Wednesday January 29, 2025
Knee Deep Times via Maven’s Notebook —
Landslides. Falling trees. Scorched forests. These are just a few ways the 2020 CZU Lightning Complex Fire transformed habitats in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
But scientists are finding that the blaze’s effects on the region’s coho salmon have been small. “Fire is part of the natural landscape here,” says NOAA research ecologist Joe Kiernan. “And these fish have evolved with fire.” The blaze consumed nearly all of the Scott Creek watershed north of Santa Cruz, but surveyors in 2022 counted more baby coho in that creek than in any year since 2002.
Groups of coho salmon swim upstream from the ocean every winter to breed, a journey that has delivered fresh seafood to generations of Californians. But in recent decades their numbers have collapsed.
“I have been fishing the San Lorenzo [River] for 30-40 years,” says Curtis Smith of Felton. At first, the catch limit was ten, he says. Now scientists see less than ten spawning coho there in an entire year.