Salmon Vanished From This River in 1991 — They're Back
A scientist snorkeling a shrinking pool on a California creek found baby salmon that shouldn't have been possible — proof that wild coho had spawned naturally in the upper Russian River for the first time in 34 years.
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A scientist was snorkeling through a shrinking pool of water on a creek in Northern California and found something that hadn't happened there in thirty-four years — baby salmon, born right in that river, in the wild.
The last time that happened, the year was 1991.
For more than three decades, coho salmon had all but vanished from the upper stretches of the Russian River. Dams, drought, and decades of habitat loss cut off the cold, clean water these fish need to spawn, and the coho that once filled this watershed simply stopped coming back. Wildlife agencies and the tribes who've called this land home for generations kept working anyway — restoring streams, reconnecting waterways, and watching, year after year, for a sign the fish might return. For a long time, there wasn't one.
Then last June, a water resources specialist for the Pinoleville Pomo Nation named Dakota Perez Gonzalez was out snorkeling a tributary called Ackerman Creek, north of Ukiah, checking on a pool that was cut off from the flowing river and shrinking fast in the summer heat. And there, in that isolated puddle, were juvenile coho salmon — proof that adult coho had pushed more than ninety miles upstream from the Pacific Ocean, all the way into the upper basin, and spawned there naturally. Nobody had documented that happening since 1991.
Because that pool was drying out, there was no time to celebrate before there was work to do. The tribe partnered with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to net out the young coho, along with Chinook salmon and steelhead sharing that same shrinking puddle, and relocate them to the Warm Springs Fish Hatchery, where they'd join the region's ongoing salmon recovery program instead of being stranded when the water ran out.
By December, the state made it official. The Governor's office announced the milestone, calling it proof that California's salmon strategy is about more than restoring a single species. As the announcement put it, it's about restoring an entire way of life — honoring tribal sovereignty, protecting the ecosystems that define this state, and doing the generational work of making sure these rivers still run for the kids who come after us.
Pinoleville Pomo Nation Vice Chairperson Angela James framed it simply: her people honor the traditional ecological knowledge passed down through generations while learning from contemporary conservation science — two ways of understanding the same river, working together.
That's really the bigger picture here. This wasn't one lucky sighting. It was decades of restoration work, a tribal water specialist who knew exactly where to look, and a state agency ready to act fast when the moment came — all converging on two small fish in a puddle that turned out to be proof a whole species is finding its way home. Rivers don't heal overnight, and neither do the partnerships it takes to heal them. But thirty-four years after the coho went quiet in that basin, they're not quiet anymore.
Sources: gov.ca.gov · sfchronicle.com
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