Will There Be a Salmon Season – Ever Again?
Excessive Water Diversions are Killing Salmon Runs
Spring Chinook salmon. Michael Bravo
California will not have a commercial salmon season in 2025 – the third such closure in as many years. The decision by the Pacific Fishery Management Council does authorize a few days of sport angling for Chinook salmon. But as Golden State Salmon Association executive director Scott Artis noted to the Associated Press, such a “token” allowance will hardly compensate for the massive economic loss the closure will inflict on the commercial and recreational fishing industries.
It is not hyperbolic to characterize the situation as apocalyptic for both the fish and the industries that have depended on them.
Moreover, the long-term trend remains grim. It is not hyperbolic to characterize the situation as apocalyptic for both the fish and the industries that have depended on them. California has supported robust runs of salmon since the retreat of the glaciers at the end of the last Ice Age. Over the past sixty years, however, the challenges salmon have faced have been extreme: water diversions, drought, the destruction of spawning habitat, pollution, and shifting marine conditions. Still, despite these impediments – and augmented by hatchery production – California’s salmon were able to maintain populations sufficient to support healthy fishing and processing industries until relatively recently.
But now, all of California’s salmon – including Coho and four distinct runs of Central Valley Chinook – are on the brink of extinction. The collapse may seem recent, but it is really the end point of decades of accumulating impacts from destructive water distribution and land use policies; collectively, they have made the physical survival of our salmon almost impossible.
Sacramento River fall-run Chinook – historically, the most important run to the commercial and sport fisheries, due to their relative abundance – have experienced steep and steady declines during the past five years. In an assessment of California’s salmon stocks prior to the announcement of the current fishing closure, the Pacific Fishery Management Council stated 2025’s fall-run Chinook population was even lower than 2024’s disastrously small run.
And the status of California’s other salmon populations is even worse. The endangered Sacramento River winter-run Chinook have recovered slightly from 2024’s catastrophic season, but the PFMC’s estimate of their 2025 numbers is about 4,500 – an appalling decline from 1969, when 117,000 winter-run salmon returned to their spawning grounds.
The Klamath/Trinity watershed – after the Sacramento/San Joaquin River system, California’s greatest salmon-producing engine, and a major contributor to Oregon’s salmon fishery – has also seen precipitous declines in fish.
State and federal fishery agencies estimate the Klamath’s 2025 fall-run ocean Chinook stocks at 82,672, down from 180,700 in the poor 2024 season and the lowest ocean abundance figure since modern assessments began in 1997. The Klamath’s spring-run Chinook have dwindled to about 2,000 returning adults, down from an historic average of about 100,000 spawners. The Shasta River, a major tributary of the Klamath, once supported about 10,000 returning Coho salmon. Now, fewer than 50 spawning Coho return each year. Overall, the Klamath/Trinity salmon population has fallen by about 90%.
By far the biggest factor in the salmon’s precipitous decline is the wholesale diversion of public trust water to corporate farms.
Urban development, clear-cut logging, and occasional over-harvesting have all played roles. But by far the biggest factor in the salmon’s precipitous decline is the wholesale diversion of public trust water to corporate farms. Roughly 33 million acre-feet of water are diverted annually from the rivers of the North State and the western slope of the Sierra. About 80% of that total is devoted to agriculture, much of it to luxury export crops such as almonds and pistachios.
Simply put, our salmon have been denied the single most important element requisite for their survival: cold, clean water. The flows that remain are too low and too warm to sustain spawning adults, their eggs, or the few fish that do hatch and manage to migrate seaward. The dams that impound the state’s rivers have also submerged hundreds of miles of prime spawning habitat. Further salmon mortality occurs at the gigantic state and federal pumps in the Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta, which transport water south to corporate farms, grinding up millions of fish of all age classes in the process.
Though our salmon are nominally protected by state and federal fish and wildlife codes, water project operational rules, and in some cases, the U.S. Endangered Species Act, these laws are honored in the breach at best – and more typically, blatantly ignored.
