coho salmon – Enviro Updates

Logging plan for Jenner forestland riles coastal community

March 23, 2026

Amie Windsor, PRESS DEMOCRAT

For several generations, the Berry family has logged the forest on their sprawling coastal property near the mouth of the Russian River to feed a sawmill they continue to operate a few miles upstream.

But the family’s latest plan for 1,099 acres of forest they own overlooking the river near its outlet at Jenner has riled this small community, raising concerns about the long-term impacts on drinking water and imperiled salmon runs that have yet to recover from a century of destructive commercial logging.

Bruce Berry, proprietor of Berry’s Mill and Lumberyard in Cazadero, is seeking state approval to thin his family’s forestland, which borders the river’s north bank, with the protected Jenner Headlands Preserve to the west.

The proposal has sparked concerns among some local residents and with environmentalists, who have waged a larger fight in recent decades over the scope of modern commercial logging on the coast. Stretching back to the Gold Rush-era, the region was razed for its redwoods and fir trees, producing lumber that helped build San Francisco — and rebuild it after the 1906 earthquake and fire.

Forestscoho salmon, Douglas fir, redwoods, Russian River, salmon habitat, Sheephouse Creek

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

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

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

December 8, 2025

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.

Habitats, Water, Wildlifecoho salmon, endangered species, redwoods, Russian Gulch

Green Valley revival reconnects creek to floodplain

November 20, 2025

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.

Habitats, Water, WildlifeCA Fish & Wildlife, coho salmon, Gold Ridge RCD, Green Valley Creek, habitat restoration, NOAA, Russian River, steelhead

Board hands down harsher penalty for Felta Creek timber owner’s water quality violations

June 16, 2023

Mary Callahan, PRESS DEMOCRAT

Regional regulators raised the total fines for Ken Bareilles in light of the important role of Felta Creek watershed, a last refuge for spawning coho salmon and steelhead trout.

A timber owner whose logging operations fouled the sensitive Felta Creek watershed, allowing sediment to enter the salmon-bearing waterway near Healdsburg over two successive winters, was ordered Friday to pay $276,000 in penalties.

The North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board’s unanimous decision came as a severe blow to landowner Ken Bareilles, 81, who fought to deflect a proposed $251,000 fine during a 3 1/2-hour hearing only to have the board return with a harsher penalty given the importance of Felta Creek to coho salmon populations and the potential harm resulting from inadequate erosion control.

‘’The whole thing is speculative,” Bareilles argued, challenging what he considered to be weak evidence and chastising water quality personnel for failing to use sensors or gauges to measure the sediment in streams.

Staffers for the water quality board said measurements weren’t required after inspections over a year and a half continued to turn up on-the-ground evidence of absent or failed erosion-control measures that allowed silty water and mud to flow into Felta Creek and nearby tributaries to the Russian River.

“This was the sloppiest operation that I’ve seen on any active timber operation in my career,” veteran board staffer James Burke, a senior engineering geologist, said in presenting evidence against Bareilles.

Forests, Water, Wildlifecoho salmon, endangered species, erosion, Felta Creek, salvage logging, sediment, stream pollution

Landowner under fire for post-Walbridge salvage logging violations

June 9, 2022

Mary Callahan, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

To hear Ken Bareilles tell it, the worst thing to happen on his land west of Healdsburg since the 2020 Walbridge Fire was the felling of charred Douglas fir trees that now lie on the ground, dried and cracking, because there’s so little demand at the mills.

To hear his neighbors tell it, the worst thing to happen since the Walbridge Fire has been Ken Bareilles.

It’s not just the neighbors. He’s seen as a bad actor by environmental watchdogs, regulators and others who have watched his emergency timber operation unfold on 106 acres in the sensitive Felta Creek watershed. Set among lush redwoods and ferns, the creek is a last refuge for endangered coho salmon.

Bareilles, for his part, has a different take on the unauthorized creek crossing, the hillside erosion, the flowing sediment, the tractor driven into the bed of Felta Creek and the host of violations documented by three state regulatory agencies over the past year.

According to him, they are the result of bad luck, poor advice, miscommunication and the relentless griping from residents who object to him logging fire-damaged trees up the hill from their homes along a narrow, private road.

He says Cal Fire and other agencies are only trying to pacify the critics by cracking down on him, and anyway, it’s only words and paper. So far there have been no fines or interference in his logging — though he remains under investigation by at least two state agencies. His one-year emergency logging permit, initially set to expire in October 2021, was even extended a year, like everyone else’s.

Forests, Water, Wildlifecoho salmon, endangered species, erosion, Felta Creek, salvage logging, sediment, stream pollution