Ca Fish and Game Approved Petition to Begin Listing Summer Steelhead as Endangered
The following is a press release from Friends of the Eel River:
The California Fish and Game Commission voted unanimously Wednesday to begin the process of listing Northern California summer steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss irideus) under the California Endangered Species Act. The commission found a petition submitted by Friends of the Eel River to list the remaining runs of summer steelhead from Redwood Creek to the Mattole River as endangered under state law presented sufficient evidence to move forward with a one-year status review prior to a final listing determination.
“We are grateful to Department of Fish and Wildlife staff for their careful review, and to the Commissioners for taking an important step toward providing these extraordinary fish the attention they deserve and the protection they need,” said Friends of the Eel River Conservation Director Scott Greacen. Ryon Kurth, Senior Environmental Scientist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, presented the Department’s evaluation and recommendation to the Commission that the petition be accepted.
Steelhead are the anadromous, or ocean-going, form of rainbow trout. While their more numerous relatives, winter-run steelhead, return from the Pacific ready to spawn in weeks or less, summer steelhead enter freshwater between April and June as sexually immature, bright silver fish. They oversummer in cold pools, often in deep, remote canyons, before using fall rains to leap obstacles that seem impassable to humans, higher than any other salmonid.
Recent research has shown the summer steelhead life history is controlled by a critical genetic difference in one specific part of the salmonid genome. Only viable populations of summer steelhead can maintain the gene and the life history it governs.
Remaining North Coast populations are far from viability. Many are critically imperiled by climate change. However, the increasing likelihood that Scott Dam on the upper mainstem Eel River will be removed offers a real ray of hope for summer steelhead. The longest, and southernmost, run of Northern California summer steelhead vanished a century ago when the dam was built. This spring, UC Davis researchers announced they had found the summer steelhead gene in rainbow trout in the headwaters above Scott Dam, raising hope a new population of Northern California summer steelhead could be resurrected from its own locally adapted stock.
Join the discussion! For rules visit: https://kymkemp.com/commenting-rules
Comments system how-to: https://wpdiscuz.com/community/postid/10599/
🕯🌳Good morning Kelley and thank you for that information.
Why is it that climate change gets blamed for everything? Seems to me that sucking 90% of the water out of an ecosystem has more to do with it. Maybe we should be blaming all the growers for climate change. Wait, that can’t be right. The article states the steelhead vanished a century ago. What was happening back then? It’s all so confusing.
Fix the problem, not the blame.
Sucking 90% of the water out of an ecosystem will change the climate.
Those willows growing on the river banks sucks up more water up then growers use. They need to be pulled out to maintain our river.
If the damn is removed and water is allowed to scour the banks, I suspect thee would be fewer willows.
It’s not being blamed for everything. Given the other impacts, global climate change is kinda a last straw here.
Agreed. The dam wiped out the run long before any “climate change”.
Did you read the article. It said half the steelhead population vanished when they put the dam in. Also climate change has a role in it because steelhead rainbow trout in any other Salmoniodfish or a cold water species you get them out of their climate they’re going to die
In my lifetime almost all of fishing has become endangered if it’s not one species it’s another feel bad for people that just want to go fishing I guess pretty soon all fish will be grown in ponds pretty sad
It’s true, fisheries have taken a crap all over the world in the past 50 years. Really it’s wherever western culture goes, fish disappear. Less than 3% of salmon as there were when Lewis and Clark first came to the west coast. There used to be salmon all the south to Washington DC (Shenandoah River) and all over in the Central Valley. Crazy to think about. I think it’s good to protect the fish, we need to take care of our world a lot better than we have lately.
Western culture? Seems more like a people and overpopulation problem. The Chinese surely have fishery problems in all their dammed rivers. Certain Amazonian indians have been decreasing the size of the wholes in their nets for years as the fish in rivers get smaller and smaller from pressure on their genomes caused by millennia of net fishing. Culture isn’t as important as sheer size of population in my mind. We can’t have all these humans and expect there to be enough resources to go around like there was before there were 6 billion plus people needing food clothing and shelter. That exponential growth we’ve witnessed in population isn’t likely going to taper off gently or plateau, but hit an inflection point and drop precipitously before stabilizing again with billions fewer humans.
Ok I’ll go with that. I was just considering the US, but you’re right.
I think global warming???? I love to fish looking forward to a steelhead or two and if I can’t do this I want my money refunded for my salmon and steelhead license. Only fair bunch of crack pots
Terilyn
Long overdue! I’m glad to see it finnaly becoming a reality.
Wont do any good as long as there is a dam, water diversions,squawfish and other habitat degradation. But it sounds good in the newspapers
So sad fish runs are almost non existent up the entire west coast. Where are all the fish?
The willows on the bank need to st3. They shade the river and help keep the water cool. Steelhead are a cold water fish
Great idea to protect, but you better tell the river otters, the sea lions(which travel 40 miles up river), squaw fish,egrets,herons,kingfishers,cormorants, and foreign commercial ships offshore that our little fishes are NOW protected. Touchy feely concept, but too many uncontrollable factors as listed above.