TU California: Newspaper Article Archive 2

Aid for the Steelhead! It's up the Creek
A fish ladder under I-5 in Orange County will help the rare trout swim upstream to spawn.
By Sara Lin
Los Angeles Times
November 18, 2005

Stepping up efforts to help endangered steelhead trout make a comeback in Southern California, a state wildlife agency on Thursday agreed to pay for a $l.2-million fish ladder in Orange County that will enable the trout to swim upstream and spawn.

The ladder will help fish migrating from the ocean to swim through a concrete culvert under Interstate 5 on Trabuco Creek in San Juan Capistrano. Currently, fish swimming upstream can go only as far as a large pool at the bottom of the culvert. Get full article in PDF

Genetic tests to confirm steelhead presence
Once ID is made, NOAA will consider whether to seek Trabuco Creek change.
by PAT BRENNAN
The Orange County Register
December 24, 2003

A decision on whether to rebuild a portion of Trabuco Creek to accommodate spawning steelhead trout will have to wait for one more critical piece of information: final genetic confirmation that they are truly wild steelhead.

State biologists said in a lstter last month that endangered steelhead were found last year and this summer in a stretch of the creek near the San Diego (I-5) Freeway. A biologist witht he state Department of Fish and Game said Tuesday that experts at ther agency were confident of the identification, but that genetic tests are required before further action can be taken. "We're pretty sure that they're steelhead," said senior fisheries biologist Mary Larson.

In the Nov. 25 letter, Fish and Game officials said a culvert in the creek is blocking the steelhead from swimming farther upstream, to a better habitat in Cleveland National Forest.

State Department of Transportation officials were checking to determine whethere they or Orange County owne the culvert. but Calans spokeswoman Pam Gorniak said if the culvert is theirs, the agency is open to mdifying it.

Once the fish's identity is confirmed, probably in four to six months, the National marine Fisheries Service, also knon as NOAA fisheries, will consider whether to ask for modification of the culvert that is blocking their migration, said supervisorty fishery Manager Craig Wingert.

But Wingert says he first wants to make sure there are no other barriers fort the fish on the stretch of creek between the culvert and Cleveland Forest.

Steelhead were thought to have disappeared from the Califronia coast south of Malibu until 1999, when they were discovered in San Mateo Creek, just south of Orange County. The latest find would be the first known appearance of steelhead in Orange County in recent times.

The portion of creek where they were found will remain open for now to fishing, but Larson had a plea for sport-fishing enthusiasts: If they catch anything that looks like a rainbow trout, release them back to the water. A unknown biological trigger causes some rainbow trout to take on a silvery, bullet-like appearance and head for the ocean, becoming steelhead.

Endangered Steelhead Trout Likely Making a Comeback in O.C. Stream
By Dan Weikel
Los Angeles Times
December 24, 2003

If confirmed, sightings mark a first since the 1960s. Home and road plans could be affected.

For the first time in decades, fish that appear to be endangered steelhead trout are being sighted in Trabuco Creek, state officials said Tuesday.

Environmentalists and biologists say the finds are significant and raise hopes that the species — once plentiful in local watersheds but virtually absent since the 1960s — will make a comeback. Until now, local sightings of the trout have been confirmed only along San Mateo Creek, just south of the county line, where more than 40 steelhead were reported in 1998.

It's unclear whether the discoveries would affect the proposed Foothill South toll road or the planned construction of 14,000 homes by Rancho Mission Viejo in south Orange County.

Two biologists from the state Department of Fish and Game have spotted what were believed to be steelhead three times in Trabuco Creek at the outlet of a massive concrete culvert below Interstate 5 in San Juan Capistrano.

The first sighting came in September 2002 when Mary Larson, a senior fisheries biologist, saw several fish, estimated at 10 to 14 inches long. In May and June of this year, Larson and a colleague spotted three fish longer than 10 inches.

They notified federal officials in late November.

