"Conservationists restoring salmon along California's North Coast have a mantra: A good coho salmon stream looks like a teenager's bedroom - if teenagers discarded logs and branches instead of dirty clothes. Surveying a stretch of the Navarro River one morning last spring, Anna Halligan, a conservation biologist with Trout Unlimited, was delighted. "This is exactly what we want," she said, examining the debris-filled water."
"In September 2020, Trout Unlimited's partners spent days selecting a redwood and then carefully maneuvering it into the river to make it more coho-friendly. That tree has now vanished - crushed under this much larger redwood, likely carried downriver by this winter's rains. The collision has created even more of a "mess" than Halligan could have planned. Halligan climbed down for a closer look. Within minutes, a young, silvery coho flashed into view in the new pool."
"Coho salmon, which migrate between freshwater creeks and the open ocean, have nourished people, plants and animals along the Pacific Coast since time immemorial. Fred Simmons, an environmental technician for the Cahto Tribe of Laytonville Rancheria, recalled growing up along coho runs "jammed up so thick that you could go out there any time of evening and just get whatever you needed for your family.""
Conservationists place large redwood logs and branches in North Coast rivers to slow flows, carve deep sun-dappled pools, and create juvenile rearing habitat for coho salmon. Crews sometimes spend days selecting and maneuvering trees into streams, and winter storms can rearrange or amplify those structures. Coho migrate between freshwater creeks and the ocean and rely on complex stream structure for feeding and shelter. Logging, development, and climate change have devastated coastal streams and pushed coho toward extinction, prompting threatened and endangered listings for populations near Mendocino County.
Read at High Country News
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