Editorial

— Rollie Atkinson
Everyone wants a clean Russian River with a healthy fish
population and a restored habitat for wildlife. We all want to
enjoy recreation access to the river and we want a safe and
reliable water supply to support our agricultural industry and
municipal needs.
In fact, so many people want to save the fish that the number of
people at last weekend’s Steelhead Festival in Healdsburg far
outnumbered the total population of steelhead counted this winter
in our Russian River.
If each festival participant adopted a single fish, we could
more than quadruple the river’s steelhead population.
Groups that sometimes oppose each other on other topics all
banded together for the festival in Healdsburg’s Plaza. Under rainy
skies that all salmon and steelhead would love, displays and booths
were set up by such groups as the Army Corps of Engineers, Sierra
Club, Sonoma County Water Agency, Russian RiverKeeper, Friends of
Lake Sonoma, Russian River Property Owners Association, Trout
Unlimited and others.
The enthusiasm for the fish and the combined knowledge and
expertise on display at the Steelhead Festival offered great
encouragement that all our past mistakes and sins against the
river’s salmon habitat will never be repeated or tolerated
again.
But is it too late?
Native Russian River steelhead were declared a threatened
species in 1997 under the federal Endangered Species Act. Decades
of dam building, gravel mining, flow diversions, canopy and
riparian removal and human pollution has all but killed-off what
was once a “world class” steelhead fishery.
In 1941, the River’s steelhead population was tallied at
800,000. As recent as the 1970’s the population was only 62,000.
Since Warm Springs Dam was constructed on Dry Creek in 1983, the
hatchery there has counted as many as 8,000 fish in one year
(1995) and as few as 400.
While fish lovers, biologists, sport fishermen, young children,
environmentalists and others celebrated at the Steelhead Festival,
workers at Warm Springs Dam reported this year’s steelhead run as
the lowest in history. Only 281 adult steelhead have been counted
so far this winter.
Steelhead are basically rainbow trout that live part of their
lives in the ocean, returning to their native fresh water river or
stream to spawn. Unlike other salmon, steelhead do not always die
after spawning and various segments of the same population may
spend a single year at sea or up to three years.
Steelhead need cool, clean and moving water to spawn, hatch and
mature. After hatching, young steelhead spend up to four years in
the upper tributaries of the Russian River before their first
outmigration to the Pacific.
The construction of Coyote Dam near Ukiah and Warm Springs Dam
on Dry Creek closed off 170 miles of former steelhead habitat
forever. The idea of supporting the native steelhead population
with a hatchery at Warm Springs Dam is not proving to be the
panacea that was first promised. The introduction of non-native
stock and hatchery-reared salmon now appear to actually threaten
the dwindling native population.
Beyond saving the river’s steelhead, we need to continue to
restore and protect the river itself. The dam construction, timber
harvesting and gravel mining, along with the managed flows for
flood protection have greatly changed the flow regime, water
temperature and sediment transport of the river. One current issue
to be resolved is the need for vineyard owners to withdraw water
for frost protection spraying while providing enough river flow for
the migrating steelhead.
The attention, education and celebration shared at the annual
Steelhead Fesitval proves enough of us appreciate and want to
restore our river. Some great progresses have been made and
continue to be made.
But to say the Russian River is once again healthy and renewed
for everyone — including the fish, our cities, our recreation and
our farms — would not be accurate.
Just ask the once mighty steelhead.