"This is a significant find, in large part because people have not seen steelhead in a long, long time," Larson said. "We're excited about it. We believe we can do some kind of recovery project in the county."

Already, Trout Unlimited of California, a national conservation group with nearly 9,600 members, is working with Fish and Game officials to restore and preserve steelhead trout habitat in Orange County. They have been concentrating on San Mateo Creek, which runs 18 miles from the Cleveland National Forest to Trestles Beach, part of San Onofre State Beach, south of San Clemente.

"As we find more fish and document them, we could turn our attention toward Trabuco Creek," said George Sutherland, who coordinates the steelhead restoration project for the South Coast Chapter of Trout Unlimited.

Larson said she is almost certain that the Trabuco sightings were steelhead because of where they were found, their size, and indications that they were not bred in a hatchery.
Genetic tests to make a confirmation will be performed on samples taken from one fish caught by an angler during Larson's May visit.

Fishing for steelhead trout is not permitted, but in this case the angler's catch proved to have scientific value.

Steelhead look like rainbow trout but are genetically coded to adapt to both fresh and saltwater habitats. They spawn in rivers or creeks, and the young eventually make their way to the sea, where the fish turn a silvery hue.

In 2002, the federal government extended endangered status to steelhead found from Malibu to the Mexican border. Such status mandates that steps be taken to protect the threatened species and its habitat.

Environmental groups, such as the Sierra Club and Friends of the Foothills, contend that confirmation of steelhead trout could affect housing projects proposed for south Orange County and plans by the Transportation Corridor Agencies to build the Foothill South tollway, the final leg of the county's toll road network.

The groups say the Trabuco Creek finds are an indication that steelhead also may exist in San Juan Creek, to the south, which crosses Rancho Mission Viejo land and the proposed path of the Foothill South extension.

Steelhead must swim up San Juan Creek to reach Trabuco Creek, which forks to the north and east. Historians also say San Juan Creek was once an abundant source of steelhead for Indians and other fishermen in the first half of the last century.

"With more trout being found, it raises the question of whether the toll road and new development should occur in the habitat of an endangered species," said Mike Hazzard, an environmental activist in south Orange County.

Fish and Game officials are urging Caltrans to rebuild the concrete culvert upstream from the site where the fish were found, to allow them to swim upstream and spawn.
The structure now is a barrier to the fish.

Larson said, however, that department surveys of the portions of San Juan Creek beyond where it joins Trabuco Creek have not found any steelhead trout because it doesn't appear to be suitable habitat.

A long stretch of San Juan Creek through Rancho Mission Viejo land has yet to be studied by the department. But Diane Gaynor, a spokeswoman for Rancho Mission Viejo, said county, state and federal environmental reviews have not found any evidence of steelhead trout on San Juan Creek on company property.

Clare Climaco, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Corridor Agencies, said the Trabuco Creek site is well west the Foothill South project area and should not affect environmental planning for the project.

Even if steelhead trout are found in the path of the proposed toll road and subdivisions, Larson said, the projects wouldn't necessarily be halted, so long as steps are taken to protect the species."

We can have development and protect endangered species," Larson said. "They are not mutually exclusive."

More rare fish found near toll-road route
Steelhead could be breeding and need protection, scientists say - a possible snag for Foothill South road plans
May 8, 1999
Byline: PAT BRENNAN
The Orange County Register

Steelhead trout thought to have vanished from this watershed decades ago appear to be breeding in sufficient numbers to warrant federal protection, state biologists tracking the fish populations say.

And if they're right, protecting the fish could further complicate construction of the proposed Foothill South toll road through San Onofre State Park.

One biologist has found 21 juvenile fish in pools along the watershed that he believes are Southern California steelhead - endangered fish that spend their adulthood in the ocean but spawn in freshwater streams.

"I feel they should be protected," said Alex Vejar, a state Dept of Fish and Game biologist who has taken several trips up the creek in search of steelhead since February, when a San Clemente man caught one and reported it to his college professor.

