Habitats

California bans harvest of red abalone until 2036

Claire Barber & Anna Hoch-Kenney, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

Just outside Mendocino in the middle of Van Damme Beach, a weathered placard educates bystanders about the region’s red abalone, a once prolific sea snail whose mild taste and iridescent shell attracted throngs of divers up the Northern California coast.

But in November, the beach was quiet aside from small waves lapping against the shoreline and a steady stream of cars racing along Highway 1. Commercial abalone fishing has been illegal for decades, and recreational diving for abalone has been banned since 2018 due to significant population decline. Now all that remains of abalone culture here is the old sign, with its illustrated abalone fading in the sun.

“Abalone diving was part of Northern California culture. It was huge,” said Matt Mattison, a lifelong abalone diver and president of NorCal Underwater Hunters, a spearfishing nonprofit based in the region. “It was a big deal for a lot of families.”

It will be at least 10 more years before Californians get the chance to dive for abalone again. On Thursday, the state’s Fish and Game Commission voted to extend a ban on abalone harvesting in Northern California until 2036, citing continued decline in red abalone populations and ongoing environmental challenges — the longest extension since its initial 2018 closure.

Read more at https://www.sfchronicle.com/outdoors/article/california-abalone-diving-ban-21233594.php

Habitats, Sonoma Coast, Wildlife, , ,

Coho salmon found in Sonoma Coast creek for first time in 60 years

Amie Windsor, PRESS DEMOCRAT

The excitement started with a flash of silver followed by a hefty dose of disbelief.

A team of conservationists and biologists from The Wildlands Conservancy, the nonprofit that manages the 5,600-acre Jenner Headlands Preserve on the Sonoma Coast, couldn’t believe what they were seeing: the telltale color and shape of juvenile coho salmon, darting back and forth in the clear current of the East Branch Russian Gulch.

It had been decades since the endangered fish had made its way to that arm of the watershed.

And yet there they were, as Ryan Berger, Corby Hines and Luke Farmer of The Wildlands Conservancy looked on.

“I had never heard of coho being in the Russian Gulch in recent memory,” said Hines, a ranger with the group.

Coho salmon once thrived in the coastal watersheds of Sonoma County and the broader North Coast, where winter rain, summer fog and the protective canopy of towering redwood forest sustained young fish and spawning adults over millenia.

Read more at https://www.pressdemocrat.com/2025/12/08/coho-salmon-found-in-sonoma-coast-creek-for-first-time-in-60-years/

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Silent partner in project to transform Sonoma Developmental Center

Phil Barber, PRESS DEMOCRAT

In September 2005, a Stockton-based developer known as the Grupe Company paid nearly $500,000 to Riverbank, a town in Stanislaus County with about 20,000 people at the time. The money would allow the city to update its general plan. One public policy professor said at the time that he’d never heard of a private business funding a general plan, which serves as a blueprint for growth and land use.

The final study proposed three alternatives for Riverbank, all of which carved out specific benefits for the Grupe Company. After an outcry by residents, the Riverbank City Council approved a plan that would slash proposed Grupe development by half. Months later, the developer announced it was no longer interested in paying for the update.

It was a “valuable lesson in developer tactics,” as a Modesto Bee editorial put it at the time, that would seem to have nothing to do with the North Bay.

But the Grupe Company is on the verge of becoming an important player here, too. It makes up half of Eldridge Renewal LLC, the partnership selected by the state to redevelop the historic Sonoma Developmental Center campus at the western edge of Sonoma Valley.

Read more at https://www.pressdemocrat.com/2025/11/29/sonoma-developmental-center-grupe-company/

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Green Valley revival reconnects creek to floodplain

Dewey Watson, SONOMA COUNTY GAZETTE

A partnership between Iron Horse Vineyards, the property owner, and the Gold Ridge Research Conservation District (Gold Ridge), with funding from California Fish and Wildlife and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Restoration Center (NOAA), has restored and improved a large part of the middle reach of Green Valley Creek to provide overwintering habitat for coho and steelhead salmon. Construction on the project, which took years of planning, began in April and has recently been completed.

“Now it is up to nature, assisted by teams of workers planting native grasses and willows to restore what has been lost for over a century and bring back healthy salmon to the creek and the Russian River,” said chief scientist and project manager John Green.

