Where Have All the Steelhead Trout Gone?

There was a time, not long ago, when a maturing steelhead trout could swim from Permanente or Adobe Creek to its adult home in the San Francisco Bay. Today, steelhead are unable to make that journey and have all but disappeared from many of the local creeks in Santa Clara Valley.

Flood control measures and urban development over the past 50 years have transformed creeks into concrete channels, and the original salt marshes are now salt evaporation ponds. Thanks to invasive species, native ecosystems are vanishing, and toxins and trash have degraded the watershed.

“Our watersheds and creeks have been compromised by logging, agriculture, mining and channelizing. Few streams support fish migrations in ‘traditional’ pre-1950s manner,” says Jim McCarthy, an Acterra Streamkeeper volunteer and a member of numerous other creek monitoring organizations. more