California
Overview
California has the most varied landscape, ecology, and climate of any state in America and is a global hotspot for biodiversity. Its 32 species and subspecies of native trout and salmon reflect this. Some of these species, such as the Paiute cutthroat and the Eagle Lake rainbow trout, have evolved to thrive in a single stream system or lake to which they have uniquely adapted. This diversity of species and habitats provides numerous and varied opportunities for fishing.
But the Golden State is also on the front lines of a changing climate. Among the many threats wild and native trout and salmon face are increasingly frequent and severe wildfires and droughts, excessive water diversions, and the legacy impacts of logging, mining, and grazing.
Throughout California, TU works to protect and reconnect rivers and streams, improve dry-season streamflow and water quality, restore fish passage, and advocate for policies that protect native fish and their habitats. By improving watershed health and protecting the places where trout and salmon live, TU is also working to sustain California’s remarkable fishing opportunities for generations to come.
Fish We're Protecting
Threats & Opportunities
The rapidly warming climate, which makes severe drought and extreme wildfire more frequent, is the single biggest threat to California’s trout and salmon and their rivers and streams. Other threats include dams and excessive and poorly timed water diversions from rivers; a water rights and water usage system based on Gold Rush-era conditions; impacts from land uses such as logging, mining, and grazing; illegal cannabis cultivation; housing and energy development; and predation and introgression from non-native species.
What we're accomplishing
Building a Future for California’s Native Trout and Salmon
TU is working to ensure California’s remarkable diversity of native trout, steelhead and salmon can thrive in the face of climate change, increasing demand for water and other threats. From Eagle Lake rainbow trout to coastal steelhead and salmon, TU brings together science, restoration and local communities to make the state’s rivers, streams and watersheds more resilient.
Undamming California’s Legendary Eel River
TU is playing a leading role in the campaign to remove the obsolete Potter Valley Project dams, which will reconnect more than 200 miles of spawning habitat in the Eel River headwaters and help jump-start the recovery of Chinook salmon and steelhead throughout the watershed.
Celebrating More Than 25 Years of Coho Salmon Conservation
For more than 25 years, TU’s North Coast Coho Project has worked to restore critical habitat for endangered coho salmon in their native waters. The project uses innovative restoration techniques to reestablish the natural processes that create spawning and rearing habitat, helping damaged watersheds recover sustainably. This work includes installing beaver dam analogs, adding large wood to streams, reconnecting floodplains, removing obsolete roads, replacing barriers with fish-friendly culverts, and implementing innovative water management solutions that keep more water instream, particularly during the dry season.
Building a Scientific Network to Guide Conservation
TU continues to expand California’s largest nongovernmental network of streamflow gauges and groundwater monitoring wells. With more than 100 gauges, this network allows TU and its partners to track water temperature, streamflow, groundwater levels and other conditions to evaluate restoration effectiveness and guide future work. In Northern California’s Pine Creek watershed alone, TU has installed eight streamflow gauges, 12 groundwater monitoring wells and hundreds of monitoring transects to better understand watershed conditions and inform restoration.
Protecting and Restoring California’s Heritage Waters
From high-elevation Sierra Nevada streams to rugged coastal watersheds, TU works with conservation partners and grassroots advocates to protect critical headwater and meadow systems on public lands. TU is at the forefront of efforts to permanently prevent a proposed cyanide heap-leach mine near Hot Creek, one of California’s most iconic fisheries and an important economic driver in the Owens River headwaters. TU also works with Tribal partners to secure lasting protections for the Sáttítla Highlands National Monument, which supplies clean, cold water to the world-renowned Fall River fishery. These efforts complement TU’s engagement in California’s 30×30 Initiative to conserve 30 percent of the state’s lands and coastal waters by 2030.
Advocating for Better Water Management and Resilient Fisheries
Through state legislation, Tribal partnerships and collaboration with water suppliers and agricultural interests, TU works to improve environmental flows, water rights enforcement, drought preparedness, pollution prevention and watershed planning. These efforts advance practical solutions that keep more water in rivers while strengthening water security for communities and landowners. Much of this work takes place through the California Salmon and Steelhead Coalition, a partnership among TU, The Nature Conservancy and California Trout.
Restoring Critical Habitat
TU has restored 40 acres of riparian floodplain and stream channel at Logan Springs Meadow in the Pine Creek watershed, an important spawning area for native Eagle Lake rainbow trout. Building on this success, TU continues to lead additional meadow restoration planning and implementation. In partnership with the University of Nevada, Reno and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, TU has also helped tag more than 17,000 Eagle Lake rainbow trout to support research and inform conservation of this unique subspecies.
How You Can Help
Support Trout Unlimited’s restoration of the Klamath River.