Green Valley Creek was once considered critical habitat for salmon because of its proximity to the Atascadero Plain, offering one of the largest basins for young salmon to grow strong enough to survive ocean challenges and return to breed.

This area of the creek, at the bottom of the Iron Horse vineyard property, was once a flat field, prone to annual flooding and quick drainage. It offered no shelter for fish or the insects that support them. Now, after years of planning and months of construction reshaping, the site hums with quiet anticipation as a stream begins to come back to life.

Read more at https://www.pressdemocrat.com/2025/11/20/sgz-l-greenvalley-120125/

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Op-Ed: California is failing its signature salmon

Tom Philp, PRESS DEMOCRAT

“Basically, we sit on the edge of extinction,” said Jeffrey Mount, a longtime expert in California rivers who conducts research at the Public Policy Institute of California. There have been successes, most notably the removal of dams on the Klamath River. It is the primary wild population of the Sacramento River watershed with the dangerously dwindling numbers.

California salmon are as central to our historic identity as the symbol on our state flag, the California grizzly. It is a sad and ironic tragedy that the grizzly has been extinct for generations. What does it say about us if salmon may soon follow?

California is known around the globe for its commitment to environmentalism. But the state is struggling. Much is chronicled about how California isn’t on target to meet climate change goals, such as our pioneering plans for “net zero” emissions of global warming gases in just two decades. There is less attention on how the state is equally failing the signature inhabitants of its natural world.

Losing salmon would be an ecological disaster for our freshwater ecosystems, forests, riverbanks and other native species if their links to the salmon were severed. Healthy salmon runs mean jobs for Californians, but the industry generating $1 billion is at risk, as is a historic piece of California’s culture.

Read more at https://www.pressdemocrat.com/2025/10/12/philp-california-is-failing-its-signature-salmon/

Habitats, Wildlife, , , ,

How smashing 5.6m urchins saved a California kelp paradise

Katharine Gammon, THE GUARDIAN

Pollution, warm oceans and hungry urchins devastated Pacific kelp. Now, thanks to divers with hammers, one of the world’s most successful rehabilitation projects has helped it rebound

On an overcast Tuesday in July, divers Mitch Johnson and Sean Taylor shimmy into their wetsuits on the back of the R/V Xenarcha, a 28ft boat floating off the coast of Rancho Palos Verdes, south of Los Angeles. Behind them, the clear waters of the Pacific are dotted with a forest of army-green strands, waving like mermaid hair underwater.

We are here to survey the giant Pacific kelp, a species that once thrived in these ice cold waters. But over the past two decades, a combination of warm ocean temperatures, pollution, overfishing and the proliferation of hungry sea urchins that devour the kelp has led to an 80% decline in the forest along the southern California coast.

In recent years, scientists have staged a comeback – mounting one of the largest and most successful kelp restoration projects in the world. To do so, they’ve recruited an army of hammer-wielding divers to smash and clean up the voracious urchins. Today’s trip is a chance to see that success up close.

Read more at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/31/california-pacific-kelp-forest

Habitats, Wildlife, ,

Scientists solve mystery of what is killing sea stars

Christina Larson, ASSOCIATED PRESS

The cause of sea star wasting disease turns out to be a bacteria called Vibrio pectenicida.

Scientists say they have at last solved the mystery of what killed more than 5 billion sea stars off the Pacific coast of North America in a decade-long epidemic.

Sea stars – often known as starfish – typically have five arms and some species sport up to 24 arms. They range in color from solid orange to tapestries of orange, purple, brown and green.

Starting in 2013, a mysterious sea star wasting disease sparked a mass die-off from Mexico to Alaska. The epidemic has devastated more than 20 species and continues today. Worst hit was a species called the sunflower sea star, which lost around 90% of its population in the outbreak’s first five years.

“It’s really quite gruesome,” said marine disease ecologist Alyssa Gehman at the Hakai Institute in British Columbia, Canada, who helped pinpoint the cause.

Healthy sea stars have “puffy arms sticking straight out,” she said. But the wasting disease causes them to grow lesions and “then their arms actually fall off.”

The culprit? Bacteria that has also infected shellfish, according to a study published Monday in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.

Read more at https://www.ap.org/news-highlights/spotlights/2025/scientists-say-they-have-solved-the-mystery-of-what-killed-more-than-5-billion-sea-stars/

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