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Coho 3alnion . Coho salmon thrive in stable, well-shaded drainages 

 because their young spend their first year of life in streams. 

 These young salmon live primarily in deep, cold pools close to the 

 faster flowing areas that produce many of the insects they feed 

 upon. These pools are typically created by the action of water 

 around large logs, boulders, or stable banks. In drainages 

 characterized by heavy logging amd road building, young coho have 

 poor survival because large logs are less available to create pools 

 and what pools there jure fill up with sediment faster than they can 

 be scoured out by winter flows. stable drainages also provide 

 better habitat for the adult fish, which use the deep pools for 

 refuges from predators and cleem, coarse gravels for spawning. 



The loss of stream heibitats favoreUale to coho salmon in the 

 past 50 years has led to their decline in Washington, Oregon, and 

 California. This on-going decline has resulting the Pacific Rivers 

 Council developing a petition to list coho salmon as a threatened 

 species, which should be filed soon to the National Marine 

 Fisheries Service. The decline of coho is peurticulsurly severe in 

 California, the southeimmost part of their range. The study of 

 coho status by myself, Dr. Larry R. Brown, and Dr. Ronald M. 

 Yoshiyama indicated that 50 years ago perhaps 200,000 wild coho 

 entered California's streams to spawn, supporting both sport and 

 commercial fisheries. Today we estimate that less than 5,000 wild 

 coho still enter these seune streams, a 97% decline. Because the 

 decline has been evident for many years, hatcheries were built on 

 a number of streams in an effort to bolster coho populations; there 

 are about 30,000 hatchery-related coho returning each year as 

 consequence. However, even the hatchery coho are in decline and 

 the mixing of hatchery euid wild stocks in some streams has probably 

 contributed to the decline of wild stocks. 



A better measure of the status of coho in California is the 

 number of streeuas that still have spawning populations. We 

 determined from old records that at least 540 coastal streams once 

 contained coho populations. We estimate today that only about half 

 of these streams still support runs of coho salmon and that many of 

 the remaining runs are so small that their extinction in the near 

 futiire is highly likely. These figures demonstrate the exceptional 

 importance of the streams in the eureas protected by the Headwaters 

 Forest Act. 



Coho in Headwaters s^eaffls. The streams in the Headwaters area 

 include the headwaters of the north and south forks of Elk River 

 and of Salmon Creek (both flowing directly in to Humboldt Bay) and 

 the headwaters of Vager Creek (mainly Lawrence Creek and Shaw 

 creek) , a major tributary of the Van Duzen River, which in turn 

 flows into the lower Eel River. In recent years, most of the 

 creeks have been surveyed for use by anadromous fishes by the 

 California Department of Fish and Game zmd/or the California 

 Conservation Corps (CCC) . Their field notes have been made 

 available to me. 



By present-day standards, the Elk River is an exceptional 

 stream for coho salmon. This is because the channel in many areas 



