Shasta coho: Going, going, gone?

Coho on the Shasta River are hanging on by a thread. Whether or not they survive will depend on how quickly management agencies respond to the latest science charting their declines.

Send a letter to management agencies below!

Unlike other salmon species, coho live only three years, and spend their entire first year in their natal streams. Dependent on instream migration to find productive habitat throughout the year, coho are particularly vulnerable to low flows, barriers, warm tailwater returns from irrigation diversions, and habitat destruction from cattle grazing and trampling. Coho are currently the only salmon species in the Klamath Watershed protected under the Endangered Species Act.

The California Department of Fish and Game finished a study last year showing that 2010 would be a make or break year for Shasta coho. Among the report’s key findings are:

* Two out of the Shasta’s three year-classes of coho are functionally extinct. The last remaining year-class, spawning fall of 2010, is on the same trajectory. The only properties where juvenile coho were actually observed in 2009 were ranches owned by Emmerson Investments Inc.

* Key rearing habitat on Archie “Red” Emmerson’s land is heavily degraded by excessive cattle trampling, de-watering, and elevated water temperatures. (Emmerson is not a local family farmer, but rather the head of Sierra Pacific logging corporation, the nation’s third-largest landowner. His net worth is estimated at over $2.1 billion and Forbes ranks him among the United States’ 400 wealthiest people.)

* If nothing is done to change habitat conditions on Emmerson’s land, the last of the Shasta coho will face additional declines.

* In addition to agricultural diversions, and warm tailwater returns from these diversions, warm water releases from Dwinnell Dam/Lake Shastina also heat cold water refugial areas during the summer.

* CDFG recommends keeping adequate water quantity and quality instream to maintain fish in good condition, maintaining sufficient flows and suitable temperatures to allow fish passage, and excluding livestock from streams.

Send a letter urging CDFG, NOAA Fisheries, and the Department of Water Resources to act swiftly to implement and enforce CDFG’s recommended actions. Without prompt and decisive action, we could lose Shasta coho in 2010.

> Download CDFG's report
> Learn more about the issue

Subject:

Your Letter:

CDFG's latest report on the status of Shasta coho (http://www.klamathriver.org/Documents/CDFG-Juvenile-Coho-2009.pdf) is appalling. CDFG has already declared two out of the Shasta coho's three year-classes functionally extinct, and calls for drastic changes if the third - and last - year-class is to survive.

You are in a position to enforce the Endangered Species Act, and the myriad other laws and statutes that can keep water in the Shasta this summer, keep cows out, and save the last remaining Shasta coho.

CDFG's report is unequivocal. If action is not taken on Red Emmerson's lands in the Shasta basin, coho will go extinct. Please implement the restoration actions CDFG recommends in this report like keeping adequate water quantity and quality instream to maintain fish in good condition, maintaining sufficient flows and suitable temperatures to allow fish passage, and excluding livestock from streams.

Please do not pretend the Watershed-Wide Incidental Take Permit program will be a panacea for this problem.  It does not address the flow, trampling, and fish passage problems that are driving Shasta coho toward extinction. Your agencies are charged with protecting threatened coho, and enforcing environmental laws, not bending them in order to maintain the status quo.

Action must be taken now if the 2010 Shasta coho broad-year is to survive.  This is our last hope to keep this population viable - please take real and meaningful action as soon as possible.

Steve Turek

California Department of Fish and Game
601 Locust St
Redding, CA 96001

Irma Logamarsino

NOAA Fisheries, Arcata Supervisor
1655 Heindon Rd.
Arcata, OR 95521

Don Masters

NOAA Fisheries, Special Agent in Charge
501 W. Ocean Blvd.
Long Beach, CA 90802

John McCamman

California Department of Fish and Game, Director
1416 9th St.
Sacramento, CA 95814

Shawn Pike

California Department of Water Resources
2440 Main St.
Red Bluff, CA 96080