Wednesday August 30, 2023
The Northcoast Environmental Center —
Since 1991, the City of Arcata has implemented a series of restoration projects and legal protections for the urban waterways within the city limits. Before the logging industry and urban development took hold, these streams teemed with Coho Salmon and Cutthroat Trout. After decades of erosion these populations were forced entirely out of urban creeks and there have been no documented sightings of either Coho Salmon or Cutthroat Trout in over thirty years. That is, until earlier this year when a group of researchers hired by the City to assess the effectiveness of Arcata’s decades of restoration projects found both Coho Salmon and Cutthroat Trout in Jolly Giant and Janes Creek.
Colton Dixon is a postgraduate student at Cal Poly Humboldt and was hired by the City to test the effectiveness of Arcata’s restoration projects.
“So I’m looking at dissolved oxygen, temperature, pH, turbidity, specific conductivity, salinity, just a bunch of different things, just to kind of get an idea of how well the water’s doing,” said Dixon. On top of the water testing, they also were recording the populations of wildlife, specifically fish and amphibian species.