Workshop Coordinators:
Matt Clifford, Trout Unlimited, and Monty Schmitt, The Nature Conservancy

In the more than two decades that various coastal California populations of steelhead and coho salmon have been protected under federal and/ or state endangered species acts, a great deal of effort has gone into studying how to recover these species.  Federal recovery plans have been completed for all three populations of coastal California steelhead, and both federal and state recovery plans have been completed for both populations of coastal California coho.  But although both the regulatory and restoration branches of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the National Marine Fisheries Service have been working for years to implement various actions called for in those plans, populations of both species have continued to decline.  This workshop will focus on efforts to re-assess the approaches the agencies and the larger restoration community are taking to recovering these species.  Topics of interest include: methods for prioritizing specific restoration projects at the watershed level to guide grant funding, more effective implementation of regulatory authority over water diversion and stream alteration, more efficient permitting of habitat restoration projects, and more effective monitoring of populations of both species.