Students releasing Chinook Salmon fry into freshwater creek, at Freshwater Park, just below the seasonal recreational damsite Photo: Jan Duncan Vaughn

The Eel River Salmon Restoration Project recently completed fish trapping and spawning activities. This year heavy rainfall and high water in Redwood Creek added to the excitement of trapping. The fish runs were some of the largest since the 1980s. The few nights that the creek level allowed us to trap (fish move at night and so do we when it?s pouring rain and the creek?s rising), we trapped 68 salmon which allowed us to put 77,325 eggs into our hatch boxes. Of the Chinook salmon trapped only 6% were marked hatchery fish, 94% were wild, which fits our goal of promoting wild fish recovery through habitat restoration.

The Cereus grant that we received allowed us to expand our Salmon in the Classroom program, which allows local students to hatch and raise salmon. This year we are setting up and overseeing 75 incubators in local classrooms. Teachers have commented that students are bringing parents and relatives to school to see their fish, which means more public involvement in schools and an ever-expanding awareness of the importance of salmon to our local communities. Also exciting was the fact that the salmon that the students raised and planted three and four years ago came back. One student and her father were watching about two dozen fish spawn in less than 100 feet of stream where students had planted their fish. They were interviewed, by Estelle Fennel, and the interview broadcast on our local radio station KMUD. The student indicated in the interview that she was glad that she had helped the fish.

We also received a grant from Working Assets for tree planting. We are now busily planting 14,000 redwood trees on landslides and restoration project sites in Redwood Creek, Leggett Creek, Miller Creek, Wood Creek, and Salmon Creek. During restoration projects we often place logs in creeks to create more habitat for fish and salamanders. The funding that we received from Working Assets allows us to grow more trees next to creeks to provide shade and wood so vital for riparian ecosystems, as well as planting trees on landslides that resulted from the heavy rains this winter.

The Eel River Salmon Restoration Project is grateful for the support that we receive towards helping us restore the runs of salmon so vital to our natural world and to local communities that are very much a part of that natural world. As we all grow elder (not just older) it is heartening to see the next generation taking an active interest in making this a better world now and for the future.


More Updates

• ERSRP Wood Creek Project
  
• August, 2003 Update
  
• November, 2002 Update
  
• May, 2002 Update
  

Main Page