Record Salmon Run

Before we moved into the middle of town in November 2020, we lived four hundred meters from Putah Creek, a stream that flows eastward just south of Davis draining from the Coast Ranges into the Sacramento Delta. In the 1950s Monticello Dam was built at the outlet of the stream from the mountains to create Lake Berryessa, but the downstream flows below the dam were quite intermittent. This started to change in 2000 with the creation of the Putah Creek Accord following an environmental lawsuit which ensured adequate water flows and initiated a program of riparian restoration.

In 2013 the first chinook salmon were spotted swimming up the creek and fall salmon runs became a regular event. (We used to stand on the bridge over the creek on Old Davis Road and look for swimming salmon, but never spotted any.) In 2021 researchers established that at least some salmon were being born in the creek and returning to spawn several years later. Yesterday there was an exciting news announcement that this year there has been a record salmon run on the creek: 2,150 chinook salmon returned this fall to spawn in the creek. Putah Creek has become a hopeful story of environmental restoration.