From the California Natural Resources Agency: With the latest science showing that nearly half of California’s native salmon and trout species face extinction in the next 50 years, state agencies have committed to a suite of actions to improve survival rates, including restoring habitat, improving stream flow, removing stream barriers and reintroducing species to ideal habitat.
These actions and more are described in a Sacramento Valley Salmon Resiliency Strategy released today and available here.
These fish travel hundreds of miles of Central Valley streams and spend several years in the Pacific Ocean, so the strategy targets the freshwater streams where salmon and steelhead eggs hatch, the streams and floodplains where young fish rear, the Delta channels the fish must travel to reach the ocean, and the many barriers that hinder adult fish returning to spawn in natal streams.
Reintroduce winter-run Chinook salmon to Battle Creek and the McCloud River.
The State’s aim is to have water districts that divert from these streams reach agreements that improve flow, stream temperature, and habitat conditions for salmon and steelhead.
The Sacramento Valley Salmon Resiliency Strategy mirrors the Delta Smelt Resiliency Strategy developed by the State in 2016 to rapidly improve conditions for an endangered fish species found only in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
The Salmon Resiliency Strategy relies heavily on the 2014 final recovery plan drafted by the National Marine Fisheries Service, which is responsible for recovery of sea-going fish under the U.S.
Other state and federal plans also support the strategy, such as the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s 2016 Battle Creek Winter-Run Chinook Salmon Reintroduction Plan.
A two-year update on California EcoRestore, the state’s effort to restore Delta wetlands habitat, is available here.
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