Field Tour Leaders: Ben Cook, Trout Unlimited, Lisa Lurie, Santa Cruz Resource Conservation District; and Joseph Kiernan, NOAA Fisheries

Scotts Creek is the only watershed south of the Golden Gate Bridge that continues to support all three cohorts of CCC Coho and this watershed is mission critical to coho recovery in the Santa Cruz Mnts Diversity Strata. As coho struggle to keep a foothold south of the Golden Gate, a unique collaboration of scientists, restoration practitioners, geneticists, transportation planners, and farm managers are working in tandem to keep this population from going extinct.  The field tour will focus on two ecological restoration efforts, the details and new science being developed through the NOAA Science Center’s monitoring and research work, and the struggles and achievements of our small local coho recovery hatchery. 

 

Of the two restoration projects that participants will learn about, is a precedent setting collaboration with Caltrans and nearly all of the local, state, and federal resource agencies focused on restoring the Scotts Creek Lagoon through removal of the massive Highway 1 fill prism that sits right in the heart of the historic lagoon footprint.  This effort is in its 7th year and the project was highlighted as a top priority in NOAA National Species in the Spotlight report. Project partners will discuss the collaboration, how this effort is shifting the planning paradigm for Caltrans and the technical work completed to-date. In addition to this project, which is still in its planning phase, we will also walk lower Scotts Creek on the CalPoly Swanton Pacific Ranch and hear about the nearly 6,000 linear feet of instream and floodplain restoration designed by CalPoly graduate students and implemented over the past 6 years. The project utilizes novel restoration techniques focused on the use of on-site materials such as local hardwoods for LWD to rock from local defunct quarries.

 

While these projects are unique, the watershed also supports the only life-cycle station in the region, and with researchers from NOAA’s Science Center, supports a state-of-the-art research program. Staff from the NOAA Science Center will discuss not only novel monitoring techniques that they are experimenting with, but also cutting-edge science they are developing to inform recovery and restoration. 

 

Finally, staff from the Science Center also help run, along with the Monterey Bay Salmon and Trout Program, the Kingfisher Flat Hatchery. Due to low numbers of naturally returning coho, this hatchery has transitioned from a steelhead hatchery to a coho recovery hatchery and is a critical piece of the recovery puzzle. The tour will end at the hatchery, where we will discuss the efforts to avoid genetic bottlenecks, keep the facility running in the face of constant funding shortages, and get to see some healthy broodstock fish.

 

The three legs of the recovery stool (restoration, monitoring, and hatchery) will be discussed in the context of the 2020 CZU Complex Fire, which burned heavily in the Scotts Creek watershed, and present and projected climate change impacts.