Southern California Steelhead once thrived in the watersheds of San Diego and southern Riverside counties. Until about the 1940s, our local streams and rivers supported runs of tens of thousands of these magnificent fish each year. Today, we find the remaining populations on the verge of extinction. The most recent surveys of our local watersheds have located only two small remaining populations in San Diego and southern Riverside counties. Only two! In our opinion, we need to establish new populations, in new refugia, spread geographically throughout our watersheds, in order to mitigate the growing threat of wildfire and the mudflows that follow. The wildfires and mudflows that decimate the stream beds, force emergency evacuations that necessite quick action and the heroic efforts led by the CDFW that we have witnessed at Coldwater Canyon Creek and now Trabuco Creek. While we continue to eliminate the invasive species populations and man made barriers that have created the population decline in the first place.

This is where we believe that Wild, Natural Conservation Hatcheries have an important role to play.

In 1996, The California Department of Fish and Game (CDFG), created the Steelhead Restoration and Management Plan For California.

In 1998, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife created its California Salmonid Stream Habitat and Restoration Manual. In Appendix B of the manual, CDFW states, in the section titled Rescue Rearing:

"Annually, Department personnel rescue fish stranded in inhospitable conditions due to poor water quality or lack of flow. The fish are collected and then relocated to suitable waters. Occasionally, it is preferable to place rescued fish in rearing facilities where the fish are grown to a larger size and released to the wild at the time of year most likely to result in their survival. Rearing facilities for rescued fish may be used to ensure the survival of a run of fish, to reintroduce fish to suitable streams, or where natural rearing conditions have temporarily been too severely degraded to maintain wild populations."

In 2005, the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service (USNMFS), extended protection under the Endangered Species Act to certain “hatchery fish programs which preserve the genetic legacy of the listed species and are managed as refugia populations.”

In 2012, The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), created the Southern California Steelhead Recovery Plan.

“The goal of this Recovery Plan is to prevent the extinction of Southern California Steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss) in the wild and to ensure the long-term persistance of viable, self-sustaining populations of steelhead across southern California”.

As an important part of their plan, NMFS suggested Conservation Hatcheries as one potential recovery strategy.

In 2018, CalTrout created the Coalition Based Steelhead Recovery Project.

The goals of the project are to Connect established steelhead populations to the ocean, and to Create more unconnected native rainbow trout populations for risk mitigation/diversity purposes.

In 2024, CalTrout created the Native Rainbow Trout Sub-Population Expansion Project Plan.

In their plan description, they state, referring to the recovery effort after the Holy Fire that burned the Coldwater Canyon watershed, “Most of the trout survived the intense fire and were relocated to a regional hatchery for short-term safety. However, a long term plan for relocating these rare and special native trout as they face a similar situation needs to be developed. There are only a handfull of places that have the needed characteristics”.

Also that “There are new methods by which managed breeding of these highly valuable populations can be performed largely in the wild to avoid hatchery effects”.

We believe the time has come to begin creating these wild conservation hatcheries for our steelhead in southern California.

We also believe that a great way to create them, especially in a time of very limited funding available from our federal government, is to engage the private sector in order to lend a hand.

The SoCal Conservancy is focused on discovering whether or not we can support the efforts of all by creating, then facilitating, partnerships with private sector landowners. Partnerships that would provide ground-truthed, GIS-analyzed locations for carefully managed wild conservation hatcheries in southern California. As long-time advocates for and avid fly fishermen of our wild, native rainbow and steelhead trout, we have spent lifetimes studying these amazing creatures and the waters they inhabit. We have learned a little and are confident that, with the support of all mentioned above, we are capable of creating and managing these wild hatcheries. Continuously inspired by the vision and leadership of CalTrout, the efforts of all members of the South Coast Steelhead Coalition, alongside our governmental agency employees, we thank them and look forward to working closely together as we move forward on behalf of our wild, native steelhead.

Lastly, we would like to note here that, according to the CDFW Manual and Guidelines referred to above, every Wild Conservation Hatchery that we may be able to create will first need to be approved and then overseen by our local CDFW Regional Manager, as well as our local Fish and Game Biologist and/or Warden. We also look forward to collaborating with USFWS and CDFW project managers and biologists should we be accepted into their Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program in Southern California.

Thank you,

Your friends at So Cal Conservancy