Friday Evening Presentations:
The Coho Confab will open Friday evening, September 13, with a community dinner and inspiring orientation presentations.
Saturday Tours:
Underwater Fish Identification
Tour Coordinators: Zachary Larson, Senior Fisheries Biologist, Caltrans, HQ DEA Office of Fish and Wildlife Connectivity
Tour Coordinators: Zachary Larson, Senior Fisheries Biologist, Caltrans, HQ DEA Office of Fish and Wildlife Connectivity
Join us for a unique opportunity to observe and learn about the various life stages of Chinook Salmon, Coho Salmon, steelhead, and Coastal Cutthroat Trout in tributary and mainstem habitats of the beautiful Smith River. This immersive tour will allow you to see native salmonids fish up close in their natural environment. Participants should be prepared for walking on uneven terrain. Swimming ability is required as you’ll be using a dive mask and snorkel to observe fish underwater. A wetsuit or drysuit is highly recommended to stay warm and comfortable.
Restoring Fish Passage and Rearing Habitat on the Smith Coastal Plain
Tour Coordinators: Monica Scholey, Smith River Alliance, Dylan Caldwell, Stillwater Sciences, and Marisa Parish Hanson, NOAA Restoration Center
This tour will visit recently completed restoration sites on the Smith River Coastal Plain, with an opportunity to see a variety of restoration methods utilized to restore coho rearing habitats including beaver dam analogues, off-channel features, and fish passage improvement techniques. On the tour presenters will discuss planning and design approaches for intermittent streams and tidally influenced habitats, lessons learned during permitting and construction, and results from biological and physical monitoring.
Rowdy and Dominie Creeks Fish Passage Improvement Projects
Tour Coordinators: Jennifer Jacobs, Fisheries Division Manager, Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation; Patrick Sullivan, GHD; and Tony Llanos, Michael Love and Associates, Inc.
Attendees of the Rowdy and Dominie Creeks Fish Passage Improvement project field tour will be able to see an instream restoration project in process. The project is removing outdated hatchery infrastructure and replacing it with a design that won’t impede fish movement. The hatchery barriers block approximately 11.5 miles of salmonid habitat on Rowdy Creek and 1.6 miles on Dominie Creek. Once restored adult and juvenile salmonids as well as lamprey and other species will have unimpeded access to the habitat upstream of the hatchery property.
Saturday Evening Open Forum:
Fire-Water-Fish Futures: Mapping Future Land Cover for a New High-resolution Climate Model of the Smith and Klamath Rivers
In this hands-on workshop and discussion, Dr Cleo Woelfle Hazard will present results from a new fire-water-fish climate model co-developed with the Karuk Department of Natural Resources and the National Center for Atmospheric Research that shows how streamflow will change over the next center. Using the Smith River as an example, participants will collectively imagine how land cover will change by mid and late century, and discuss how fires affect fish and where beneficial fire should be prioritized in the Smith River area.
Sunday Tours:
Innovative Restoration in the Lower Klamath – Big Jams, Liberating Floodplains, & Tribal Stewardship
Tour Coordinators: Sarah Beesley, Yurok Tribal Fisheries Department, and Rocco Fiori, Fiori GeoSciences
Tour Coordinators: Sarah Beesley, Yurok Tribal Fisheries Department, and Rocco Fiori, Fiori GeoSciences
Attendees on the Lower Klamath field tour will be able to see a variety of restoration features including constructed wood jams, off-channel habitats, and ground water palisade structures and explore a recent floodplain road relocation project. We will be discussing everything from restoration objectives and approaches (including Tribal stewardship), planning, design, permitting, construction, lessons learned, and how physical and biological monitoring is informing the process.
Reconnecting People to Place: Tour of Prairie Creek Restoration Project at ‘O Rew (currently known as the Orick Mill Site)
Tour Coordinators: Ashley Shannon, California Trout Jeff Anderson; Northern Hydrology and Engineering; John Bair, McBain and Associates; Kate Stonecypher, CalPoly Humboldt; and a Yurok Tribe Project Team Member (TBA).
Attendees on the Prairie Creek field tour will tour a multi-year restoration and trail gateway development project to get a glimmer of this future public access and restoration area. The tour will showcase habitat features such as a newly constructed mainstem Prairie Creek, large wood installations and backwater pond and wetland creation, as well as describe the vision for a Yurok Tribe village site, trail hub, and Coastal Trail connection. We will share the project history from 2015 concept designs to current status - year 4 of 5 years of implementation. The tour will highlight the design approach, results from monitoring fisheries response to floodplain habitat restoration within Life Cycle Monitoring framework, and the role of the Yurok Tribe, and their Fisheries Department and Construction Corporation in the project. We will share some of our vision for project completion in 2025 and for how the project team is preparing to support the property transfer from Save the Redwoods League to the Yurok Tribe and into a proposed co-management model with Redwood National and State Parks.
Redwoods Rising - Restoring the Mill Creek Watershed from the Ridge Tops to the Anadromous Waters
Tour Coordinators: Marisa Parish Hanson, NOAA Restoration Center; Shannon Dempsey, California State Parks; and Ted Masters, California State Parks
Attendees on this field tour will explore the ongoing transformation of the Mill Creek watershed, home to the core Smith River coho salmon population. The tour will visit an assortment of dynamic restoration features including forest restoration, instream large wood loading, culvert to bridge conversions, road removal, and an in-progress floodplain reconnection road relocation project. We will discuss the long-term restoration strategy to accelerate the development of late seral forest characteristics, enhance stream function, and rehabilitate logging roads within Greater Mill Creek. Learn the importance of maintaining a functional transportation network to support ongoing and future restoration activities, as well as how we have leveraged partnerships (including Tribes and non-profits) and various permitting pathways to accomplish landscape-scale restoration.