This is the second of a two-part series on conservation stories involving trout and other sport fish in California. Highlighted here are twelve notable waters in Southern California where restoration projects are underway or being considered (they are not presented in any particular order). The first part, which ran in the January/February issue, focused on those in Northern California.
It takes a tough trout to live in Southern California. That’s because many of that region’s rivers are lined with cement, hardly an inviting habitat for a trout, even for those genetically adapted to swimming in Southern California’s natural environments. Examples of successful trout conservation efforts are harder to find in the Southland than in the North, because many watersheds are under attack to make room for subdivisions for a booming population.
Southern California’s rapid growth in population is the stuff of legends. In 2010, over 24 million people lived in Southern California, which includes Santa Barbara, the Los Angeles metro area, San Diego, and the areas in between, according to America 2050, a regional-planning group. The group projects that the population of this area will increase to 39 million by the year 2050.
To accommodate the current population, watershed lands have been paved over for homes, shopping centers, and parking lots. Riparian areas have been decimated. Streams have been dried up to provide water for farming or for lawns or other urban uses. All this is what happens in a normal water year. The drought is having an even bigger effect on fish.
Although trout runs are being sacrificed for population, it wasn’t always that way. According to Trout Unlimited’s South Coast Chapter, which is based in Orange County, “Prior to World War II, as many as 30,000 steelhead returned annually to coastal streams south of Point Conception to the Mexican Border, the southernmost limit of the steelhead range on the West Coast. Today, as few as 500 adult steelhead may return to this region in a ‘good’year. And the southern steelhead is one of the rarest salmonids in North America.” They may be rare, but thanks to a growing conservation coalition, there are some improvements in the populations of steelhead and other trout. Coordinated by California Trout, the South Coast Steelhead Coalition (formerly known as the SanDOC Coalition), composed of nonprofits, local, state, and federal agencies, and individuals, is working to protect and restore fish and watersheds in San Diego and Orange Counties.
Nevertheless, rather than be declared successes, projects and policies benefiting trout in Southern California should be more accurately be termed “works in progress.” Here are some of them from the region.
1. The Los Angeles River. Most anglers wouldn’t consider the L.A. River a wild-trout water, but it serves as the poster child for river restoration efforts that could benefit fish in the future. The beleaguered 51-mile-long river starts in the Simi Hills and the Santa Susana Mountains and flows through Los Angeles County and part of the San Fernando Valley to its mouth at Long Beach. It’s called by some the “river of cement” for being encased in concrete.
It was once home to a thriving steelhead population, but that ended with its conversion from a free-flowing river to a flood-control channel in the 1930s. The last known steelhead was caught in the river in 1940, according to interview with Jim Edmondson conducted by Lewis MacAdams, cofounder and president of Friends of the Los Angeles River. Edmondson is a longtime Southern California resident, trout angler, and former California Trout executive director who is active with the California Water Impact Network, which advocates for “equitable and environmentally sensitive use of California’s water.”
“We need to restore the channel,” Edmondson said. “We have to remove enough of the concrete so that the fish can make it to the headwaters.” What would the river look like if it could sustain a steelhead population? “It has pools, riffles, runs, and clean gravel. It has a lush riparian forest of native vegetation and trees in multiple age classes and clean, cold water. It has a natural flow regime, including high and low flows. And finally, it’s free of man-made barriers, so that the fish can migrate throughout the watershed,” Edmondson said.
A segment of the river might look like that in the near future, because the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is recommending a $453 million plan to remove the concrete and restore 588 acres of habitat along an 11-mile stretch. The recommendation follows seven years of study and recent selection of a preferred environmental alternative for the restoration, one that has drawn criticism from environmental groups for not restoring enough of the river and for limited public access and by business interests concerned about the cost to taxpayers.
The steelhead will have to wait patiently for their new habitat, because this recommended alternative must gain a final nod following a public comment period and then be approved and funded by Congress. Josephine Axt, chief of planning for the Army Corps Los Angeles District, told the Los Angeles Times, “I don’t think we’d be out there turning dirt for at least five years.”
In addition to the Los Angeles River, other waters in Southern California have been a priority for restoration by conservation groups and public agencies. In its annual “Conservation Project Update,” CalTrout set goals for these initiatives.
2. The Santa Ynez River. “The Santa Ynez River in the Santa Barbara/Lompoc/Solvang area once supported the largest steelhead run south of San Francisco,” states CalTrout’s update on the 92mile-long river. “In the 1950s, steelhead access to roughly half of the watershed, and more than two-thirds of the spawning habitat was completely obstructed with the construction of the Bradbury Dam.” The dam is located in central Santa Barbara County and forms Lake Cachuma.
CalTrout’s priority is to provide fish passage to historic spawning and rearing areas and provide for adequate water flows below Bradbury in order to enhance steelhead populations.
