SACRAMENTO – The California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries announced an emergency action plan to capture Central Valley spring-run Chinook salmon juveniles in a move to prevent extinction of the threatened species. 

The captured juvenile spring-run will be raised to adulthood at UC Davis, in an effort to save this run’s unique genetic heritage. 

Spring-run salmon were declared threatened in 1999 under the Endangered Species Act and experienced catastrophically low survival in 2021.  

Chinook salmon preservation efforts on the Stanislaus River have been undertaken in a joint effort by the South San Joaquin Irrigation District and Oakdale Irrigation District.

The two agencies have helped restore breeding areas for the salmon and carefully  monitor their numbers.

The news  regarding the emergency action is another blow to California’s salmon stocks and a beleaguered fishing industry impacted by the complete closure of the 2023 commercial fall-run Chinook salmon season. The closure has resulted in the loss of tens of thousands of jobs in California and Oregon, erased incomes for thousands of families, and threatens the survival of coastal communities.

Rejecting calls from Golden State Salmon Association, environmental organizations, environmental justice groups and tribes over the last decade to restore the health of California’s rivers, the Bureau of Reclamation, even during drought, has continued to divert the water salmon need to survive from the Sacramento River.

The Bureau has the authority to reduce these diversions and provide life-saving cold water for salmon.  

During the last few years, spring-run Chinook have continued to be exposed to harmful water temperatures and dangerously low water flows in our rivers, including the Sacramento.

 In Butte Creek, the Central Valley’s spring-run Chinook salmon stronghold, high river temperatures in the summer of 2021 forced salmon into limited river habitat, which resulted in outbreaks of disease that killed nearly all adult spring-run fish prior to spawning.

The following year, only 5,132 wild spring-run salmon returned to spawn. In August 2023, a breach on PG&E’s Butte Canal, which carries water to their De Sabla Powerhouse, caused rust colored sediment to spill into and thoroughly pollute Butte Creek. The pollution event resulted in the destruction of salmon habitat and killed threatened spring-run fish. 

Currently, the State’s fall-run Chinook salmon industry is valued at $2.1 billion in economic activity and 33,000 jobs annually for California and Oregon in a normal season.

Industry workers benefiting from Central Valley salmon stretch from Santa Barbara to northern Oregon. This includes commercial fishermen and women, recreational anglers (fresh and salt water), fish processors, marinas, coastal communities, equipment manufacturers, hotel and food industry, tribes, and others.

 California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin River system supports four distinct Chinook salmon runs: fall, late-fall, winter and spring.  

The winter- and spring-runs have seen periods of alarmingly low numbers and are designated as endangered and threatened, respectively, under the Endangered Species Act.

The fall-run, which is currently the only commercially and recreationally fishable stock, was closed in 2023 for the third year in California’s history, due to low numbers of adults that survived the hostile conditions encountered in Central Valley rivers.

The late-fall run has been eliminated from most of its native spawning habitat.

All four Chinook salmon runs are dependent upon cold water flows and releases from reservoirs for mitigation and spawning.