Posted on 04/22/2022 11:22:22 AM PDT by nickcarraway
Concerns are being raised over what the drought might be doing to an ancient salmon run that goes through the heart of Silicon Valley.
Roger Castillo doesn’t look after the rivers and streams and their wildlife in Silicon Valley because it’s his job. He does it because he loves it.
Storm Dumps Half-Inch Of Rain On Oakland, Peninsula, South Bay; 1" Reported In Santa Cruz Mountains “What are we going to leave our children you know?” Castillo said.
The mostly self-taught citizen-naturalist is a former truck mechanic who just discovered thriving schools of Chinook salmon fry in Los Gatos Creek.
But because of reduced water flows due to the drought, they’re likely to become trapped in pools of warm water upstream with no way to swim out to sea when they mature.
“The salmon cannot tolerate 75 degrees. They can barely tolerate 75 degrees. So what will happen in the summer is we’ll cook fish here. We have habitat for them to rear them, but if we let them stay here, we’ll end up cooking fish,” Castillo said.
Castillo has a well-documented history of working to improving fish habitat since the re-emergence of salmon in San Jose’s polluted urban streams 40 years ago.
Last December he documented spawning salmon jumping in Los Gatos Creek that made Campbell look like Alaska. On Tuesday, he was counting the salmon fry and will turn over the numbers to California Fish and Wildlife and the Valley Water district in hopes the salmon can get a human helping hand.
“We want to relocate these salmon here to a lower point in the river where some up wells occur. We’d have to trap them and move them in tanks,” he said.
Castillo hopes to organize an emergency rescue soon, since the fry are also in danger of getting eaten by carp and bass which also live in the streams.
He says it’s worth the effort to support the salmon which were all but wiped out by pollution decades ago.
“That is really one of the most endangered species that we have,” Castillo explained.
Wildlife biologists are trying to determine the origin of the salmon in Santa Clara Valley streams to find out if the fish are naturally reproducing on the river or hatchery-raised fish that may have strayed.
Liberals: “We love nature.”
Also Liberals: “We need to make a lot of changes in the natural world because without our intervention, nature would fail to be what we want it to be.”
Ping
The environmental signals will go out, across nature. Some of the Chinook Salmon will start making different routes. They - the species - will survive. In time they will again be seen in “regular numbers” in the Los Gatos Creek. LIFE writ large is stronger and more skilled at adapting than the climate alarmists give LIFE credit for.
A drought in California. Build a dozen or so desalination facilities along the coastline, put some windmills and solar panels on it to generate electricity to run the facilities and pipeline the water inland. While they are at it, cover the pipelines with solar panels to run the pumping stations.
Put all the homeless to work supporting the construction of the pipeline. It really is that easy.
Thanks. The Palo Alto Post has an ad for a market in Menlo Park with King Salmon selling for $27 per pound. Maybe we can catch these “cooked” chinook for dinner?
Seriously, it is amazing that the fish returned up these small streams after ending the bad pollution.
It was nice hearing the rain last night and this morning. Too bad all the hills are brown a month early.
ancient BS - probably were planted in that creek some time in the past.
Duh. The mountains in Utah have packs of coyotes that filled the niches left open by the wolves. It may be a trite saying but life finds a way. And if it doesn’t something else fills the niche. When the honey bee numbers plummeted locally the natural bees came right back. And gardens grew as well as ever.
Life is resilient. Far more so than the LGBTQ envirowackos who love to lecture us and who will die out this generation. Thank God.
A little targeted dredging to keep a shallow channel open and flowing could help.
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