Endangered salmon returned to California’s far north — then the money dried up

Two years ago, Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled a strategy to save declining salmon — spotlighting a historic partnership with the Winnemem Wintu Tribe to reintroduce endangered winter-run Chinook to the vital, cold waters upstream of Lake Shasta in far northern California.

Now, tribe officials say the state is ending its support, potentially causing salmon restoration efforts on the McCloud River to die mid-stream. The tribe is now grappling with the sudden loss of jobs, along with the dimming of hope that the culturally sacred fish will be restored to their ancestral waters.

“It makes me feel betrayed. It makes the tribe feel betrayed,” said Gary Mulcahy, government liaison for the tribe. “It’s like they just gave up.”

State officials say the one-time funds were tied to the state’s drought response and have now been used up.

“The pilot was designed to take urgent action during severe drought conditions while testing key tools and approaches needed for potential long-term reintroduction,” California Department of Fish and Wildlife spokesperson Stephen Gonzalez said in an email.

Racing against warm water

Federal scientists call the Sacramento River’s winter-run Chinook salmon “one of the most at-risk endangered species.”

Cut off from historic higher elevation cold-water spawning grounds by the Shasta and Keswick dams, the fish have been stranded for decades in the Sacramento River — where warm water routinely cooks their eggs. Keeping that water cold enough for salmon puts limits on how much water federal managers can deliver from Lake Shasta — a vital irrigation supply for Central Valley farmers.

“We are forcing the fish to be in places where they never were historically,” said Carson Jeffres, a senior researcher at the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences. “When we have all those eggs in one basket, you are one really warm event from losing that cohort of fish.”

The drought years of the early 2020s decimated the eggs, which prompted emergency action even before Newsom announced his salmon plan. “It was our wake-up call,” Jeffres said.

In 2022, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife joined with the Winnemem Wintu Tribe and federal fisheries agencies to relocate endangered salmon eggs from the hatchery below Lake Shasta to the cold, spring-fed McCloud River upstream.

For the first time in more than 80 years, the fish swam in their ancestral river, where they had once been abundant.

State and federal agencies finalized the partnership the next year, naming the Winnemem Wintu Tribe as a “co-equal decision-maker” in agreements to work on restoring salmon to the McCloud River.

“The goal is ecological and cultural restoration, which will one day renew fishing opportunities for the tribe that depended on the once-plentiful salmon for food and much more,” the California Department of Fish and Wildlife said in the press release three years ago.

Newsom touted the effort in his 2024 salmon strategy, which featured a smiling photograph of Winnemem Wintu Chief and spiritual leader Caleen Sisk next to Chuck Bonham, then-director of the Department of Fish and Wildlife. They stood in front of the McCloud River.

“Partnerships with Tribal Nations,” the strategy said, “can propel our mission forward.”

Funding ends as fish return

The McCloud’s salmon, trucked around Lake Shasta to complete their ocean migration, have started to come back. Last year, a couple of two-year-old males returned to swim up the Sacramento River.

The eggs they fertilized hatched in incubation tanks on the banks of the McCloud, according to Rebekah Olstad, project manager for the Winnemem Wintu’s salmon restoration efforts.

But this year, the state, tribal and federal scientists involved have no plans to transport fertilized eggs above the dams, Olstad said. The tribe expects its state funding will be gone by the end of June, and is already laying off personnel from work tribal leaders hoped would help employ tribal members long term.

Olstad, who is not a tribal member, is also losing her job. She says that the tribe has received a little over $6 million for the McCloud projects since 2023, with the grant set to end this year.

“The tribe was aware that the current grant contract would end,” Olstad said. “However, under the co-management framework, the tribe has been expecting that there would be partnership to secure the next round of funding… so that there would be capacity to actually continue the work.”

The grant also supported an ambitious effort to bring the wild descendants of McCloud salmon back to California from New Zealand. Exported more than a century ago, the Winnemem Wintu Tribe hopes these salmon will revive the genetic diversity of the few remaining endangered salmon in the Sacramento River. But this work, too, Sisk said, risks grinding to a halt.

“We’re down to bare-bones staff,” Sisk said. “It pretty much shuts down all of our efforts.”

Science — and trust — interrupted

Sisk and Mulcahy said they communicated their concerns to California Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot and to Bonham. Both, Sisk said, indicated that they would try to find additional funding.

Tribal leaders also met with current Fish and Wildlife Director Meghan Hertel, Sisk said.

“They all say it’s an important program,” Sisk said. “If it’s good, then where’s the funding?”

Gonzalez, the department spokesperson, emphasized that the program was a pilot. “While this initial phase of on-the-ground pilot work is ending, it has successfully established the scientific, operational and partnership foundation needed to inform next steps,” he said.

Jeffres, the UC Davis scientist, has been studying conditions and monitoring salmon in the McCloud under a separate state grant – one he said has also recently ended.

Even if the state awards more funding for the tribe’s restoration efforts, he said, interruptions to science damage trust and relationships — creating setbacks and inertia that are difficult to recover from. Jeffres said it’s difficult to see the rug pulled out from under the Winnemem Wintu Tribe once again.

“I would give up any of our research funding to have the program continue with the tribe,” Jeffres said. “I’m looking under every couch cushion.”

Mulcahy said seeing the state’s funding end has been especially hard after the Newsom administration’s announcement of $10 million for salmon projects three months ago.

“We were told (the department) was a co-manager — and then all of a sudden, boom. I mean, there’s nothing there,” Mulcahy said.

The Governor’s Office and Natural Resources Agency did not immediately respond to CalMatters’ requests for comment.

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This story was originally published by CalMatters and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.