One of California’s best climate solutions: healthy rivers.

Climate change is reshaping California through hotter temperatures, shrinking snowpack, larger wildfires, longer droughts, and more extreme floods. By restoring healthy watersheds, we’re helping rivers — and the people and wildlife that depend on them — adapt to a changing future.

STATE OF THE SALMONIDS

Photo: Michael Wier

Why THIS matters now

Climate change is transforming every watershed in California.

No threat has grown more urgent or more consequential to the health of California than climate change. California’s rivers evolved around predictable seasons of snowmelt, rainfall, and cool mountain temperatures. Today those patterns are changing. Snowpack is shrinking, rivers are warming, droughts are lasting longer, floods are becoming more intense, and catastrophic wildfires are reshaping entire watersheds faster than fish and people can adapt.

Salmon, steelhead, and trout are cold-water fish. They evolved alongside California’s snowmelt-fed rivers — timed to their seasonal rhythms, shaped by their flows. As the climate changes, those rivers are running warmer, flowing lower, and flooding more violently. The conditions these fish need to survive are becoming harder to find.

Vanishing Runs

CalTrout’s State of the Salmonids II report (2017) identified climate change as the most significant, overarching human-made threat to California’s salmonids — a critical or high threat for 87% of species.

87%

of California’s salmonid species face critical or high climate threat (SOS II)

50%

of the Sierra snowpack could be lost by 2100 under current trajectories

23 of 31

Native salmonids at risk of extinction by 2100

5x

increase in catastrophic wildfire acreage since 1990

Nature is California’s climate infrastructure

Restoring rivers helps communities withstand climate change impacts.

Climate resilience starts with healthy watersheds. Every restoration project strengthens California’s ability to withstand a changing climate.

Healthy Headwaters

Forests, meadows, and springs capture snowmelt, recharge groundwater, and keep rivers flowing through longer dry seasons.

Connected Rivers

Removing barriers to reopen rivers reconnects cold-water habitat, restores natural river processes, and helps fish move as climate conditions change.

Reconnected Floodplains

Floodplains store floodwaters, replenish groundwater, and reduce downstream flood impacts while creating productive habitat for wild fish.

Restored Estuaries

Estuaries buffer storm surge, improve water quality, support fisheries, and create space for coastal ecosystems to adapt to sea-level rise.

Climate Refugia

Some rivers and springs will remain cold enough to support wild fish even as temperatures rise. CalTrout studies, identifies, protects, and reconnects these climate refuges to give species the best chance to persist into the future.

Climate change is ongoing — sometimes our only option is to adapt

Adapting Together

Climate adaptation looks different across California. No single solution can address every climate challenge. That’s why we tailor restoration to each watershed.

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Making room for rising seas

North Coast

Through the Elk River managed retreat strategy, we’re partnering with willing landowners to restore tidal marshes that protect communities, improve water quality, and allow estuaries to migrate inland as sea levels rise.

Explore the elk river watershed

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Protecting species through disturbance

Southern California

As catastrophic wildfires become more frequent, we’re working with our partners to safeguard endangered Southern Steelhead by temporarily relocating genetically important fish while restoring the rivers they’ll return to. In 2026, a new facility at Edison High School in Orange County opened its doors to protect native rainbow trout of Southern steelhead lineage when future disturbances like this occur. The Edison Innovation Lab gives high school students an opportunity to learn aquaculture and environmental stewardship skills while also playing a huge role in recovering an iconic yet endangered Southern California species.

Explore this work

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Keeping water in rivers

Statewide

Through water transactions, flow advocacy, drought response, and habitat restoration, we’re helping rivers remain resilient during California’s increasingly frequent dry years.

Explore ALL PROJECTS

In their Words

“Salmon, steelhead, and trout are indicators of watershed health, and their fate is inseparable from the future of California itself.”

Darren Mierau/Director of Science, CalTrout

A Reason for Hope: Klamath River Recovery

When rivers recover, fish return.

In 2024, the removal of four dams on the Klamath River reopened hundreds of miles of historic salmon habitat. Soon after, CalTrout and our partners installed a monitoring station near the former Iron Gate Dam site to document the river’s recovery.

Within months, thousands of Chinook salmon were recorded migrating into habitat that had been inaccessible for more than a century. The Klamath demonstrates what’s possible when science, restoration, Tribal leadership, and long-term partnerships come together. Healthy rivers can recover — and wild fish can too.

Learn More about the klamath