Meeting Trout Halfway
The southern steelhead trout can be one tough fish. Pushed from its part-time home -- the streams of Southern California -- by pollution, flood-control measures and nonnative wildlife, the southern steelhead was pronounced an endangered species in 1998. Since then, it’s shown up in a couple of unexpected places, which should give new impetus to plans for restoring habitat, removing manufactured barriers and perhaps giving a more critical eye to intensive development plans in south Orange County.
Most recently, scientists are pretty sure they’ve found steelhead in Trabuco Creek for the first time in decades. Before this, the only local waterway where they’d been spotted was San Mateo Creek, just south of the county line. That stream runs only through public lands, has no artificial barriers and has been the site of a restoration project by Trout Unlimited, a conservation group that is trapping and removing bullfrogs and other invasive animals.
The Trabuco fish, on the other hand, look like hardy suburban dwellers. They were found just south of a concrete culvert, hard by Interstate 5 in San Juan Capistrano. The find encourages and delights biologists and environmentalists, reminding them of the three good-sized steelhead that three years ago swam up Mission Creek through downtown Santa Barbara, until they too were stopped by a concrete barrier. Two disappeared, perhaps heading back to the ocean. The third died.
Like salmon, steelhead live much of their lives in the ocean, but swim upstream to spawn in fresh water. Human meddling, though, has changed a lot about the “fresh” in Southern California’s water. Urban runoff, nonnative species such as the bullfrog, and manufactured “improvements” to the streams all hamper steelhead survival. Now the state Department of Fish and Game is examining Southern California streams to determine a baseline for what the region still has in the way of steelhead in order to encourage their return.
It will take a series of steps at local and state levels to make that happen. For starters, Caltrans can heed the request from Fish and Game to remove the concrete culvert that seems to have stopped the Trabuco fish and rebuild it upstream above their spawning grounds. Concerns about restoring steelhead populations in adjoining San Juan Creek should play a role in decisions about whether to build the Foothill South toll road and how much development to allow on Rancho Mission Viejo.
Learning from the Santa Barbara experience, both Caltrans and the Army Corps of Engineers should proactively examine the possibility of rebuilding other barriers in the region’s waterways in environmentally friendly ways. In Ventura County, officials have been looking at channeling water flow with strategically embedded stones, for example, rather than the traditional concrete channels.
The fish appear willing to return. But people will have to meet them halfway, by not barring or polluting their path upstream.
