Chinook salmon haven’t spawned in the McCloud River for more than 80 years. But last summer, thousands of juveniles were born in the waters of this remote tributary, miles upstream of Shasta Dam.
The governor of California stood in a patch of dry brown grass as he made his proclamation:
“We’re in a new era. The idea of your nice little green grass getting lots of water every day — that’s going to be a thing of the past,” he said. “We’re in a historic drought, and that demands unprecedented action.”
But it wasn’t Gavin Newsom speaking — it was the state’s previous governor, Jerry Brown, and the year was 2015.
Nearly an entire run of juvenile winter-run Chinook salmon cooked in the Sacramento River this past summer, casting doubt as to whether the iconic species can survive the one-two punch of drought and climate change.
Ben DuVal knelt in a barren field near the California-Oregon border and scooped up a handful of parched soil as dust devils whirled around him and birds flitted between empty irrigation pipes.
DuVal’s family has farmed the land for three generations, and this summer, for the first time ever, he and hundreds of others who rely on irrigation from a depleted, federally managed lake aren’t getting any water from it at all.
As farmland goes fallow, Native American tribes along the 257-mile-long (407-kilometer) river that flows from the lake to the Pacific watch helplessly as fish that are inextricable from their diet and culture die in droves or fail to spawn in shallow water.
After years of drought, salmon in Northern California are facing extinction. Conservation groups in the region have drafted a water management plan that, if adopted, would send less water to Central Valley farmers and keep more cold water for fish.
Last week, fishery advocates in Northern California submitted their temperature management plan to the State Water Resources Control Board. They want to change water operations in the Shasta, Trinity, Sacramento and Lower Klamath Rivers so the region’s salmon runs have enough cold water to survive.
An entire run of endangered winter-run chinook salmon, as well as the fall-run salmon that make up the core of the California fishery, are in danger of being wiped out this year if the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation keeps diverting water to farmers at its current rate. With state water resources constrained by the extreme drought, that’s the alarm that environmental, fishing and tribal groups are sounding after reports show the Sacramento River will reach dangerous temperatures during spawning season, based on federal scientific scenarios that analyze the bureau’s planned water releases. They warn of a massive die-off as bad as during the last drought, when 95% of winter-run chinook salmon eggs and young fish were wiped out in 2014 and 2015.
The quiet of morning broke as a battery of boats roared toward first light on the open water.
Dozens of anglers, competing in teams of two for the biggest bass they could find, disappeared beyond the weed beds and tule thickets into the maze of rivers and sloughs. Each was chasing a cash prize and the satisfaction of conquering one of the West’s premier spots for sportfishing: the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
In research published Thursday, a team of university and government scientists identify a toxic material derived from tire treads that is washing into rivers and creeks as the killer of as many as 90% of the coho salmon in parts of the Puget Sound.
An agreement announced Tuesday paves the way for the largest dam demolition in U.S. history, a project that promises to reopen hundreds of miles of waterway along the Oregon-California border to salmon that are critical to tribes but have dwindled to almost nothing in recent years.
A coalition of environmental and fishing groups are suing a water district in southern Oregon over an aging, privately owned dam that they say hinders the passage of struggling salmon populations in the pristine North Umpqua River.
The lawsuit, filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Eugene, asks a judge to order the Winchester Water Control District to build a new fish ladder and make major repairs to Winchester Dam, which dates to 1890 and is on the National Register of Historic Places. The dam is one of the oldest in Oregon.
