Habitat restoration will benefit trout and salmon

 
JOHN BURGESS/THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Mike Brunson, winemaker and vide president at Michel Schlumberger Wine Estate, next to a pool created on a section of Wine Creek running through the Dry Creek property.

Mike Brunson is an avid trout and salmon fisherman whose duties as winemaker and vineyard manager at Michel-Schlumberger Wine Estate have put him on the front lines of river restoration.

Five years ago, the Dry Creek Valley winery partnered with the conservation group Trout Unlimited and the California Department of Fish and Game to restore steelhead trout and salmon habitat on a half-mile stretch of Wine Creek, which flows through the property into nearby Dry Creek.

Using a $50,000 grant, Brunson and others took what had been an artificially straightened waterway and added pools to help slow the water, providing places for fish to rest, and placed native vegetation along the banks, providing shady areas to cool the stream.

The work has paid off for both farm and fish, the winemaker said.

The creek banks are less susceptible to erosion, preserving vineyard space, and so far this year Brunson said he has seen several adult steelhead moving up the stream to spawn, a change from years before when he did not see any fish.

“The water just used to shoot through here,” he said Thursday, looking over one of the shady resting pools. “Now, we have somewhere to look for fish, sort of like checkpoints.”

The effort is an attempt to pull the Russian River's endangered coho salmon and threatened steelhead back from the brink of extinction, wildlife supporters said.

Last year, hatcheries at Lake Sonoma and Lake Mendocino reported a near-record low of adult steelhead — fewer than 900 — returning to spawn. The river's coho salmon are even more rare.

Water diversions, groundwater pumping, dams, pollution and poor ocean conditions are all to blame for the decline, studies show.

Thursday, officials at the Don Clausen Fish Hatchery below Lake Sonoma showed off their work to boost fish numbers through artificial breeding and a newly restored, publicly accessible 100-yard-long spawning channel.

A growing number of landowners throughout the Russian River watershed have joined the same restoration campaign, seeking out unlikely allies in conservation groups and wildlife agencies in a bid to restore streams for fish.

During the past five years, the state and various resource groups including Trout Unlimited have partnered with Quivira Vineyards, Preston Vineyards and Michel-Schlumberger, among others, to restore more than a mile of Russian River tributaries in Dry Creek Valley.

The projects build on established initiatives such as the Napa-based Fish Friendly Farming program, which recognizes landowners who use non-polluting, water-conserving farming methods that can improve fish habitat.

Quivira Vineyards was already enrolled in the Fish Friendly Farming program about six years ago when its then-owners, Henry and Holly Wendt, launched a project with Fish and Game and Trout Unlimited that restored nearly a half mile of Wine Creek.

Since then, Quivira employees regularly spot spawning fish, said Ned Horton, an assistant winegrower.

Momentum for other projects seems to be growing by word of mouth, Horton added.

Quivira's current owner, Pete Kight,cq is looking at another project which will re-create pool habitat and historic floodplain just upstream of where Wine Creek meets Dry Creek.

“You don't really have to do that much to get fish to come back,” Horton said.

Kent MacIntosh, a Trout Unlimited representative and North Coast fishing guide who followed along with a Fish and Game-organized tour of the restoration projects Thursday, said his pitch to interested landowners uses a similar line.

“If you build it, they will come,” MacIntosh said of the fish.