How would you manage the Russian River for sustainable water supplies and restored fisheries with no water taken from the Eel River? By: David Keller, Bay Area Director, Friends of the Eel River. Originally published in The Eel River Reporter 2013 The people and agencies who manage the Russian River have been using water diverted … Read more
For the fifth time, a federal judge has called for an overhaul of Columbia and Snake River dam operations to preserve salmon and steelhead. In his ruling, he urged renewed consideration of Lower Snake River dam removal. A federal judge has called for a new approach to Columbia and Snake River dam operations to preserve … Read more
In July, roughly 1,000 rural Sonoma County residents overflowed classrooms and small meeting chambers at five informational sessions convened by the State Water Resources Control Board. It would be hard to exaggerate many attendees’ outrage. At one meeting, two men got in a fistfight over whether to be “respectful” to the state and federal officials … Read more
Friday, December 12, 2014 Dear Friends of the Eel River, It never rains but it pours. Here on the rainforest coast, the old saw often invokes less the classic series of unfortunate events than the fact that crisis and opportunity sometimes come, like our rain, by the bucket. After three long years of the most … Read more
By: Scott Greacen Originally published by Econews, June 2014 Serial Variance Requests Reveal Vulnerability of Eel River Fisheries to Demands from Russian River Irrigators The Eel River’s surviving salmonids—chinook, coho, and steelhead—are struggling to come back from near-extinction. Good returns from 2010 to 13, particularly for chinook, felt like recovery might be getting underway. Unfortunately, … Read more
Sustaining our ecosystem is like paddling a canoe, Strange, a former river guide, pointed out. “You have to know what happened upstream and where the rapids are, and you have to paddle together, stay balanced, and respect the river.” “Nothing is more scary and sensitive to landowners than questions about their water use,” said Stolzman. … Read more
Summer is coming. Coho salmon that spawn in the South Fork of the Eel River—a population that may still number only several thousand fish in a good year—are the critical anchor, state and federal experts say, for the survival and recovery of the species in streams south of the Oregon border. No other watershed in … Read more