THE YEAR IN REVIEW
Steelhead in the Classroom
Healdsburg Wild Steelhead Festival
Restoration of the Salmon Creek Estuary
Fish Passage Project on Dutch Bill Creek
Erosion Control Project on Green Valley Creek
Colgan Creek Urban Streams Restoration Grant Application
Here is a quick summary of a few projects RETU accomplished in 2008.
Our first activity of the year is the Steelhead in the Classroom in-service training for new teachers in the program. The seminar, held at the Visitors Center at Lake Sonoma, trains about 10-20 new teachers in the program's curriculum of salmonid life cycle and habitat needs. It also certifies the teacher to transport the 30 steelhead eggs that will be raised in the classroom incubator and later released by the class into a Russian River tributary. In February, a workshop is held at the Henry Mechanical shop in Windsor where teachers assemble the classroom incubator made from a 10 gallon aquarium, insulation and a chiller that keeps the water at a nice comfortable 52 degrees for the steelhead eggs and fry. It's all about cold, clean water! Contact Rich McGowan to sign up for the January 10, 2009 training at (707) 887-1378.
The first annual
Healdsburg Wild Steelhead Festival in February 2008 was a smash hit. RETU was instrumental in pulling it off, including the inspired trout pond set up in the Gazebo in the Healdsburg Plaza, which was a thrill for young and old. Please consider volunteering or sponsoring the Festival in 2009. Learn how to participate:
Steelhead Fest Website
The
Salmon Creek Estuary is undergoing restoration after a study determined that Steelhead smolts were having difficulty surviving the summer in the Esturay due to predation. The need for more structure providing cover in the Estuary led to a project to build some structures out of large root wads. Such "large woody debris" structures would normally occur in the Estuary and provide places for the young steelhead to hide from predators. RETU helped finance the delivery of some very large redwood root wads from a site on Jonive Road that will be used to construct the habitat features in 2009. Estuaries are
critical Critical Habitat!
A recently completed fish passage improvement project was partially funded by RETU on Grub Creek, a tributary of
Dutch Bill Creek at Westminister Woods near Camp Meeker. The project included a "roughened channel" leading up to a box culvert. The floor of the culvert was enhanced with redwood "baffles" to help the fish swim the culverts length under Bohemian Highway more easily. RETU has a great history on Dutch Bill Creek. After RETU completed a renovation of the circa 1930s Dutch Bill Creek Fishway in the late 1990s, Coho Salmon were found above it for the first time in 50 years!
Green Valley Creek may be the last best Coho Salmon habitat among the 100 tributaries of the Russian River that support Steelhead and/or Coho. A steep eroding bank can cause large quantities of fine sediments to enter a stream. These "fines" pollute and fill in clean gravel beds that are needed for successful spawning. Clean gravel and cobble is also necessary for the health of macro-invertebrate(bug) populations that are a young salmonid's primary food source. RETU helped rescue an erosion control project at Bones Road that would not have gotten done this year if not for RETU's financial support. The steep bank was pulled back with an excavator, bioengineered techniques were used to stabilize it and fish habitat features were added at the toe. Another fish passage project on Green Valley Creek received RETU financial support at a culvert site in a reach where RETU has been completing restoration projects since the mid-1990s. The 2008 work in Dutch Bill and Green Valley Creeks was done by long time TU volunteer, Doug Gore, owner of Dragon Fly Stream Restoration.
The Colgan Creek Urban Stream Restoration Grant Application is a partnership between RETU and the City of Santa Rosa to make progress on the Lower Colgan Creek Restoration Plan that was adopted by the Santa Rosa City Council in 2002. The project would restore the reach of the stream in front of Elsie Allen High School on Bellevue Avenue and provide some excellent educational opportunities in restoring an urban stream to conditions that will again someday support salmonids in well shaded cold, clean water in a proper channel form.
