Here’s why steelhead trout’s endangered status could pump life into Southern California rivers
When the state attached endangered species status to the iconic Southern California steelhead trout last week, it was like giving an aging Hollywood starlet new billing. But will the klieg lights bring attention, money and fame, or ready them for their final close-up?
Known simply as Southern California steelhead, they once teemed in the tens of thousands in streams and rivers from Santa Barbara to the Mexican border. But after rivers were mummified in concrete, dams were erected and habitat turned into roads and housing tracts, their numbers dwindled, with a recent survey verifying only 177 in existence.
Nonetheless, from the biologists at the California Fish and Game Commission who granted the status under the California Endangered Species Act, and the folks at California Trout who successfully petitioned for it, to historians, tribal leaders and fish lovers in general, the recognition brings a chance for a happy ending to this fish story.
The fish originally was listed by the federal government as an endangered species since 1997. But CalTrout leaders in 2020 began the petition to the state after seeing little progress. “Now is the time to empower the state agencies to lead the way to make sure this species doesn’t go extinct,” said Russell Marlow, senior project manager in the South Coast region for California Trout.
Last year, Marlow saw a picture of a Southern steelhead swimming in the Santa Ynez River north of Santa Barbara and he doubled down on the state petition application. “I thought, is this the picture of the last fish observed?” he said last week. “We’ve seen only a handful returning to any of the major rivers in the past couple of years.”
Gut-punch moments like that one peppered the group’s petition that pushed the buttons of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to proclaim they will help this fish survive by putting money into stream restoration and dam-removal projects that block the fish from spawning and maturing by partnering with CalTrout, Caltrans and state parks.
“Fish on the brink of extinction need all of the protection it can get,” Marlow said. “We need to be doing things quicker, faster and on a larger scope.”
Marlow called the fish Oncorhynchus mykiss irideus, a landmark species that shaped the history and culture of Southern California.
“This fish has cultural significance, for the Chumash in Ventura and the Tongva in Los Angeles. It’s my reason we are pursuing this work,” he said.
His remarks recall a reaction from David Paul Dominguez, a member of the local Chumash tribe, who told KCRW radio last year that he was brought to tears when he saw a Southern steelhead swimming in Malibu Lagoon in 2014. “To see that prehistoric person, still alive, lived during prehistoric times, like ourselves … we call them relatives for a reason. Because we had the same injustice enforced upon us,” he said.
In Los Angeles County, the Gabrielino San Gabriel Band of Mission Indian’s Chief Red Blood Anthony Morales said without a doubt, ancestral survival depended in part on the Southern steelhead that swam plentifully in the San Gabriel and Rio Hondo rivers.
“Of course, at one time that fish and other natural resources were available to our people. Back in those days it would’ve been a major food source,” said Morales last week.
The steelhead is quite a unique fish.
They begin their life in rivers but don’t always stay there due to a combination of genetic and environmental factors that scientists don’t completely understand, noted Marlow.
When they’re born, they stay in fresh water and become rainbow trout. When they make their way downstream to the Pacific Ocean, they become Southern steelhead where they mature and double in size. They come back to the fresh waters to spawn. Unlike Chinook or other salmon species, the steelhead can make the journey three or four times.
“This is the most courageous and most creative fish that we have in California,” Marlow said.
Tim Brick, of Pasadena, who is executive director of Stewards of the Arroyo Seco, has been working to bring the fish back to the Arroyo Seco, a stream in Pasadena that feeds into the Los Angeles River.
As the story goes, the salmon-like species between 1850 and 1940 attracted fisherman from across the country to the San Gabriel, Los Angeles and Arroyo Seco rivers. These white settlers would bring back 200 steelhead trout on a single fishing trip, Brick said.
Today, there are fish in the upper reaches of the Arroyo Seco three miles north of the Hahamongna Watershed Park basin near JPL, between Pasadena, La Canada Flintridge and the Angeles National Forest, he said.
But the fish are rainbow trout, the immature cousins of steelhead. They number about 1,400, he said. Some were moved by state agencies from the West Fork of the San Gabriel River in the Angeles National Forest during the Bobcat fire in 2020, he said.
Since these trout cannot swim through the concrete channels south of the park, nor bypass the Devil’s Gate Dam, they remain in the freshwater, trapped, unable to reach the ocean.
“They are landlocked at this point,” Brick said on April 24. “They never become steelhead.”
Brick has a vision of these fish making it through the Devil’s Gate Dam, essentially being swept downstream by the next big flood event. Some have seen them underneath the 134 Freeway bridge in west Pasadena several years ago.
“The rainbow trout are like surfers. When the big flood comes they would ride the wave,” Brick said. He believes some rainbow trout have gotten through the dam but they would face difficulty in the concrete channels to the south.
Other potential projects include the removal of Brown Mountain Dam from the Arroyo Seco, which keeps the trout trapped in the Angeles National Forest, Brick said. That project is being studied but has not yet been authorized by the U.S. Forest Service, Brick said.
Also, down past Dodger Stadium, Los Angeles is working with nonprofit partners and the Wildlife Conservation Board to create a naturalized stretch of the LA River that would include sediment, rocks, insects and resting spots to enable the trout to go farther south and possibly reach the ocean, or for ocean-living steelhead to make their way north into the fresh waters to spawn, Brick said.
But the concrete-lined portions of the Arroyo Seco and LA River, as well as dams, prevent safe passage for the salmon-like fish. Today, rainbow trout trying to reach the ocean and become steelhead would get stuck in the flood control channel and die, he said.
On Trabuco Creek in San Juan Capistrano in south Orange County, CalTrout and its partners from state and county government are finishing designs and getting ready to begin construction on a fish-friendly adaptation of Trabuco Creek running under 10 lanes of the 5 Freeway, Marlow said. “It would be a fishway so fish can swim underneath the freeway,” Marlow said.
In the Santa Monica Mountains, three creeks have been historical population spots for Southern steelhead: Arroyo Sequit Creek (south of Leo Carrillo State Park on the Ventura/LA county border); Malibu Creek (south of Malibu Creek State Park) and Topanga Creek (west of Pacific Palisades).
A CalTrout project will restore 18 miles of aquatic habitat and re-connect the waterway from the Pacific Ocean to the interior of the Malibu Creek watershed, according to the CalTrout website.
Another project with Caltrans and the National Park Service includes restoration of Solstice Creek, a stream with year-round flows in the Santa Monica Mountains. This would involve refurbishing and building bridges, removing old dams and planting native vegetation.
By cleaning up local rivers and streams it reduces the risk of flooding. Also, it helps create a cleaner flow of local water that replenishes ground water aquifers, which are used by retail water agencies to supply drinking water, Marlow said.
“Our rivers are our future. If we are protecting this fish and doing restoration, we are also bolstering these critical ecosystems upon which we survive,” Marlow said.
What are the Southern steelhead’s chances of survival? That’s hard to say. But experts said they are able to survive in severe droughts and in warmer waters, both the result of climate change. The fish may teach humans about survival in a changing climate, Marlow said.
“As we take climate resiliency into our portfolio, it (steelhead) can gauge the effectiveness and efficiency of how we are doing,” he added. “They are one of the best indicators we have for total watershed health.”
Staff Writer Kristy Hutchings contributed to this report.