Resilient coho are MacGyvering their way through the drought
When Rachael Ryan went to the Lagunitas Creek watershed in Marin County in the summer of 2021, she felt dejected. The river basin, roughly an hour north of San Francisco, shelters one of the largest and most stable remaining wild populations of endangered coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) along the Central California coast. But after another year with too little rain “there were all these fish trapped in tributaries and pools that were drying up,” Ryan recalls. “It was sad to watch in real time how drought impacted these fish.”