The Nature Conservancy announced this week that they have purchased ranchland in Shasta, California and hope to return Big Springs Creek to its former glory as a major salmon run.
[social_buttons]
The organization noticed the creek’s consistent, glacier-fed flowing water supply should make it the perfect spawning area for the embattled Pacific salmon, but it wasn’t being properly cared for. Years later, they’ve purchased 4,136 acres of surrounding land and plan to fence off the creek to protect it.
Since the stream is glacier-fed, the waters should stay cool even throughout the summer. While other streams and tributaries warm in the face of climate change, scientists predict this stream could act as a safe haven for breeding salmon, which prefer cold waters.
Unfortunately, cows have trampled the banks of the stream, causing the channel to widen and water temperatures to rise. Additionally, the creek has been used for crop irrigation, further draining the water.
Via: SacBee
Photo Credit: Mary-Lynn on Flickr under Creative Commons license.
Salmon and other anadromous fish are seriously depleted through damming their spawning areas in the 20th century.
The cows arrived only shortly before that, causing far more erosion due to their near-year-round presence. Erosion causes siltation of streambeds, which suffocate the salmon eggs. Salmon redds (nests) require clean, cold water over gravel. Thus, if you have ever seen the muddying siltation caused by herds and atv use, you would understand.
Any reopening of high, cold streams allows salmon to return and reproduce. Salmon suffer serious and fatal diseases when in water that is too warm.
If the Nature Conservancy is doing this, it is on land which they purchased.
Thus you do not need to raise hackles. Instead it might be wise to educate oneself; and go further: call a personal moratorium on eating of salmon, until they come back to the numbers which they had before the 1920s.
So what is the point of this story?
Cows have done what cows do and does that mean that their is no solution?
Are they going to do something about it or are they going to do nothing?