Learn about Salmon Habitat Restoration

Peter Van De Burgt will be speaking about Salmon Habitat Restoration on the Ten Mile and Garcia Rivers Tuesday, April 16, at 7 p.m. in the Ukiah City Council Chambers.

Van De Burgt's presentation will update us on salmon habitat restoration on some of our local rivers. On the North Coast, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) is working to protect and restore a network of coastal floodplains and estuaries that includes the coastal reaches of the Ten Mile River, the Navarro River and the Garcia River. This network will conserve biodiversity, increase coastal resilience, and provide some of the southernmost habitat for wild coho salmon along the Pacific Coast.

Our work is about improving conditions in these rivers and their estuaries by reconnecting floodplains, building wood jams (large structures within the streams themselves), and restoring the natural form and function of whole riverscape systems. This work provides critical habitat for fish and it's helping to demonstrate the effectiveness of estuary and floodplain habitat restoration, creating a blueprint that can be replicated across the region. To date, TNC has constructed three large restoration projects in the Ten Mile River and one in the Garcia River estuary, with three more projects slated for construction in the coming years.

A quick recent success story: This winter, in the Ten Mile River, we have observed more adult salmon returning to the river to spawn than we have ever seen in our 10plus years of monitoring. It is looking like this will be the best spawning year for coho salmon that we have seen in a long, long time — a glimmer of hope for a species otherwise teetering on the brink of extinction in California.