Saving California's Salmon

Victory for Protecting Salmon

A federal judge has declared that water diversions in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta must be reduced through March 2009 in order to prevent the extinction of threatened and endangered Chinook salmon and steelhead populations. In April 2008, U.S. District Court Judge Oliver Wanger ruled that the government’s diversions of water from Delta rivers were illegally destroying these species. After a contentious trial over how the government would be required to fix the situation, Judge Wanger ordered water managers to reduce diversions immediately, before the species disappear entirely.

California's salmon populations have plummeted dramatically in the last year, and state and federal fisheries managers were forced to close the salmon fishing season for the first time in 150 years.

Baykeeper is a member of the coalition that's been fighting to save the salmon since 2005, along with The Bay Institute, Natural Resources Defense Council, Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, Institute for Fisheries Resources, California Trout, Friends of the River, Northern California Council of the Federation of Fly Fishers and the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, and represented by Earthjustice.

In 2005, a coalition represented by Earthjustice and including Baykeeper, The Bay Institute, National Resources Defense Council, Friends of the River and California Trout filed suit because of the water diversions’ dire effects on the crashing Delta smelt population. A June 2007 ruling by Judge Wanger in that case also ordered reductions in pumping. This latest ruling in the salmon case directly parallels the earlier decision to help save the smelt.

Delta Water Diversions Are Killing the Delta's Endangered Fish

Water exports from the Delta threaten the survival of the Chinook salmon and Delta smelt by reducing freshwater flow, eliminating spawning habitat and killing juvenile fish that are sucked into the pump machinery. Every year, an estimated 5.5 million acre-feet of water is pumped from the Delta in order to irrigate rice and other water-intensive crops grown in the semi-arid Central Valley. In 2004, water managers significantly increased the amount of water pumped from the Delta, which has led to the current salmon population crash.

Baykeeper wrote about the destruction of California's salmon in our June 2008 Bay Crossings column. Read the full analysis here.