Along California’s redwood coast, conservationists have been working for more than a decade to give a damaged creek something surprisingly simple: room to behave like a creek again.
Prairie Creek is one of the last refuges for three threatened species of salmon: California Coastal Chinook, Northern California steelhead, and coho salmon (whose numbers declined by 90% in the last century).
The major US restoration project, led by NOAA Fisheries and a broad coalition of partners, has transformed a former lumber mill into wetlands and a thriving floodplain ecosystem where young salmon can find food and grow before making the difficult journey to the Pacific Ocean.
Now, they’re recording some remarkable results, after years of monitoring the fish.
Juvenile coho salmon using the restored habitat are growing faster than fish remaining in the main creek channel, and researchers say that in some places the difference has been dramatic.
Growing Twice as Fast
“In certain sites and certain years, the fish using restoration sites grew up to twice as fast,” said Carter Adamson, who studied the fish growth at Prairie Creek.
Adamson, a fish biologist with the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission, explained how that extra growth could result in consequences far beyond the creek.
Faster-growing young salmon are more likely to survive their migration to the ocean, more likely to survive their years at sea, and return as adults to their home stream to reproduce.
Portions of the creek had been altered by human activity, leaving young fish with fewer of the complex habitats they naturally use to feed and shelter. Two of the ways the team assisted the salmon was by restoring the creek’s plantings and the amount of slow-moving water.
The historical damage was corrected by reconnecting the creek with its floodplain and restoring wetlands, ponds, and side channels.
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Researchers from Cal Poly Humboldt have monitored the salmon before, during, and after construction, tagging individual fish with tiny microchips and tracking their growth, movements, and survival.
Early results reveal more than faster growth. NOAA reports that 2.6% of the juvenile coho from the 2023 cohort survived their time in the ocean and returned as adults to spawn, compared with previous survival estimates of about 1%.
Monitoring at Prairie Creek will continue through at least 2028 to account for changing ocean conditions. This extra time will give scientists a clearer picture of whether bigger, faster-growing juveniles ultimately translate into more adult salmon returning home.
So far, the results are what was expected: Give young salmon slow water, abundant food and places to hide, and they don’t merely occupy the restored habitat, they thrive there.
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Sometimes restoring an endangered species doesn’t require newfangled ideas, only repairing what was damaged to give nature the ingredients to start cooking again.
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