Proof that the San Mateo fish are indeed steelhead trout could require protective measures from the builders of the proposed toll road - already under fire from biologists and activists because the road could disrupt the habitat of at least nine other endangered or threatened species in the San Mateo watershed.

But when - or even if - such proof will come is a matter of uncertainty. And federal decisions to protect endangered species can take years to complete.

Unlike other endangered species, steelhead are protected only when the young achieve the steelhead form - an ocean-going version of the fish. Some stream-bound juveniles are believed to make this transformation when they receive certain environmental cues that prompt them to seek out the ocean.

Other juveniles remain in the streams all their lives. These are called rainbow trout; they do not have endangered-species status.

Among state and federal regulators, opinions vary on how worthy of protection the San Mateo fish would be.

"We're just not sure if these fish are steelhead," said Craig Wingert, a fisheries biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service - the federal agency that would determine whether to protect the San Mateo fish.

Even if they turn out to be steelhead, Wingert said, they would have to meet two other criteria before his agency becomes involved: They would have to be a sustained population that breeds in the stream year after year, and they would have to be placed in jeopardy by human activity.

"We want to be careful about how we weigh into it because there are consequences from these listings," Wingert said.

Still, confidence is growing among state biologists that the San Mateo fish represent the real thing.

Vejar said the fish found so far, although all juveniles, show characteristics similar to young steelhead on California's central coast.

And Dennis McEwen, a Fish and Game steelhead trout specialist in Sacramento, said the mere presence of rainbow trout in the San Mateo watershed should be enough to warrant protection.

"Any one of those fish has the capability of going to the ocean and coming back as a steelhead," McEwen said.

McEwen and Vejar suspect that three especially wet years in a row in Southern California, including last year's El Nino, allowed ocean-going steelhead to swim up the San Mateo watershed and breed.

Anecdotal reports of steelhead in the creek in the 1970s and '80s have been known to biologists and fishermen, experts say, but the last scientifically confirmed sighting was in the 1950s.

Steelhead are listed as endangered by the federal government, but it is uncertain whether that protection would extend to fish in the San Mateo watershed. When the listing was made, only fish in Malibu Creek in Los Angeles County, and northward, were known.

McEwen has spent the past seven years trying to ensure the survival of protected steelhead populations in Malibu Creek, in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers and a few other places where they spawn along the California coast. He believes the San Mateo group is critical to survival of the species.

The key tests will come in the weeks ahead, when geneticists will try to determine the kinship of the San Mateo Creek fish.

Using bits of tail fin clipped from fish caught and released by Vejar, they will seek genetic markers linking them to Southern steelhead.

Another test will examine the ear bones of a fish that Vejar took from the stream. Ear bones of young fish born from ocean-going mothers show distinctive chemical traces.

If the San Mateo fish prove to be steelhead, environmental activists stand ready to apply whatever pressure they can to gain their protection - and, if possible, further frustrate the plans of toll road builders.

The Endangered Habitats League and the Sierra Club say they will petition the government to protect the San Mateo Creek population if necessary. Both groups are already urging the National Marine Fisheries Service to declare San Mateo Creek as critical habitat for the fish; the service is considering declaring critical habitat for other, known populations of steelhead in Malibu Creek and northward.

"We'll do what it takes to get the protection that these fish obviously need," said Bill Corcoran, public lands conservation coordinator for the Angeles chapter of the Sierra Club.

Toll-road builders say they will try to avoid harming the fish's habitat if federal officials decide it requires protection. The Foothill South would be built on tall columns along one side of San Mateo Creek, and would also cut through a state park and a part of the San Mateo wilderness.

But the Transportation Corridor Agencies believe the toll road is critical to the future of southern Orange County to relieve congestion on the San Diego (I-5) Freeway, projected to increase by 64 percent by 2025.

"As always, the first thing we do is try to avoid any habitat of endangered species, and second, to minimize any impacts," spokeswoman Lisa Telles said.

