Note: Updated on Jan. 1, 2025 at 7:28 a.m. with a link to the California Department of Fish and Game website where the finalized population numbers will be published.
Steelhead trout, coho, and Chinook salmon are making their annual journey upstream to their spawning grounds in Northern California’s rivers, but while efforts in Mendocino County show signs of success, the Bay Delta’s salmon populations face an uncertain future.
The endangered fish, once so numerous that naturalists claimed they could cross rivers by stepping on their backs, are now critically imperiled. Restorationists along the Mendocino Coast, however, are reporting encouraging numbers that indicate the population may be stabilizing.
“So the numbers are estimates of the number of adult salmon that return to each river,” said Peter Van De Burgt, North Coast Restoration Project Manager for the Nature Conservancy. “Each winter, adult salmon return to their home rivers where they were born, and they migrate upstream to make what we call redds, which are basically nests, and lay eggs and reproduce.”
Preliminary counts for 2023-2024 provided by Van De Burgt show improvement in several rivers. In the Ten Mile River, an estimated 5,574 fish were counted compared to a recovery target of 3,700, and in the Noyo River, an estimated 5,280 fish were counted compared to a recovery target of 4,000. But elsewhere on the coast, salmon continued to fall short of recovery targets. (The finalized numbers will be available at the California Department of Fish and Game website. They are not expected to change.)
While acknowledging challenges, Van De Burgt highlighted the progress as reason for optimism. “I don’t know if we will ever get back to the historic levels of abundance that we’ve heard about, you know, where you can walk across rivers on the back of salmon,” he said. “But we’re inching closer to a future where salmon are still present, and at least somewhat abundant in our streams. And I think that’s really, really worth celebrating, especially in the context of conservation as a whole, because a lot of times in environmental conservation, good news can seem in short supply. When we get these indicators of progress, like we’re seeing in these Mendocino County rivers, then I think we really should celebrate it and use that as confirmation that we’re kind of on the right track and just need to keep doing more. We might actually get to the future that we want to see.”
While Mendocino County offers a glimmer of hope, the outlook is far bleaker for the Bay Delta. Chinook salmon populations there have been steadily declining for years, said Alastair Bland, an environmental reporter for CalMatters.
“It’s been a long, long trend of declining salmon populations, mainly Chinook salmon,” Bland said. “And these are fish that spawn in the Central Valley watershed in the rivers that drain through the Central Valley and San Joaquin and Sacramento systems through the Delta, and they flow out into the Bay.”
“The fish used to swim underneath or through what is now the Golden Gate by the millions—two, three, four million perhaps every year,” Bland continued. “And they would spawn in these rivers, and they were a keystone piece of the ecosystem and cultures. And today, most recently, these runs have averaged somewhere around 100,000 fish. It’s so low that they’re considered to be in danger of perhaps disappearing in the not-so-far future.”
California has closed the salmon fishing season for the past two years, and the state is updating the Bay Delta Water Quality Control Plan, which could significantly impact salmon survival.
“There’s two sets of rules,” Bland said. “One of them happens to be strongly favored and preferred by water user groups, including farms and urban water districts, and the Newsom administration. The other plan, the other set of rules, is one that’s preferred by the environmental community. It basically calls for more water staying in the river systems at all times.
"The volume of water flowing through these rivers—that’s the key ingredient in the formula for having healthy salmon runs, according to some quite a bit of research and very many environmentalists," he said.
The state is exploring voluntary agreements to bridge the divide, but Bland noted concerns about their effectiveness. “Rather than force the adoption of one set of rules or another, momentum is building behind voluntary agreements,” he said. “But the concern there is that if only a small subsection or a small percentage of the water users in the system—in the water in the Central Valley—are subject to the regulations that environmentalists say are more protective, then it won’t have the net overall benefits or effect on the ecosystem that environmentalists claim because only a small percentage of water users are subject to it.”
If the environmentalists are right, the consequences could be severe for the remaining fish.