For more than thirty years, no coho salmon had been born in the upper Russian River in California. The species, once abundant across the state's coastal waterways, had been driven to the edge of extinction by decades of logging, land clearing, and habitat destruction.
Then, in December 2025, juvenile coho were found in a Russian River tributary — the first confirmed natural reproduction in the upper basin since 1991. And they weren't alone. Over the winter of 2024–25, more than 30,000 endangered coho were counted along California's Mendocino coast, more than six times the estimated statewide population in 2008 and double the previous year's record.
The turnaround didn't happen by accident. It is the result of over a decade of painstaking habitat restoration led by a coalition including the Nature Conservancy, Trout Unlimited, NOAA Fisheries, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, tribal nations, and local landowners. Together, they have rebuilt the rivers that coho need to survive.
Rebuilding rivers, one floodplain at a time
The work has been hands-on and enormous in scale. At a single site on the Ten Mile River watershed north of Fort Bragg, 8,000 dump truck loads of dirt were removed to create floodplains where juvenile salmon can shelter during storms. Teams built side channels, off-channel ponds, and wetlands, and placed fallen logs and root wads in the water to create deep pools where young fish can hide from predators, feed, and grow.
"It was kind of like putting your finger over a hose — the water just shoots through," explained Ellory Loughridge, a restoration project associate with the Nature Conservancy. "By making these floodplains, the water has a second area to go through, so it makes some nice little water eddies that are good for juvenile fish."
The results have astonished even the teams behind the work. "I started here in 2017, and on a busy day you might see about ten fish," said Loughridge. "Now we have crews that will come back having seen 100 fish in a single survey. It's just like a different world."
Coho have also returned to waterways where they hadn't been seen in decades — the Gualala River watershed for the first time in twenty years, Usal Creek for the first time since 2014, and the Sonoma Coast for the first time in roughly sixty years.
Why salmon matter
The recovery matters far beyond the rivers themselves. Peter Van De Burgt, North Coast restoration project manager with the Nature Conservancy, describes salmon as ecological linchpins.
"They play this outsized role in the health of our overall ecosystem because they're basically conveyor belts of nutrients from the river to the ocean and back," he said. Scientists have found salmon-derived nutrients in core samples of ancient redwood trees — a vivid reminder of how deeply connected these fish are to the landscapes around them.
From the high seas to the headwaters
The salmon's recovery comes alongside a broader shift in how the world protects marine life. In January 2026, the High Seas Treaty entered into force, creating a legal framework for establishing marine protected areas in international waters — spaces covering roughly 64 per cent of the world's ocean that previously had no single nation's protection. While enforcement remains a challenge, the treaty represents a landmark commitment to ocean biodiversity.
A Scottish echo
Closer to home, Scotland faces its own salmon crisis — and is drawing from a similar playbook. Wild Atlantic salmon and sea trout numbers have been falling for decades, with marine survival rates dropping from around 25 per cent thirty years ago to as low as one per cent today.
Salmon Scotland has opened a £230,000 conservation fund for 2026, part of a five-year, £1.5 million investment in river restoration. Projects include repairing dams in the Western Isles, stabilising eroding riverbanks in Argyll, and DNA monitoring on the River Carron to track how conservation stocking contributes to returning adult fish.
"Wild salmon is part of Scotland's identity, yet its numbers have been falling for decades," said Tavish Scott, chief executive of Salmon Scotland. "Through this fund we are supporting practical, community-led projects that restore rivers, protect spawning grounds, and improve the conditions wild fish need to survive."
Hope on the current
Back in California, Van De Burgt says the coho comeback has transformed how he views his career. "I've always approached this work from a scarcity mindset — like my job is to prevent extinction," he said. The record returns have given him something new: the belief that restoration can move beyond mere survival and towards genuine abundance.
It's a message that carries well beyond the Russian River. When communities commit to restoring what has been damaged, nature has a remarkable capacity to respond.