Take ActionSupport Trout Unlimited’s campaign to remove the two old dams of the Potter Valley Project on the Eel River.
Take ActionStay up to date about how you can help us care for and recover California’s Priority Waters.
California Conservation Team Leaders
Brian Johnson
California Director
brian.johnson@tu.org
California Director
brian.johnson@tu.org
Priority Waters
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Klamath River
The Klamath and its largest tributary, the Trinity River, are world-renowned for their salmon and steelhead fishing and provide the economic and cultural foundation for tribes and commercial fishermen in this region. With our tribal and conservation allies, we removed four old dams on the Klamath, reopening over 400 stream miles to anadromous salmon and steelhead – the largest dam removal project in history. On the Trinity, we are using science to improve the flow regime and advocating for legislation to protect the undammed South Fork and its vital spawning and rearing habitat.
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Eel River
The Eel is the state’s third longest river and its best hope for the recovery of wild salmon and steelhead runs. TU is working on multiple fronts to reconnect and restore this river system. We are a leader in the campaign to remove the two antiquated Potter Valley Project dams, while our North Coast Coho and Steelhead Project is removing barriers to fish passage and improving water quality and habitat in numerous tributaries and in the mainstem above the dams. Meanwhile, TU’s Science work is improving salmonid population monitoring here.
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North Coast California
In stream systems such as the Navarro, Mad, Garcia, Noyo, Ten Mile, Usal, and Big rivers, we are is reconnecting and improving habitat and dry season flows through off-channel water supply solutions and better monitoring and modeling; removing fish passage barriers; preventing excessive sediment runoff by decommissioning or improving forest roads; enhancing habitat complexity by tactical placement of large wood; and reducing illegal diversions and pollution from trespass cannabis grows.
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Russian River
This watershed, most famous for its steelhead fishery, is gaining attention as a focal area for coho salmon conservation. Few watersheds are as affected by California’s increasingly volatile Mediterranean climate, and more stream miles here are drying back in the summer and fall. With a variety of partners, TU’s California Water Program is reconnecting and rewetting this basin’s small tributaries, which are critical habitat for coho and steelhead spawning and rearing, through innovative solutions that boost dry season flows and enhance water supply security.
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Lagunitas Creek
Lagunitas Creek is one of TU’s longest-running restoration and stewardship efforts in California. This relatively small watershed has an outsized importance for North Coast coho. Over the past four decades, TU’s North Bay (now Golden Gate) Chapter has led and supported projects to improve fish passage, stabilize streambanks, enhance habitat complexity and water quality, and improve public access. In a significant tributary, San Geronimo Creek, the North Coast Coho and Steelhead Project is leading the restoration of the stream where it flows through a former golf course that has been converted to open space.
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Central Coast
In small coastal watersheds between San Francisco Bay and Morro Bay, TU’s California Water Project is leading restoration projects that reconnect and improve vital habitats for the threatened South Central Coastal Steelhead. In streams such as the Carmel, Arroyo Seco, Pajaro and Big Sur Rivers and in wild steelhead factories such as Pescadero and San Gregorio Creeks, TU is removing old dams and weirs, replacing blocked culverts, building new bridges, converting former golf courses to parks, restoring floodplains, and developing off-stream storage solutions for landowners in waters prioritized in the federal recovery plan for SCC Steelhead.
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Sacramento and San Joaquin River Watersheds
In famous trout streams such as the Upper and Lower Sacramento, McCloud, Pit, Merced, and Tuolumne Rivers and their tributaries, TU is working with tribes and other partners to rebuild native wild salmon and steelhead stocks by evolving the dynamic over water management from one of conflict to one of collaboration; improve streamflow regimes through hydropower processes; reconnect and improve habitat in spawning tributaries; return salmon to spawning habitat above impassable dams and diversions; make forests and meadows more resilient to climate change; protect and improve water quality and hydrology in headwaters; and restore streams and floodplains degraded by mining and other land uses.
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Terminal Lakes
In legendary trout waters such as the Truckee River, the East Walker River, and Eagle Lake, TU is helping to recover native Lahontan cutthroat; protecting headwaters through new legislation and resource management direction; reconnecting and restoring tributaries, floodplains and meadows; repairing or decommissioning old forest roads, bringing beavers and beaver dam analogues back to the landscape, and restoring habitat degraded by legacy land uses. TU is also working to prevent impacts from mining to the designated Wild Trout water of Hot Creek and other Eastern Sierra streams.
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Kern River Basin
Across the southern third of the Sierra Nevada range, TU is protecting and recovering California’s state freshwater fish, the golden trout, and native Kern River and Little Kern River rainbow trout, by leading partnerships with resource agencies, tribes, and other stakeholders to restore meadows and streams, better protect headwaters, remove fish passage barriers, and improve fishing opportunities.
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