3. The Ventura River–Matilija Creek. “Matilija is a major tributary of the Ventura River. Historically, both waters provided miles of high-quality steelhead habitat,” the CalTrout update says of the 17-milelong creek. “Matilija Dam, located on the creek, is a 190-foot structure with a reservoir that is now filled with 6 million cubic yards of sediment. In its current state, the dam poses seismic/safety risks for downstream communities and completely blocks fish passage.”
Working with the Matilija Coalition and the Matilija Dam Technical Advisory Committee, CalTrout is advocating removal of the dam, which was built 67 years ago for water storage and flood control and which blocks over 10 miles of spawning areas. According to a technical journal article on the river: “5,000 steelhead trout historically used the upper Matilija basin. The Robles Diversion Dam on the Ventura River downstream posed a barrier to trout migration until a $6 million fish ladder was constructed in 2006. Recent genetic analysis of the steelhead in Matilija Creek (both above and below Matilija Dam) has shown them to be of native and not hatchery stocks.” Agencies are currently studying the cost of removing Matilija Dam, including determining mitigation and how to deal with the sediment plume that could result.
4. The Santa Clara River. “The Santa Clara River near Ventura represents one of the most valuable watershed systems for restoring endangered Southern California steelhead populations. In fact, it’s considered a stronghold watershed under the North American Salmon Stronghold Partnership,” states a description from CalTrout. “There is exceptional spawning habitat in Sespe Creek (a large tributary) with only one barrier between the creek and the Pacific Ocean and in Santa Paula Creek (another large tributary). But there are issues. United Water Conservation District (the river’s largest water manager) diverts river flows at facilities such as the Vern Freeman Diversion Dam and the Santa Felicia Dam to meet agricultural and community demands. Such dams are fish passage barriers that deny fish access to historic spawning grounds and/or restrict flow, blocking upstream return migration of adult fish and downstream outmigration of juveniles.”
CalTrout’s priority for the 83-milelong river is to provide fish passage to historic spawning and rearing habitat on the river and its major tributaries and to improve habitat to promote an increased steelhead population.
5. Malibu Creek. “In summer, 2006, there was a massive die off of native and exotic fish and invertebrates in Malibu Creek, thought to be due to a combination of pollution, high temperatures and low oxygen. The steelhead trout population fell to zero by November, 2006.”That’s the sad recent history as reported in a Southern California Academy of Sciences Bulletin article on this creek, which is better known for the location of the old TV series M*A*S*H than for its trout.
Since then, nonprofit, local, state, and federal agencies have worked as part of a council for the 13.4-mile-long creek and the Santa Monica Mountains on studies documenting problems and developing restoration plans and have conducted many on-the-ground projects to improve the habitat for fish.
6. Trabuco Creek. This 22-mile-long creek, which flows out of the Santa Ana Mountains in the Cleveland National Forest and through San Juan Capistrano in Orange County, once saw large runs of steelhead, but channel modifications, loss of riparian habitat, and water pollution resulted in a great reduction in the runs. According to records, steelhead were spotted in 2003 and 2005 in the creek, but no longer swim to the forest regions in the upper reach of the creek.
Trout Unlimited’s South Coast Chapter has been working with the South Coast Steelhead Coalition to gain funding for projects that implement key goals and objectives of the Southern Steelhead Recovery Plan, according to the chapter’s Web site, including restoring fish passage and habitat in critical reaches of Trabuco and neighboring San Juan Creek, which runs roughly parallel in the watershed. The TU chapter and its partners have secured over $2 million for restoration projects in the Trabuco–San Juan watershed. Total cost of restoration is estimated to be $11.4 million.
7. The Santa Margarita River. This 30.9-mile-long river, which drains areas in the southern end of the Santa Ana Mountains between Los Angeles and San Diego, is one of the last free-flowing rivers in Southern California. It flows from the spectacular Temecula Gorge and crosses the San Diego County line just northwest of the town of Fallbrook, then flows through the U.S. Marine Corps base at Camp Pendleton and on down to the Pacific Ocean.
According to Friends of the River (FOR), the river “is widely recognized by various local, state and federal agencies to be an irreplaceable scenic and ecological treasure.” “Large runs of coastal steelhead trout have been extirpated from the Santa Margarita, but the river remains one of the few nearly pristine coastal watersheds in which to reintroduce this biologically unique species,” says FOR.
The river is a priority for protection and restoration by FOR, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the Friends of the Santa Margarita River, and The Nature Conservancy, which has been actively protecting land in the watershed.
8. San Mateo Creek. This 22-milelong creek, which flows into the Pacific along the border of Orange and San Diego Counties just south of San Clemente, is another priority for TU and its partners, led by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (DFW).
