Coho salmon released into transformed Dry Creek

James Knight, BOHEMIAN.COM

In Dry Creek Valley, there’s at least one place where a jumble of felled trees doesn’t spell trouble for coho habitat. It’s part of a multimillion dollar project meant to restore Dry Creek’s salmon population—and possibly save the Sonoma County Water Agency an additional $150 million bill.

On Friday, Nov. 22, representatives from four government agencies, the Dry Creek Rancheria Band of Pomo Indians and members of the press gathered by a slow-moving channel just downstream from Warm Springs Dam to witness the release of 2,000 juvenile coho as part of the six-mile Dry Creek Habitat Enhancement Demonstration Project. Dressed in fatigues, U.S. Army Corp of Engineers district commander Lt. Col. John Baker carefully lowered the first aquarium net full of small, wriggling fish to their uncertain fate.

The impetus behind the effort is a 2008 opinion issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). By 2004, the coho population in the Russian River system had declined to the point where little more than a dozen individuals could be counted. A crash program at the Don Clausen Fish Hatchery at Lake Sonoma has successfully reared coho salmon that return to the hatchery, but that’s just a start. "We want to restart the populations in historic coho salmon streams," says Derek Acomb, an environmental scientist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. "We don’t want the fish to stray back to the hatchery."

via Flow Masters | News | North Bay Bohemian.

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