Wildlife – Enviro Updates

Commercial salmon fishing to open in California for the first time since 2022

April 12, 2026

Sophie Austin, ASSOCIATED PRESS

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Federal fishery managers voted Sunday to open waters off the coast of California to commercial salmon fishing for the first time since 2022, with the population rebounding after wet winters ended a long drought.

The decision by the Pacific Fishery Management Council to allow limited commercial and recreational salmon fishing off the coast is a win for the state’s salmon fishing industry, which has grappled with years of season closures due to dwindling fish stocks. The council, which manages fisheries off the West Coast, barred commercial salmon fishing off California for the past three years. It voted last year to allow some recreational fishing for the first time since 2022.

The council is an advisory group to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, which makes the final decision but historically has followed the council’s rulings. The secretary’s decision will be posted in the Federal Register within days.

Agriculture/Food System, WildlifeChinook salmon, coho salmon, fisheries, fishing season, salmon

State grant gives Laguna de Santa Rosa Foundation chance to restore 175 acres of wetlands

March 10, 2026

Anna Armstrong, PRESS DEMOCRAT

A stretch of farmland along the Laguna de Santa Rosa floodplain could become a new home for steelhead, coho salmon and wading birds as part of a major wetland restoration effort now backed by more than $1 million in state funding.

The Laguna de Santa Rosa Foundation was awarded a $1.05 million grant in late February from the California Wildlife Conservation Board to begin planning restoring 175 acres of farmland between Sebastopol and Forestville back into riparian and wetland habitats.

The grant marks a major turning point for the foundation, which will now be able to take on its largest singular project in the foundation’s 37-year history.

The site sits along the laguna just north of Gravenstein Highway on land owned by the Lafranchi family ranch, a property that has been farmed for multiple generations. In 2024, Sonoma County Ag + Open Space purchased a conservation easement on a portion of the ranch to ensure it would be permanently protected.

The state funding will cover the costs of the design work, which includes environmental and hydrology studies, engineering plans and habitat assessments.

Habitats, Water, Wildlifecoho salmon, endangered species, Laguna de Santa Rosa, native plants, Russian River, steelhead, streams, wetlands restoration

Tools tweak beaver dams

February 14, 2026

Mark DeGraff, KNEEDEEP TIMES

CDFW Beaver Restoration Program

The town of El Dorado Hills, California was facing a problem. A beaver dam had inundated a popular walking trail. The community wanted to reverse the flooding without harming their buck-toothed neighbors.

Beaver experts visited the area and proposed a simple solution: a flood-control pipe threaded through the mass of sticks and mud that formed the dam. Once installed, the pipe quickly lowered the water level. Today, the trail remains dry, and beavers still call El Dorado Hills home.

Projects that help beavers and humans coexist have only grown easier since 2018, when El Dorado Hills began its beaver friendly project. Last October, Occidental Arts & Ecology Center launched the Beaver Help Desk, a state-funded resource that matches beaver-beleaguered landowners like the ones in El Dorado Hills with certified beaver coexistence professionals. It’s just one of a flood of new efforts to restore the water-storing rodent to its former habitats across California.

Beaver habitat restoration has become a priority among landowners, legislators, and environmentalists alike as climate change threatens the state’s ecosystems and water supply. A growing body of evidence has found that beavers were once abundant throughout California, and bringing them back will foster climate resilience. They build ponds where salmon can weather dry summers and create wet meadows that serve as firebreaks. One study calculated that repopulating the Sierra Nevada with beavers would create enough dams to store 32 billion gallons of water, making an area three-quarters as large as Yosemite wet enough to resist wildfires.

Water, Wildlifebeaver dams, beavers, flooding, OAEC, water storage

Round Valley Indian Tribes respond to Trump administration’s attempt to thwart Eel River dam removal

January 31, 2026

Amie Windsor, PRESS DEMOCRAT

James Russ and Joseph Parker, the former and current presidents of the Round Valley Indian Tribes, are seeking to make their reservation healthy again.

