Thursday August 1, 2024
CalMatters —
California’s fifth largest wildfire is encroaching on some of the last strongholds for imperiled salmon, with potentially devastating consequences for a species already on the brink.
The explosive Park Fire has spread into the Mill and Deer Creek watersheds in Tehama County, which are two of the three remaining creeks where wild, independent populations of spring-run Chinook, a threatened species, still spawn in the Central Valley.
If the Park Fire climbs to higher altitudes, federal and state officials said it could strike the final deathblow to the region’s spring-run salmon, which are already at risk of extinction.
“It’s really concerning. It’s really sad. Spring-run Chinook populations have taken such a hit over the past few years, and they’re just at a critically low point,” said Howard Brown, senior policy advisor with the Central Valley office of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s West Coast fisheries region. “The emotional toll of seeing a fire like this hit such an important place, with (critically at-risk) populations that are suffering so bad, it just feels like the cards are stacked up deeply.”