Fish find has experts hoping
If trout here are steelhead, they could make big waves
by Terry Rodgers
San Diego Union-Tribune
March 10, 1999

Nature is a blend of serendipity and science, where the randomness of raindrops mixes with the magical certainty of causes and effects. How else to explain the unexpected reappearance this winter of coastal rainbow trout in San Mateo Creek, where federal biologists had believed it to be extinct?

While genetic tests must still be performed, biologists are all but certain that the trout found in San Diego County are southern steelhead, among the "rarest fish in the United States."

They believe they may be the offspring of ocean-going steelhead that entered the mouth of the creek in the 1997-98 EI Niño winter after being drawn there by heavier than normal flows of fresh water from the Creek into the ocean.

Steelhead were last found in the creek more than 40 years ago. Scientists estimate that the historic population of southern steelhead -- native rainbow trout existing south of San Luis Obispo-- has been reduced by 99 percent, from 55,000 to fewer than 500.

In August 1997, the National Marine Fisheries Service listed several dwindling populations of steelhead as endangeredspecies, and pronounced steelhead to be extinct south of the Santa Monica Mouns. Federal officials drew the line of extinction at Malibu Creek in northern Los AngelesCounty.

If the line has moved south to San Diego County, the endangered fish could become a slippery problem for adjacent landowners, including the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base, which the seasonal San Mateo Creek crosses, and the developers of a planned Orange County toll road.

Beginning in 1995, federal biologists repeatedly searched San Mateo Creek for steelhead, but were skunked. The demise of native trout in the creek running through the dry, prickly sage scrub of Camp Pendelton seemed certain.

The middle portion of San Mated Creek, about eight miles long, was as dry as a sandbox between 1946 and 1967. Still, the spawning habitat in the headwaters remained suitable for trout, even though it is plagued by non-native predators.

Before this winter, the last docuinented occurrence of steelhead in San Mateo Creek was in the mid-1950s when a state game warden caught several on a trout lure, said Allen Greenwood, co-founder of

San Diego Trout, a small conservation group.

"I'm totally amazed about these fish coming back," said Greenwood, who has spent the past several years documenting San Diego County's native trout. "I've been looking for steelhead here a long time, but you have to be at the right place at the right time."

The person in that unique position is a 20-year-oldcollege student from San Clemente who wanted to disprove a family fable.

Toby Shackelford said he was drawn to the creek in early February after being intrigued by his mother's stories about arm-long trout allegedly caught there by Toby's grandfather in the 1940s. "I didn't believe it," Shackelford recalled. "My mother, she tends to I make up stories now and again."

Exploring the western end of the creek with his dog, Shackelford dropped a fishing line into a shallow pool no longer than a pickup truck. The single hook was baited with his all-time, sure-fire, can't-miss fish food: Kraft cheddar cheese.

Within moments, there was a nibble. Then a bite. As he swung the flip-flopping creature ashore, Shackelford, who'd spent his childhood near Seattle, was awe-struck by the sight of the 10-inch rainbow trout at his feet. "I was amazed I caught it," he remembered. "I was excited."

Standing on the creek bank less than 300 yards east of Interstate 5, he released the fish with trembling hands.

"I knew it was a steelhead," he said. "You could tell. I've seen one before. It had a pretty big belly underneath."

Shackelford told his fish story the next day, Feb. 11, to Lee Waian, a professor of environmental science at Saddleback Community College. Waian realized the signicance of the silvery creature and immediately informed a state biologistin San Diego.

A few days later, Shackelford led an expedition of scientists and trout experts back to the spot where he'd landed the fish. But all that was found were seven non-native species, including large-mouth bass, carp, blue gill and bottom-feeding bullhead. The trout seekers were deflated.

"I think some of them were starting to doubt me," Shackelford recalled. But one key member of the expedition, state biologist Alex Vejar, beIlieved that Shackelford had not mistaken one of the warm-water intruders for a native trout.