That means helping their people, they say, and specifically tackling high rates of diabetes and obesity that affect their tribal nation and many other Indigenous communities.

It also means restoring their land and the river that has been intrinsically linked with their people for millennia.

“We are Native people tied to the resources and rhythms of the Eel River,” Parker said. “Our health is connected to the river.”

Now, the tribal nation is confronting the Trump administration over the river’s future and fighting some of its regional allies to reclaim water rights that have been overlooked for a century.

Water, WildlifeEel River, endangered species, Potter Valley Project, Russian River, salmon, salmon habitat, Scott Dam, water diversion

West Coast monarch butterfly populations hit historic low

January 30, 2026

Meg Tanaka, LOS ANGELES TIMES

Western monarch populations hit the third-lowest count since 1997, with just 12,260 recorded along California’s coast this winter.
Scientists worry the low numbers represent the ‘new normal’ for western monarchs, raising serious concerns about their future survival.
Coastal development and habitat destruction threaten remaining overwintering sites, though some communities show conservation and growth can coexist.

Wildlifehabitat loss, monarch butterflies, pesticides

Trial begins in chemical runoff case against tire manufacturers

January 26, 2026

Margaret Attridge, COURTHOUSE NEWS SERVICE

A chemical additive in car tires is leaching into rivers and other waterways, killing protected fish species, lawyers for a conservation group and a fishing trade association told a federal judge during a bench trial in San Francisco, California, Monday.

After a three-day trial, the judge will determine whether tire manufacturers — including Bridgestone America, Goodyear Tires and Michelin North America — are violating the Endangered Species Act by harming protected and endangered fish species like coho salmon, steelhead trout and Chinook salmon.

The plaintiffs claim the tire manufacturers make or distribute products that contain an additive called 6PPD, a chemical that ultimately transforms into 6PPD-quinone when it reacts with ozone. As the tire interacts with the environment and roads, 6PPD-quinone leaches onto hard surfaces. When it rains, the chemical falls into rivers and other waterways, where it can kill fish in a matter of hours, they add.

After exposure, fish start displaying symptoms of urban runoff mortality syndrome, causing them to lose equilibrium and die within a few hours. Even if they’re transferred to non-polluted water before they die, they don’t recover from the syndrome, the plaintiffs say.

Water, Wildlife6PPD-quinone, coho salmon, Earthjustice, endangered species, Endangered Species Act, fisheries, PCFFA, urban runoff mortality syndrome, water pollution

Op-Ed: Why California gray whales are starving

January 18, 2026

David Helvarg, PRESS DEMOCRAT

Recently, while sailing with friends on San Francisco Bay, I enjoyed the sight of harbor porpoises, cormorants, pelicans, seals and sea lions — and then the spouting plume and glistening back of a gray whale that gave me pause. Too many have been seen inside the bay recently.

California’s gray whales have been considered an environmental success story since the passage of the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act and 1986’s global ban on commercial whaling. They’re also a major tourist attraction during their annual 12,000-mile round-trip migration between the Arctic and their breeding lagoons in Baja California. In late winter and early spring — when they head back north and are closest to the shoreline, with the moms protecting the calves — they can be viewed not only from whale-watching boats but also from promontories along the California coast including Point Loma in San Diego, Point Lobos in Monterey, Bodega Head and Shelter Cove in Humboldt County.

In 1972, there were some 10,000 gray whales in the population on the eastern side of the Pacific. Generations of whaling all but eliminated the western population — leaving only about 150 alive today off of East Asia and Russia. Over the four decades following passage of the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the eastern whale numbers grew steadily to 27,000 by 2016, a hopeful story of protection leading to restoration. Then, unexpectedly over the past nine years, the eastern gray whale population has crashed, plummeting by more than half to 12,950, according to a recent report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the lowest numbers since the 1970s.

Today’s changing ocean and Arctic ice conditions linked to fossil-fuel-fired climate change are putting this species again at risk of extinction.

Climate Change & Energy, Sonoma Coast, WildlifeArctic sea ice, fossil fuels, gray whales