Tag: Peter Moyle
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California’s Amazing Terminal Lakes
By Peter B. Moyle When Californians talk of lakes, they usually mean reservoirs, the 1500 or so artificial bodies of water behind dams. Alternately, they may be referring to the 4,000 or so natural lakes in the Sierra Nevada or to one of the few large natural lakes in the state, such as Lake Tahoe…
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Schooling Fish: Behind the Scenes of Putah Creek Fish Sampling
By Christine A. Parisek, Peter B. Moyle, Joshua Porter, and Andrew L. Rypel It’s a curious thing, teaching a classroom of future fish conservationists about revitalizing degraded ecosystems. Putah Creek was an unconventional place to teach ecology. After the creek turned bad, it stayed that way for decades – deteriorated habitat, nonexistent flow, garbage, rusted cars,…
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Future Ancestors of Freshwater Fishes in California
By Peter B. Moyle The Challenge We are living in the Anthropocene, an era being defined by global mass extinctions caused by humanity. While on-going and impending extinctions of birds and other terrestrial vertebrates gain the most attention, the situation with freshwater fishes (and other freshwater organisms) is as bad or worse, partly because many…
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Putah Creek’s rebirth: a model for reconciling other degraded streams?
By Emily Jacinto, Nann A. Fangue, Dennis E. Cocherell, Joseph D. Kiernan, Peter B. Moyle, and Andrew L. Rypel It’s hard to look at native fishes in Putah Creek and not grin a little. Be it a Sacamento Pikeminnow (below), a Sacramento Sucker, a Tule Perch, or even a Chinook Salmon – Putah Creek has…
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Endangered Freshwater Fishes: Does California Lead the World?
By Peter B. Moyle & Robert A. Leidy See Moyle and Leidy (2023) for much more detailed version of this essay. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108758826 Few things give the authors of this essay more pleasure than swimming in a California stream on a hot summer day, wearing a mask and snorkel, and observing diverse native fishes behaving naturally.…
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What’s the dam problem with deadbeat dams?
by Andrew L. Rypel, Christine A. Parisek, Jay Lund, Ann Willis, Peter B. Moyle, Sarah Yarnell, Karrigan Börk *this is a repost of a blog originally published in June 2020. Damming rivers was once a staple of public works and a signal of technological and scientific progress. Even today, dams underpin much of California’s public…
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Monster Fish: Lessons for Sturgeon Management in California
By Peter B. Moyle & Andrew L. Rypel If you ever watched National Geographic television and are interested fishes and rivers, you likely have some familiarity with Dr. Zeb Hogan. He hosted a series of shows on giant freshwater fishes, called Monster Fish. He and a colleague also recently published a fascinating book (Hogan and…
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Hatcheries alone cannot save species and fisheries
By Andrew L. Rypel and Peter B. Moyle The photo is a common one (Fig 1). Large numbers of fish are being released into a river, stream or estuary – products of a fish hatchery. A politician or government leader looks on, or even participates in the release, says a few words, and then grabs…
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Nature’s gift to nature in early winter storms
By Jeffrey Mount, Peter B. Moyle, Andrew L. Rypel, and Carson Jeffres The current wet spell, made up of a parade of atmospheric rivers, is a welcome change from the last three years of record dry and warm conditions. For very good reasons, the focus during these big, early winter storms is first and foremost…
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Considerations for Developing An Environmental Water Right in California
By Karrigan Börk, Andrew L. Rypel, Sarah Yarnell, Ann Willis, Peter B. Moyle, Josué Medellín-Azuara, Jay Lund, and Robert Lusardi This week, news emerged of a State Senate plan that would spend upwards of $1.5B to purchase senior water rights from California growers. Under California’s first-in-time, first-in-right water allocation system, senior water rights are filled…
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The Putah Creek Fish Kill: Learning from a Local Disaster
By Alex Rabidoux, Max Stevenson, Peter B. Moyle, Mackenzie C. Miner, Lauren G. Hitt, Dennis E. Cocherell, Nann A. Fangue, and Andrew L. Rypel Putah Creek is a small stream located in the Central Valley that has been extensively modified to suit urban and agricultural water needs. Following ratification of the Putah Creek Accord in…
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A Swiss Cheese Model for Fish Conservation in California
by Andrew L. Rypel, Peter B. Moyle, and Jay Lund We read with great interest Nicholas Chistakis’s piece outlining a “Swiss Cheese Model For Combating Covid-19” in the Wall Street Journal. Christakis presents a model for considering the individual steps needed to achieve a larger goal, and how each step should fit into a larger…
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New insights into Putah Creek salmon
by Malte Willmes, Anna Steel, Levi Lewis, Peter B. Moyle, and Andrew L. Rypel It’s November 2016, and we’re out in canoes on Putah Creek as part of the annual salmon survey. Just as we navigate our watercraft through a narrow river section using push poles, thorny blackberry bushes and trees begin to close in…
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New science or just spin: science charade in the Delta
By Karrigan Bork, Andrew L. Rypel, and Peter Moyle Science-based decision making is key to improved conservation management and a legal mandate in the US Endangered Species Act. Thus supporters of federal efforts to increase water exports from the Central Valley Project (CVP) and State Water Project (SWP) have claimed that these efforts are based…
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Science, the Delta, and the future of San Joaquin salmon
by Peter B. Moyle I feel fortunate to be a biologist in an era and place, California, where science matters. Routine scientific studies rarely make headlines but they are relied on by decision makers because they reduce uncertainty, bit by bit. This seems to be true nationwide as well, except in the highest levels of…
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Habitat Restoration for Chinook Salmon in Putah Creek: A Success Story
by Eric Chapman, Emily Jacinto, and Peter Moyle 2017 was another good year for Chinook salmon in Putah Creek. Putah Creek is just a small stream flowing through Yolo and Solano counties, fed by releases of water from Lake Berryessa. For decades, Chinook salmon were rare in the creek. Yet, now, with salmon populations struggling…
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Resurrecting the Delta for Desirable Fishes
by Peter Moyle, Carson Jeffres, John Durand The Delta is described in many ways. When extolling the Delta as a tourist destination, it is described as a place of bucolic beauty; islands of productive farmland are threaded by meandering channels of sparkling water, a place to boat, fish, view wildlife, and grow cherries and pears. But…
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Advice on Voluntary Settlements for California’s Bay-Delta Water Quality Control Plan Part 3: Science for Ecosystem Management
by Jeffrey Mount, PPIC Water Policy Center* Recommendation Improving Delta ecosystem functions under the State Water Board’s proposed Bay-Delta Water Quality Control Plan will require a complex series of changes to water and land management—and a strong science program to guide actions. This science effort will need to go well beyond current Delta science programs…
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Advice on Voluntary Settlements for California’s Bay-Delta Water Quality Control Plan Part 2: Recommended Actions to Improve Ecological Function in the Delta
by Jeffrey Mount, PPIC Water Policy Center* Recommendation By strategically linking freshwater flow releases with the management of tidal energy and investments in landscape changes in the Delta, it is possible to improve ecological food webs and habitat for native species and reduce the effects of pollutants. Projects to address these problems should be concentrated…
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Advice on Voluntary Settlements for California’s Bay-Delta Water Quality Control Plan Part 1: Addressing a Manageable Suite of Ecosystem Problems
by Jeffrey Mount, PPIC Water Policy Center Recommendation The State Water Resources Control Board and the parties seeking to incorporate voluntary settlement agreements in the Bay-Delta Water Quality Control Plan should identify a specific, tractable set of problems that can be addressed over the next 15 years through this plan. We urge the participants to…