Salmon Run Through It : In Working to Restore Polluted Creek and Re-Establish Fish Habitat, Students Learn the Value of Conservation and the Power of Community Service

The kids couldn’t believe their eyes. Right there, in the creek that flows by their high school, were the most beautiful fish they had ever seen: chinook salmon, silvery red and plump as could be.

There were dozens of them. It was probably the biggest run up the meandering 5 1/2-mile stream this century.

The students jumped into the creek with nets and hauled out 29 of the wayward salmon, believed to be strays from the endangered Sacramento River fall run. All of them were heavy, one weighing nearly 40 pounds.

“Massive,” said Craig Koyl, 17, the Casa Grande High School senior who caught it. “It broke through the net on the first try. But we got it.”

It was quite a day, late last October. They were no ordinary salmon, and the students, being no ordinary pupils, knew it. With the help of a newly built hatchery, they would turn their catch into thousands of tiny salmon, which they hope will someday return to the creek as life-giving adults.

The catch, they say, represented another step toward achieving their goal of restoring Adobe Creek to where it can sustain runs of salmon and steelhead trout. Until 1990, salmon hadn’t shown in the creek this century. And a nearly extinct strain of steelhead has all but disappeared.

“We want to bring the numbers up,” said Janeen Gold, 16, a junior at the school. “It’s going to take a while, but we’re going to do it.”

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The dream of restoring Adobe Creek began 11 years ago, when the United Anglers of Casa Grande High School was formed as a club in science teacher Tom Furrer’s field studies class, and that dream is more alive than ever. The class, limited to 24 students, has a waiting list of nearly 200. They must score 100% on three tests and pass Furrer’s extensive evaluation to get in.

“If your heart’s not into it, then you might as well not be here because we need people who are ready to work and their heart’s into it,” said Gold, one of only a few juniors in the class.

Such attitudes have helped bring the United Anglers’ dream closer to reality than anyone could have imagined.

Adobe Creek, which over the years has been dried up by diversions, torn up by off-roaders and littered by partyers and illegal waste dumpers, is flowing freely and cleanly throughout much of the year. Its once-barren banks are lined with willow trees, planted annually by the students. And salmon and steelhead, strays or otherwise, seem to be entering the stream via the Petaluma River in increasing numbers.

And if this isn’t enough of an accomplishment for high school students, there is the state-of-the-art fish hatchery, built largely from funds raised by the students. It’s on campus, behind Furrer’s classroom and across the street from the creek.

The hatchery, it is hoped, will prove to be the key toward achieving their goal.

“I deal a lot with hatchery folks and everybody is drooling over this one because it’s nicer than those at most state agencies,” said Paul Siri, assistant director of the Bodega Bay Marine Laboratory.

Completed in 1993, at a cost of $510,000, the hatchery is home to more than 20,000 salmon fry--or “babies” as Furrer and his students affectionately refer to them--courtesy of the 29 fish the kids caught in the creek last October. The eggs were removed and fertilized, then hatched by the United Anglers, with the help of people such as Siri. The energetic little fish seem to be doing nicely in their narrow, glass-lined raceways, awaiting their imminent release.

“It’s just amazing, all everyone’s done,” said Joanna Stiles, 17, a senior and one of Furrer’s top students. “When I’m feeling down, it really boosts my spirits to come in here and watch them swimming around.”

Hopefully, she said, some of them will return to Adobe Creek and send her spirits sky high.

Whether they will find their way back, however, remains to be seen. The California Department of Fish and Game says that because the salmon were strays from the Sacramento River run, their offspring should be released in San Francisco Bay, which provides a route to the Sacramento River. The DFG, which issued the permit for the group to raise the fish, has arranged the release in the near future.

“We don’t want to create the expectation of a return where there is not enough suitable habitat,” said Bill Cox, a DFG fisheries biologist with responsibilities in Sonoma and Marin counties.

Furrer, 40, a wildlife and forestry expert at Casa Grande, says there is or soon will be suitable habitat for salmon, and that the release in San Francisco Bay probably won’t stop the fish from finding their way back to the Petaluma River after having spent their adult years feeding in the Bering Sea.

The fish, he said, are “imprinted” with the scent of hatchery water that comes from the same aquifer that feeds Adobe Creek. Therefore, he said, they instinctively will be attracted to their home river, as all salmon are.

In any event, the DFG’s decision hasn’t dampened the United Anglers’ spirits. There will be more salmon because of their efforts, and future United Anglers will be monitoring the creek, should the fish return in the future.

“Fish and Game says we’ll be lucky if we have one fish come back out of all these,” Stiles said, shaking her head. “We’re hoping for a lot more.”

While donning wading boots with Gold, Koyl and Heather Freebody in preparation for a creek cleanup the other day, Stiles explained her interest in such a project.

“This is kind of a personal motivation for me,” she said. “It’s for self-respect, I guess, just knowing I make a difference and that I can help make this come true, even though people may doubt our abilities. We have the motivation and the focus to get it done.”

Similar motivation extends through the group, which has earned several conservation and environmental awards over the years.

The efforts of the students, trying to halt the flow of litter into the creek, speaking at various functions, applying for grants and participating in fund-raisers such as their annual spaghetti dinner, has also earned them support in this community of about 50,000.

“They’re just super kids,” said Charlie Malnati, 73, who has lived alongside the creek for 45 years and provides access to the United Anglers. “I mean, that’s what the ballgame’s all about. I mean, if they don’t take care of something like this, what’s the next generation going to have?”

Skeptical though he may be, even Cox had high praise for the United Anglers of Casa Grande.

“The kids have sparked an interest in community that is incredible, and for me that is the greatest benefit,” he said. “The awareness in the community is a tremendous benefit. It extends way beyond Adobe Creek to all the streams in Petaluma and even beyond Petaluma.”

So impressed were Peter and Connie Pfendler, affluent ranchers in the hills above town, that they donated $180,000 toward the completion of the hatchery just when it seemed the plans would have to be put on hold.

“Peter and Connie live up on the mountain and they’ve been following our project in the local papers,” Furrer said. “They saw the struggle the kids were going through. We had just come out of the creek. Litter just kept coming at us from all angles; every time we went down there (people) just kept pouring in more and more litter.

“We were in the recession and money donations had stopped coming in. We were at an all-time low, and Peter came down one day and told the kids he was rewarding them for changing people’s lives, changing people’s attitudes.”

The hatchery went up and the young salmon are evidence of the United Anglers’ abilities. They eagerly await the arrival of steelhead this spring. If the creek is too small and its habitat inadequate for full-scale salmon runs, as Cox says, it probably can accommodate steelhead, and Siri says it is hoped the hatchery can help “reinforce wild stocks” of the smaller fish.

The United Anglers have already shown they can raise steelhead too. In 1986, using an abandoned, dilapidated campus greenhouse converted to a makeshift hatchery, at a cost of $7,000, they raised about 2,000 fish. They were released into Adobe Creek in 1987 and two years later, a new generation of United Anglers lined the creek and cheered as 21 of the fish returned to spawn.

Furrer said he envisions strong runs of both salmon and steelhead five years down the line.

Said Gold, “We’re at least doing something positive for our environment. There’s so much negativity going on. We are a part of something good and that feels good.”