Endangered salmon returned to Northern California, then the money dried up

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Two years ago, Gov.Gavin Newsom unveiled a strategy to save declining salmon — spotlighting a historic partnership with the Winnemem Wintu Tribe to reintroduce endangered winter-run Chinook to the vital cold waters upstream of Lake Shasta in far Northern California.Now, tribe officials say the state is ending its support, potentially causing salmon restoration efforts on the McCloud River to die midstream.

The tribe is now grappling with the sudden loss of jobs, along with the dimming of hope that the culturally sacred fish will be restored to their ancestral waters.“It makes me feel betrayed.It makes the tribe feel betrayed,” said Gary Mulcahy, government liaison for the tribe.

“It’s like they just gave up.”State officials say the one-time funds were tied to the state’s drought response and have now been used up.“The pilot was designed to take urgent action during severe drought conditions while testing key tools and approaches needed for potential long-term reintroduction,” California Department of Fish and Wildlife spokesperson Stephen Gonzalez said in an email.Federal scientists call the Sacramento River’s winter-run Chinook salmon “one of the most at-risk endangered species.”Cut off from historic higher elevation cold-water spawning grounds by the Shasta and Keswick dams, the fish have been stranded for decades in the Sacramento River — where warm water routinely cooks their eggs.Keeping that water cold enough for salmon puts limits on how much water federal managers can deliver from Lake Shasta — a vital irrigation supply for Central Valley farmers.“We are forcing the fish to be in places where they never were historically,” said Carson Jeffres, a senior researcher at the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences.

“When we have all those eggs in one basket, you are one really warm event from losing that cohort of fish.”The drought years of...