Fishing in the North State

Without help, almost two-thirds of the state's native salmon, steelhead and trout could be gone within a century.

That includes seven fish swimming in north state waters, according to a report released this week by California Trout, a San Francisco-based fish and watershed advocacy group.

"They are all in serious danger of extinction," said Peter Moyle, a University of California at Davis ecology professor who wrote the 350-page report.

In danger of extinction in the north state are redband trout on the McCloud River; coho and spring chinook salmon on the Klamath River; and winter, spring and late-fall run chinook, as well as the Central Valley steelhead, on the Sacramento River.

They're endangered by the changes people have made to rivers and the land surrounding them, such as dams and logging, Moyle said.

"Every place has its own different reasons," he said, "but it all deals with how we treat the land and the water."

All of the fish facing possible extinction are indicator species that give warning of problems in the health of their streams, said Curtis Knight, Mount Shasta area manager for California Trout.

"These fish are telling us that something is wrong with those systems," Knight said.

In two of the past three years, he said, only about 50 fish of each species have made it back to the Shasta and Scott rivers, which feed into the Klamath River in Siskiyou County.

"These guys are hanging on by a thread," Knight said.

And there is precedent of extinction in the north state, with the bull trout - which was only found on the McCloud River - declared extinct in 1997.

But there are many habitat-restoration projects around the north state that are under way to help the ailing fish, Knight and Moyle said.

Those include the massive restoration of the Klamath River that would take place after the removal of four hydroelectric dams that block salmon from spawning habitat. Earlier this month, leaders from California and Oregon, the federal government and the dams' owner, Portland-based Pacific Power, announced an agreement in principle to remove the dams by 2020.

Along with restoration work, the California Trout report called for the state to hire more game wardens to enforce laws that protect watersheds and overhaul management of the state's hatcheries.

State scientists who study the north state fish deferred comment on the report to a spokeswoman in Sacramento - Jordan Traverson - who in turn released a typed statement from state Department of Fish and Game Director Donald Koch.

It read:

"We look forward to reading the 100-plus-page report 'SOS: California's Native Fish Crisis,' released by California Trout today. We thank California Trout for their dedication to California's native fish species. We appreciate their support and look forward to engaging them and other stakeholders in finding solutions to further our efforts to conserve the state's valuable fish and wildlife resources."