Reasoning that skittish native trout might be holding in the less accessible, quiet waters upstream, Vejar obtained permission from Camp Pendleton officials to search San Mateo Creek along the boundary between the Marine base and a wilderness preserve in the Cleveland National Forest.

Vejar, who was accompanied by Warren Wong, a scientific aide, spotted what appeared to be a few trout in a riffle upstream from a stream-flow gauging station. Using a battery-powered shocker, Vejar was able to stun one of the trout, which was about 6 inches long. He measured it, clipped off a piece of the dorsal fin for genetic testing and released it. Continuing upstream, he zapped another rainbow trout, this one about 7 inches long.

Vejar is confident that the rainbow trout he found, as well as a few others that scattered out of sight, are the offspring of expeditionary . steelhead that entered the mouth of San Mateo Creek during the 1997-98 El Nino winter and raced upstream to spawn.

Free-ranging southern steelhead, Iknown as strays, have been known to repopulate streams where native rainbows had been extirpated. Like bloodhounds, the strays wander the offshore ocean and follow the scent of fresh water discharged during heavy storms.

The steelhead's remarkable survival skills have generated a cult following among ardent anglers and inspired prose from Zane Grey to Ernest Hemingway.

While all steelhead are the same species - rainbow trout - southern steelhead are genetically distinct from their cold-water brethren. Scientists believe that southern steelhead are older on the evolutionary chain than the same fish which are more numerous in the Paci:ficNorthwest.

Southern steelhead are able to survive extremes of warm water, drought and fire.

"People associate steelhead with old-growth redwood forests," said Dennis McEwan, a state biologist and author of California's steelhead recovery plan. "They don't expect to see them in streams next to yucca bushes."

Like salmon, steelhead are hatched in fresh water but spend their adult life at sea. Unlike salmon, steelhead don't necessarily die after spawning.

McEwan agrees that the discovery of juvenile trout in San Mateo Creek, which lies 100 miles below the boundary drawn by the federal government as the species' southernmost range, is a remarkable display of the fish's persistence. "That there's natural reproduction of rainbow trout occurring in San Mateo Creek - that's huge," said McEwan. "That's a tremendous find."

Despite their obvious scientific value, the highly prized San Mateo Creek trout are not protected by the federal government's endangered species listing of almost two year ago. The fish. are protected from Malibu Creek north, but not south of there, because federal scientists had found no evidence of breeding populations.

To ensure the survival of the young steelhead, efforts should be made soon to remove non-native fish in the creek's headwaters in the national forest, said Slader Buck, a Camp Pendleton biologist.

Confirmation of the existence of the rainbow trout in San Mateo Creek could have far-reaching ramifications.

Scientists and conservation groups have already appealed to the National Marine Fisheries Service to extend federal protection and its boundary of critical steelhead habitat to the U.S.-Mexican border.

The presence of the endangered fish could affect the alignment of the $645 million FoothiIl South toll road proposed in Orange County to link Oso Parkway with Interstate 5 in San Clemente.

Camp Pendleton, which pumps ground water from the aquifer underlying San Mateo Creek, would have to ensure that water extractions would not further degrade the stream.

The presence of the celebrity species could also spur efforts by conservationists to restore the habitat along the creek.

"If nothing else, it may hopefully allow enough mitigation money to pay for the habitat improvements that we've been looking for the past eight years," said George Sutherland of San Clemente, a vice president of Trout Unlimited.

Paul Barrett, a fish expert with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service in San Diego, said he would wait for the results of genetic tests before getting too excited.

Jim Edmondson of Cal Trout, a statewide conservation group, said the discovery of what appear to be steelhead in San Diego County underscores his frustration with the federal officials who are charged with protecting the species.

"What this means is that we know far too little, and we're doing far too little," said Edmondson. "There are so many things we could be doing for this fish that are positive, but we're not doing them."