“Historically, San Mateo Creek, in the 1940s and earlier, had steelhead runs of hundreds, and in some years thousands of fish,” reports TU. “Since then, due to climatic change, drought, urbanization and agricultural activity within the watershed, there has been a reduction in annual runs to the point that southern steelhead south of Malibu Creek were determined to be extirpated or extinct.”
A population of steelhead has been recently identified in the creek, which is one of the last unchannelized streams in Southern California. The creek’s watershed covers 139 square miles and is heavily affected by development and agriculture, prompting the American Rivers conservation group to list it as the “nation’s second-most-imperiled waterway.”
Trout Unlimited has been working with governmental agencies on a process for advising them on priorities for $800,000 in state funds that were approved as part of Proposition 12 and earmarked for the creek and its watershed.
9. The San Gabriel River. Located in Los Angeles and Orange Counties, this 60.6-mile-long river extends from high in the San Gabriels above the eastern Los
Angeles Basin across the San Gabriel Valley to the Pacific. The river has native steelhead, but also a population of threatened yellow-legged frogs that has resulted in the removal of trout.
10. Piru Creek. “The creek offers a diverse outdoor experience for anglers, hikers, and families alike. This scenic creek traces a 50-mile-long arc created by the tectonic clash between the Coast and Transverse ranges around the Sespe Wilderness,” states FOR. “But visitors have easy access to lower Piru Creek from Interstate 5. The flow of the lower creek
is augmented by water releases from Pyramid dam and reservoir. This segment offers one of the few reliable year-round cold-water trout fisheries in Southern California and is managed as a catch and release Wild Trout Stream by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.”
11. The Kings River. The 125-milelong Kings River has carved one of the deepest canyons in North America as it flows westward from the crest of the Sierra, dropping more than 13,000 feet to the upper limit of Pine Flat Reservoir. “Fish biologists consider the Kings River to be one of the finest wild trout fisheries in the state. The native fishery attracts anglers from all over California,” says FOR, but construction of the 600-foot-high Rogers Crossing Dam would result in loss of fish habitat. “In response to the recent energy crisis, the Kings River Conservation District (a downstream irrigation district) is reconsidering its Rogers Crossing dam proposal.”
12. The Kern River. Located east of Bakersfield, this 162-mile-long river is a trout anglers’ paradise, whether in the spectacular and remote upper reaches at Monache and Kern Meadows, the middle section at Lake Isabella, or the lower stretch, where angling for warmwater species is popular. The DFW is working to restore the Kern River’s wild trout in much of the watershed, a proposal drawing flak from those who think these fish will jeopardize an aggressive program of stocking hatchery fish.
The Kern River watershed hosts native California golden, Little Kern golden, and Kern River rainbow trout, as well as nonnative brown, eastern brook, and rainbow trout. The DFW has successfully restored populations of golden trout to the isolated headwaters portion of the Kern River. Millions of dollars have been collected by the Kern Community Foundation and spent on restoration projects.
Here are Web links for more information on topics covered in this story:
American Rivers: https://www.americanrivers.org
America 2050: http://www.america2050.org
California Department of Fish and Wildlife Inland Deserts Region: https://www.dfg.ca.gov/regions/6
South Coast Region: https://www.dfg.ca.gov/regions/5
California River Impact Network: http://www.c-win.org
California Trout Southern California Region: http://caltrout.org
California Trout Spring 2013 Conservation Project Update: org/book/spring2013
Center for Biological Diversity Southern Steelhead Project: http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/species/fish/southern_California_steelhead_trout
Friends of the Los Angeles River: http://folar.org/about/about-folar
Friends of the Santa Clara River: http://www.fscr.org
Friends of the River: http://www.friendsoftheriver.org
Keep Sespe Wild: http://www.sespewild.org
Kern Community Foundation: http://www.kernfoundation.org/index.php?pag e_id=99
Kings River Conservation District: http://www.krcd.org
Matilija Coalition: http://www.matilijacoalition.org
Matilija Dam Ecosystem Restoration Project: http://www.matilijadam.org Malibu Creek Watershed Council: http://www.rcdsmm.org/malibucreekwatershed
Rindge Dam Removal: wikipedia.org/wiki/Rindge_Dam
San Diego Coastkeeper: http://www.sdcoastkeeper.org
Santa Monica Watershed Council: mountains-watersheds-council
Southern Steelhead Recovery Plan (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration): gov/stories/2012/01/1_12_steelhead.html South Coast Steelhead Coalition: fornia-region/south-coast-steelhead-coalition
Southwest Council of the Federation of Fly Fishers: http://www.fedflyfishers.org/Councils/Southwest.aspx
Trout Unlimited San Mateo Creek Project: dex.php?page=san-mateo-project
Trout Unlimited Trabuco Creek Restoration Project: http://www.tu.org/tu-projects/southern-steelhead-recovery
