Chinook Salmon & Central Valley Steelhead

MARCH 2010 UPDATE
Only 39,500 of the Sacramento River's fall run of Chinook salmon were counted year.  This represents a 40% drop from the previous year, and a disastrous decline from  nearly 800,000 just eight years ago. A February 13th Los Angeles Times article explains the situation. 

Chart Showing Sacramento River Fall Run Chinook Salmon Trends

This decline occurred despite two years of complete closure of the California commercial salmon fishery. Although some people have blamed the decline on ocean conditions, a report by NOAA's Northwest Fisheries Science Center indicates that this year's ocean conditions were far better than those experienced by cohorts during the last two years.  The precipitious drop in fall run Chinook salmon returns despite the unprecdented shut-down of the commerical fishing industry and improved ocean conditions strongly suggest that conditions in Central Valley waterways (where the salmon spawn) and the Delta (where they rear and migrate) play a major role in the population decline.

BACKGROUND
In the Sacramento-San Joaquin watershed, two of the four runs of Chinook salmon (also called King salmon) are listed under the Endangered Species Act: winter-run Chinook as endangered; and spring-run Chinook as threatened.   Work by The Bay Institute was instrumental in securing Endangered Species Act protections for spring-run Chinook. In addition. The Bay Institute works to protect the threatened Central Valley steelhead population (steelhead are ocean-going rainbow trout).

Chart Detailing Central Valley Chinook Runs

Like all anadromous fish, the two Chinook salmon runs and the steelhead population, as well as unlisted fall- and late fall-run Chinook, need healthy rivers and estuaries to survive, migrate and reproduce. Most of the salmon-producing rivers in the Sacramento-San Joaquin watershed no longer provide safe passage or habitat for either young or adult fish. The rivers have been damaged by dams that both block salmon from reaching their spawning grounds and impair water quality for incubating eggs and rearing juveniles, by water diversions that reduce water flows and by pollution.
 
In 2006, The Bay Institute joined with other environmental and fishing organizations to challenge the National Marine Fisheries Service’s biological opinion for protecting salmon and steelhead from harmful operations of the federal and state water projects. In an important victory for the fish, the federal district court threw out the biological opinion in 2008 and ordered the agency to redo it, this time using the best available science and appropriate consideration of climate change to protect the fish and their habitat. The new biological opinion issued in 2009 incorporates many of the protections The Bay Institute recommended in testimony before the court.
 
The Bay Institute is also working to expand salmon habitat and restore salmon and steelhead to the San Joaquin River. Salmon were extirpated from California’s second largest river more than fifty years ago when operations of the Friant Dam dried up the river. 

Chart Showing San Joaquin River Fall Run Chinook Salmon Trends

In 2009, following the twenty-year battle to restore the river, water flowed into the long-dry river channel and, in 2013, Chinook salmon will be reintroduced.