Nearly 12 years have passed since this many coho salmon swam up the Lagunitas Creek watershed to spawn.

By the end of January, surveyors found 332 redds, or salmon egg nests, and about 664 adult coho in the watershed — the highest count since the winter of 2007-08. While this count is still well below the recovery target of 1,600 redds needed to bring the species out of its endangered classification, researchers are optimistic with the recent trend.

“This run was 10 percent larger than their parents’ generation, 70 percent larger than their grandparents’, and 40 percent larger than the run of their great-grandparents’ (back in 2009-10),” Marin Municipal Water District ecologist Eric Ettlinger wrote in an update. “Such sustained generational growth is a very hopeful sign for the population.”

The Lagunitas Creek watershed alone supports about 20 percent of the wild coho runs between Monterey Bay and Fort Bragg. Decades of habitat degradation, development and dams have depleted the population. Both the state and federal governments recognize the Lagunitas coho salmon as an endangered species.

A 2017 study by the U.C. Davis Center for Watershed Sciences and the environmental organization California Trout on California’s salmon species listed the Lagunitas coho as being at critical risk of extinction — the highest risk category next to extinction — within the next 50 years without “significantly increased intervention and protection of watersheds.”

Environmental advocates and fisheries biologists are hoping ongoing flood plain and habitat restoration projects in the watershed will help tip the balance in the coho’s favor.

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