Only 3 percent of juvenile Chinook salmon survived the 2015 spawning season in California’s Sacramento River, said the National Marine Fisheries Service on Monday. With drought haunting the state, there wasn’t enough cold water in the river. The fish “were cooked to death,” says The Sacramento Bee. In 2014, just 5 percent of juveniles survived.
Winter-run Chinook have a three-year spawning cycle, which makes it crucial that the population do better in 2016 or face extinction. Farmers and environmentalists are already butting heads over the salmon’s future. The state may withhold even more water than it did last year at Shasta Dam to create deep, cold-water pools for the fish. But water-strapped farmers are adamant that they need all they can get to irrigate.
Fortunately for farmers, and salmon, rain has steadily fallen on California over the last month. In the northern half of the state, Folsom Lake is three times as full as it was in December, and 104-percent fuller than on average for this time of year. Reservoir staff may soon release water from the lake to guard against flooding. But most other California reservoirs aren’t nearly as full, and state officials have said that for the drought to officially end, the Sierra Nevada snowpack would need to be about 150 percent of average by April 1.