This graphic of a tributary to the Eel River shows the intense marijuana cultivation typical of many drainages in California’s Emerald Triangle. The large red circles indicate outdoor grows of more than 100 plants and the pot farms in this drainage alone require more than 15 million gallons of water per growing season. By Matt
Photo: The Steelhead Whisperer and his daughter on California’s Big Sur River. I spent Father’s Day this year not fishing. That was fine with me, though. My son was with me and we were at 7,500 feet in the Sierra Nevada range, where winter had not yet gathered up all of her train. And we
Trout Unlimited is working along the south-central coast of California to recover native steelhead runs, largely by restoring habitat and enhancing fish passage and dry season streamflows through cooperative partnership projects with landowners and agricultural operators. Steelhead are listed as Threatened in this region. On Pennington Creek near San Luis Obispo, TU completed a major
Land acquisition, conversion to regional park land, dedication of irrigation water to the Carmel River The Carmel River on California’s central coast is a native steelhead stronghold, but dams and a steady increase in diversions and pumping have contributed to a drastic decline in adult steelhead returns. Recently, two of three dams on this river
The Mill Creek Dam Fish Passage Project dramatically improves access for native coho salmon and steelhead to more than eleven miles of high quality spawning and rearing habitat in a key tributary to California’s Russian River. TU and a variety of partners completed construction on this project in October 2016. Adult coho salmons returns in the Russian
By Natalie Stauffer-Olsen, PhD. It is always exciting when new technology becomes available that can help us understand, manage and protect wild steelhead, the mavericks of the Pacific salmonids. Steelhead and rainbow trout populations can be difficult to predict, model and understand because of their very plastic (scientific term for highly variable) life histories, from juveniles to
Dr. Rene Henery leads a small team of Trout Unlimited program staff who work on improving and restoring habitat, passage and flows for imperiled Central Valley salmon and steelhead. This effort has taken promising strides over the past several years toward a collaborative, adaptively-managed approach to rebuilding wild runs of native fish and the fisheries
