Tag: Klamath River
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Announcing the 7th International Symposium on River Science
The International Society for River Science (ISRS) will hold the 7th International Symposium on River Science at the University of California, Davis on October 6-9, 2025. We invite you to attend! The first river symposium was held in 1979 in Norway, and rivers conferences have continued through the decades since, across the globe. Recent conferences…
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The folly of unimpaired flows for water quality management
by Ann Willis Unimpaired streamflow has long been the benchmark against which current stream flows are evaluated for environmental purposes. The underlying assumption is that if there is water in a stream, the stream must be healthy. A closer look shows why unimpaired flows is often a flawed basis for environmental management, particularly when water…
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The Public Trust and SGMA
by Brian Gray In a recent decision in litigation over flows and salmon survival in the Scott River system, the California Court of Appeal has ruled that groundwater pumping that diminishes the volume or flow of water in a navigable surface stream may violate the public trust. The public trust does not protect groundwater itself.…
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Fish managers tasked with ranching? Conservation wins
by Ann Willis In May, the Wildlife Conservation Board (WCB) approved $2.4M for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) to acquire Shasta Big Springs Ranch on the Shasta River, a tributary to the Klamath River. This follows a 2010 state award of $10M to purchase the existing easement and control over water rights…
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The Little Shasta River: A model for sustaining our national heritage
by Ann Willis, Rob Lusardi, Alex Hart, Susan Hart, Blair Hart, Andrew Braugh, Amy Campbell, Ada Fowler Rancher: farms. Conservationist: fish. Researcher: science. Too often, identity is used to divide us. Stereotypes are used to stake out conflicting positions. It’s a zero-sum approach that ignores the commonality of our natural – and national – heritage.…
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Science takes flight: aerial imagery provides new opportunities and insights
By Devon Lambert Remote sensing is all the rage as we start the New Year, largely due to its ability to exponentially increase our areas of analysis for research. What used to take us weeks to survey with traditional field methods can be done in as little as a few hours, sometimes without even leaving…
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Creeks that cool down as summer heats up
By Ann Willis and Andrew Nichols Summer has just begun and conditions on many of California’s drought-stricken rivers and streams are already looking grim for cold-water fish. Endangered winter-run salmon may not survive a repeat of last summer’s nearly total loss of eggs and fry from an over-heated Sacramento River. Low and warm flows in…
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A salmon success story during the California drought
Looking back on 2014, it’s hard not to feel despair for California salmon. With drought-stricken rivers running dangerously warm and slow for spring migration, the government was giving millions of young hatchery salmon a lift to the Pacific by truck and barge. Come August, several streams in the Central Valley were drying up. Native fish…
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Time to rethink fish plantings in the Klamath
By Rebecca M. Quiñones The Klamath River basin presents one of the best opportunities for the reform of hatchery practices and the recovery of wild salmon and trout populations in California. Much of the habitat for the Klamath’s Chinook, coho and steelhead fisheries is in relatively good shape compared with conditions in the Sacramento and…
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Sex, lies and videotape: Premature maturation of Chinook salmon on Shasta River
Carson Jeffres, Senior Research Associate, Center for Watershed Sciences, University of California – Davis Migration to and from the sea (anadromy) is the iconic pattern we associate with Pacific salmon. They spend most of their life in the ocean, taking advantage of its productivity to grow and mature. These adults return upstream to spawn in…
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Suction dredging is bad for fish
Peter B. Moyle, Professor of Fish Biology, UC Davis Suction dredging seems like a fairly innocent pastime. A few folks go to a stream on a nice summer day with a portable device to suck tiny amounts of gold out of a stream bottom. The device basically is a floating sluice box equipped with a…