The story of our salmon’s decline is thus not a narrative of missed opportunities or “mistakes being made.” It is more a matter of studied indifference to the law and a complete caving by government officials to the powerful Central Valley agribusiness lobby that has wielded enormous influence in Sacramento and Washington for decades.
Not all that long ago, salmon generated $1.4 billion in revenues and 23,000 jobs in California.
The economic and environmental impact of the salmon’s demise has been enormous. Not all that long ago, salmon generated $1.4 billion in revenues and 23,000 jobs in California. Additionally, salmon from the Klamath and Central Valley systems spurred $700 million in economic activity and created more than 10,000 jobs in Oregon. Commercial fishers, sport angling guides, fish processors and retailers, restaurants, tribes, and associated ancillary enterprises including chandleries, boat builders, and tackle manufacturers all had an enormous and profitable stake in our salmon. And unlike the profits from agribusiness – which is concentrated in a handful of powerful growers – salmon revenues were widely distributed through a vast network of small enterprises and their communities.
Moreover, our salmon were a critical component in ecosystem health. They were an incredibly efficient mechanism for transporting vast quantities of marine nutrients deep into California’s watersheds. The tremendous numbers of spawned-out salmon that died in the upper reaches of their natal streams annually nurtured the state’s wildlands. Their carcasses directly fertilized the rivers, feeding the planktonic organisms that form the basis of aquatic food webs. The decaying fish nurtured riparian forests directly, and their component elements fertilized upland forests over wide areas through the excretions of the scavengers and predators that fed on them. Our wildlands have degraded steadily since the demise of the salmon due in no small part to the impoverishment of watershed soils.
As long as salmon had a constituency – the people who depended on them for economic stability and the people who demanded access to them as high-quality food – there was always an impetus for turning things around. Reliable salmon seasons ensured that our salmon had champions – and more than that, a lobby with real political power. We saw that power flexed in the 1990s, when greater Delta flows and significant habitat improvements were approved by the U.S. Congress.
But we’ve now gone three years without a salmon season. It’s bad enough that the people who depend on salmon for a livelihood, food, or recreation have been cut off at the knees, but something far worse is in play: we’re losing the institutional and social memory of salmon. A generation is coming of age that has never eaten wild California salmon, that has never fished for them, never experienced the awe of witnessing a heavy run thrashing and spawning on their redds. They won’t know what has been lost, because they will never have experienced it.
And when that memory is fully eradicated, there will be no constituency for salmon nor all the benefits they confer to the people and landscapes of California. Without the collective will to preserve our salmon fisheries, the destruction of our rivers and the Bay/Delta will accelerate to its final and catastrophic conclusion.
It doesn’t have to be this way, of course. We can restore our salmon, and we can have salmon seasons and a salmon economy again. Here’s how we do it:
Put more water down our rivers and through the Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta. There is enough water for sustainable agriculture, cities and salmon. There isn’t enough to support an agribusiness sector that commandeers 80% of our water for luxury export crops. Salmon need cold, clean water at critical points of their life cycles. We must provide it.
Adjust reservoir releases and Delta pumping schedules to accommodate basic fishery needs. State and federal laws require dam and pump operators to keep “fish in good condition.” We need to enforce the statutes that are on the books.
Establish conservation hatcheries to revive and preserve wild stocks. Salmon genetics are a priceless heritage, and we need to maintain genetic diversity within our populations to as great a degree as possible. The more diverse our salmon populations are, the more successful they’ll be at meeting the challenges of drought, habitat degradation, and shifting marine conditions.
Enhance production in commercial hatcheries. The fall-run Chinook has been the “bread and butter” of the commercial and sport fisheries. We need to augment production of this run to increase and preserve our foundational constituency for salmon – commercial fishers, sport anglers, fish processors and retailers, and consumers.
Provide improved temperature protection for Sacramento and Trinity River salmon through better regulations and rigorous enforcement by the State Water Resources Control Board.