and conceptual design, backed by a $14 million-plus federal feasibility study now underway with the Army Corps of Engineers. Beyond its benefit to fish, restoring natural floodplain function here also supports the agricultural landowners working this land, whose productivity depends on the same natural processes the project aims to bring back — a rare case where restoring the estuary and sustaining working lands point in the same direction.