Bringing BackSteelhead Trout

Over the past 17 years, I have been working on the biggest restoration project of my career, and I’m happy to share that now it’s finally close to wrapping up.

When I first started working on steelhead trout restoration projects in California’s Santa Barbara and Ventura region in 2004, I learned about some incredible backcountry creeks in the Sisquoc and Manzana river watersheds that supported populations of steelhead trout, which is listed as federally endangered. These native fish have a complex lifecycle. Similar to salmon, steelhead trout are anadromous, meaning they are born from eggs deposited in cold freshwater and they spend part of their lives in the ocean before returning to freshwater to spawn. Over the past several decades, their access to spawning streams and creeks has been increasingly blocked by physical barriers like dams and road crossings. Along with overfishing, climate change, and other forms of habitat degradation, this has led to a severe decline in steelhead trout populations in these watersheds.

Back then, my colleague, biologist and photographer Matt Stoecker, had just completed some essential surveying of these rivers and creeks to identify barriers to trout migration. His work allowed for a number of key restoration projects to take shape in the Los Padres National Forest, which is located in the coastal mountains of central California.

One such project — which was among the first I worked on along with a group of biologists, engineers, and government agencies — was the Horse Creek Dam removal. In 2006, we used dynamite to blow up an abandoned small dam on the creek, opening up over 19 miles of critical habitat for endangered steelhead that had been blocked for nearly 40 years. That project captured my interest in steelhead recovery, and I started working with a Santa Barbara-based nonprofit on a project to recover steelhead trout runs in Davy Brown and Munch creeks, tributaries to the Sisquoc River that run through the Los Padres National Forest.

In 2007, I founded South Coast Habitat Restoration (SCHR), an organization focused on creek restoration and steelhead trout recovery projects in the Santa Barbara and Ventura region, and began managing efforts for this project. In addition to working on barrier-removal projects on public and private lands, SCHR also works on removing nonnative plants, decreasing sediment inputs into creeks, and implementing streamflow-enhancement projects.

SCHR has been working with partner conservation groups and government agencies to remove three instream concrete crossings, commonly known as Arizona crossings, on these creeks, one crossing Munch Creek and the other two on Davy Brown Creek. The crossings act as barriers to steelhead trout migrations. The removal of the three barriers — which were built by the Forest Service many decades ago without the knowledge of their impact to the aquatic environment — would restore access to approximately 3.1 miles of creek for steelhead.

As a small nonprofit organization, our efforts are directly driven by the grant funding we are able to secure. In 2008, we received a small grant from the Forest Service to have concept engineering designs developed for the removal of the three barriers. We contracted that work to engineering and biological consulting firms. But soon we faced a financial barrier: For many years, we were not successful in securing funds to complete the engineering designs. Finally, nearly eight years later, in 2016, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation awarded us a grant for the project. Those funds — coupled with additional funding from the County of Santa Barbara Coastal Resources Enhancement Fund, the California Fish Passage Forum, and CalTrout — allowed us to complete the engineering designs for the project.

The design plan for the Munch barrier was to remove it entirely. But the two barriers on Davy Brown, which serve as public access roads across the creek, needed a different plan. They needed to be replaced with clear span bridges, that is, bridges that don’t have piling or other supporting structures in the creek channel that could prevent migration of aquatic species.

Once the engineering designs were completed and approved by the Forest Service, our efforts turned towards permitting and construction funding. The Forest Service took the lead with the environmental review and permitting for the projects with our assistance, while SCHR sought construction funding and was successful in securing grants from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the California Coastal Conservancy. In total, we have raised over $3.5 million for the project.

Finally, in 2020, we began the actual, physical work on the project. In collaboration with the California Conservation Corps (CCC), we began to remove the Munch Creek barrier using jack hammers, saws, picks, and shovels. This was no easy task given the Covid-19 pandemic; however the CCC was an excellent partner organization to work with. By August 26, 2020, Munch Creek was once again flowing free.

Work on the Davy Brown Creek barriers began this past August. Working with a construction firm, we quickly removed the two old creek crossings using heavy equipment in order to make way for the construction of bridges at each of the sites. The new concrete bridge abutments and wingwalls are being built as of this writing in early November. We are working with tribal monitors from the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians while the construction is underway to ensure that the project does not impact any cultural resources.

We anticipate the new bridges will be installed by January 2022 and the project fully completed by March 2022. This project would not have been possible without the partnership and support from South Coast Habitat Restoration’s colleagues as well as the Forest Service and our funders.

It has been challenging to get this project to where it is and we continue to face challenges as we work towards its completion. Habitat conditions for steelhead trout are getting worse due to a number of anthropogenic factors.

Learn more about this Earth Island project at: schabitatrestoration.org

Every year wildfires are getting bigger across the West Coast, further impacting watersheds that are steelhead trout habitats. Over the past 15 years, we’ve observed populations of steelhead being extirpated from watersheds following the fire-flood cycle. Stream restoration and steelhead trout recovery efforts in our region are at a critical point.

SCHR’s efforts over the past 14 years have led to the removal or modification of 27 barriers and restoration of 44 miles of habitat in the region. We look forward to continuing our voluntary efforts to improve habitat for steelhead trout in our region.

The survival of this endangered fish continues to hang in the balance. But we hope that this project, once complete, will help at least these two creeks begin to heal in the near future, and allow steelhead trout to return to their waters in numbers close to what they were in the times when the Chumash were the sole stewards of this land and shared it with the grizzly.