Salmon at the Edge: Adapting Ecosystem Conservation Programs Using Experiences from California's Central Valley Project

California’s Central Valley provides freshwater habitat historically relied upon by Chinook salmon populations that comprise California’s largest commercial salmon fishery. Additionally, the Central Valley is California’s most productive agricultural landscape. The US Bureau of Reclamation and California Department of Water Resources (DWR) operate the Central Valley and State Water Projects for delivering water for agriculture, municipalities, and industry from Northern to Southern California via multiple tributary dams and diversion facilities in the San Francisco Bay-Delta. The recent collapse of Central Valley salmonid populations and an ecological regime shift in the Bay-Delta have catalyzed concerns for native aquatic species and the ecosystem. For over a decade, multiple programs focused on restoring migratory fish habitats in the Central Valley have provided positive results as part of the Central Valley Project Improve Act, yet Chinook salmon populations have not achieved the desired “doubling goal”. State and federal agency partnerships working towards solutions, such as CALFED, have come and gone while water users and environmental organizations litigated upon multiple Biological Opinions and attitudes towards balanced solutions continued to become more polarized. The most recent effort by stakeholders (Bay-Delta Conservation Plan; BDCP) has focused on developing new infrastructure to improve water supply reliability, restore habitats and flows for critical species, and reduce impacts of other stressors (i.e. predators, hatcheries). Each of the previous programs has gone through similar planning steps- goal setting, studies and investigations, implementation, and independent reviews. By evaluating the success, failure, and adaptation of previous programs, it is possible to evaluate the likely success and adaptation necessary in future programs if imperiled fish are to be conserved and restored. In fact, federal and state implementing and regulatory agencies are playing a critical role in developing the BDCP, so that it integrates multispecies conservation goals and objectives, an ecosystem management-guided implementation program, and rigorous science to further recovery and conservation of species while addressing California’s long-standing water conflicts in the Central Valley.