California ends funding for endangered salmon recovery

from Rachel BeckerCalMatters

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Two years ago, Gov. Gavin Newsom revealed a strategy to save dwindling salmon — highlighting a historic partnership with the Winnemem Wintu Tribe to reintroduce endangered winter Chinook to the vital cold waters upstream of Lake Shasta in far northern California.

Now, tribal officials say the state is ending its support, potentially killing McCloud River salmon recovery efforts midstream. The tribe is now struggling with the sudden loss of jobs, along with dimming hope that the culturally sacred fish will be restored to its ancestral waters.

“It makes me feel betrayed. It makes the tribe feel betrayed,” said Gary Mulcahy, the government’s tribal liaison. “It’s like they just gave up.”

State officials say the one-time funds were tied to the state’s response to the drought and have now been spent.

“The pilot is designed to take emergency action during severe drought conditions while testing key tools and approaches needed for potential long-term reintroduction,” California Department of Fish and Wildlife spokesman Steven Gonzalez said in an email.

Competition against hot water

federal call the scientists the winter Chinook salmon of the Sacramento River is “one of the most at-risk endangered species.”

Detached from historically higher cold water spawning grounds of Shasta and Keswick Damsthe fish have been stranded for decades in the Sacramento River — where warm water routinely cooks their eggs. Keeping the water cold enough for salmon sets limits about how much water federal managers can take from Shasta Lake — a vital irrigation supply for Central Valley farmers.

“We’re forcing fish to be in places they’ve never been historically,” he said Carson Jeffresssenior researcher at the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences. “When we have all those eggs in one basket, you’re one really warm event away from losing that cohort of fish.”

The drought years in the early 2020s destroy the eggswhich necessitated urgent action even before Newsom announced his salmon plan. “That was our wake-up call,” Jeffress said.

In 2022, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife joined the Winnemem Wintu Tribe and federal fisheries agencies to relocate endangered salmon eggs from the hatchery below Lake Shasta to the cold, spring-fed McCloud River upstream.

For for the first time in over 80 yearsthe fish swam in the river of their ancestors where they had once been abundant.

State and federal agencies finalized the partnership the following year, designating the Winnemem Wintu Tribe as an “equal decision maker” in working agreements to restore salmon in the McCloud River.

“The goal is an ecological and cultural restoration that will one day restore fishing opportunities for the tribe that depended on the once-abundant salmon for food and much more,” California Department of Fish and Wildlife said in the press release three years ago.

Newsom praised the effort in his Salmon Strategy 2024which featured a smiling photo of Winnemem Wintu Chief and spiritual leader Caleen Sisk next to Chuck Bonham, then director of the Department of Fish and Wildlife. They stood before the McCloud River.

“Partnerships with tribal nations,” the strategy says, “can move our mission forward.”

Funding ends when the fish is returned

McCloud salmon, trucked around Lake Shasta to complete their ocean migration, have begun to return. Last yearseveral two-year-old males returned to swim up the Sacramento River.

The eggs they fertilized hatched in hatchery tanks on the McCloud coast, according to Rebecca Olstad, project manager for the Winnemem Wintu salmon recovery effort.

But this year, the state, tribal and federal scientists involved have no plans to transport fertilized eggs over the dams, Olstad said. The tribe expects its state funding to run out by the end of June and is already laying off staff, tribal leaders hope will help hire tribal members in the long term.

Olstad, who is not a member of the tribe, also lost her job. She says the tribe has received just over $6 million for McCloud projects since 2023, with the grant set end of this year.

“The tribe was aware that the current grant agreement was going to end,” Olstad said. “However, under the collaborative management framework, the tribe expected that there would be a partnership to secure the next round of funding … so that there would be the capacity to actually continue the work.”

The grant also supported an ambitious effort to return wild descendants of McCloud salmon back to California from New Zealand. Brought out more than a century ago, the Winnemem Wintu tribe hopes this salmon will revive the genetic diversity of the few remaining endangered salmon in the Sacramento River. But that work, too, Sisk said, is at risk of stalling.

“We’re down to bare personnel,” Sisk said. “It pretty much stops all of our efforts.”

Science — and trust — broken

Sisk and Mulcahy said they communicated their concerns to California Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot and to Bonham. Both, Sisk said, have indicated they will try to find additional funding.

Tribal leaders also met with current Fish and Wildlife Director Megan Hertel, Sisk said.

“They all say this is an important program,” Sisk said. “If it’s good, then where’s the funding?”

Gonzalez, the department spokesman, emphasized that the program is a pilot. “As this initial phase of pilot field work comes to a close, it has successfully established the scientific, operational and partnership foundation needed to inform next steps,” he said.

Jeffress, a scientist at the University of California, Davis, has been studying conditions and monitoring salmon in the McCloud under a separate state grant — which he said also ended recently.

Even if the state allocates more funds to the tribe’s recovery efforts, he said, science breaks damage trust and relationships — creating setbacks and momentum that are difficult to recover from. Jeffress said it’s hard to see the rug pulled out from under the Winnemem Wintu tribe once again.

“I would give up our research funding so the program could continue with the tribe,” Jeffress said. “I look under every cushion on the couch.”

Mulcahy said seeing the end of state funding has been especially difficult since the Newsom administration announcing $10 million for salmon projects three months ago.

“They told us (the department) was a co-manager — and then all of a sudden, boom. I mean, there’s nothing there,” Mulcahy said.

The governor’s office and the Natural Resources Agency did not immediately respond to CalMatters’ requests for comment.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.