California coho salmon recovery reached a milestone last season when 30,000 central California coast coho salmon returned to rivers emptying into the Mendocino coastline, ten times the decade-long average of 3,000, and double the previous season’s total. NOAA Fisheries described the count as evidence that targeted restoration work on private land can shift the trajectory for one of the most endangered fish populations in the United States.
‘I am overjoyed, everybody’s just ecstatic about how many coho there are,’ said Joe Pecharich, NOAA Marine Habitat Resource Specialist. ‘We have conducted intensive sampling since 2009 in these watersheds and many of us never thought we’d see something like this in our lifetime.’
The central California coast coho salmon, often shortened to CCC coho, is the most endangered subset of the coho species. In many waterways along this stretch of coastline, the fish had effectively vanished. Usal Creek had not recorded a live coho in ten years. The Gualala River watershed had seen none in two decades. Both are now witnessing adults migrating upstream and juveniles heading downstream.
How the California Coho Salmon Recovery Was Built
The turnaround is the product of more than 100 small-scale improvement projects coordinated across the Mendocino coast river systems. NOAA assembled a coalition that included local communities, tribal nations, NGOs, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, timber companies, and the fishing-focused nonprofit Trout Unlimited. Work has spanned the North Fork Navarro, Noyo, Garcia, and Big river watersheds.
The interventions are practical and unglamorous: widening undersized road culverts, removing log-jam barriers, and returning artificially straightened waterways to their natural, meandering course. Each change is designed to ease the coho’s passage between freshwater and the ocean, a journey the species must complete successfully across both ecosystems during its lifetime.
In 2024, Trout Unlimited remediated a barrier in Neefus Gulch, a small tributary of the North Fork Navarro River. According to NOAA Fisheries, the project restored 1,600 feet of stream channel and reopened upstream spawning habitat that had been cut off. The speed at which coho colonise newly accessible water continues to surprise those involved. ‘It’s been amazing to see how quickly coho will occupy new habitat. Just days after the excavators roll out, the fish will start to swim in,’ said Peter van de Burgt, The Nature Conservancy’s North Coast Restoration project manager.
Last summer, NOAA and The Nature Conservancy completed the largest-ever habitat restoration project in the Ten Mile watershed. The results there have been striking in their own right: NOAA Fisheries reported that 5,574 CCC coho returned to the Ten Mile River last spawning season, itself a record for that watershed.
The Life-Cycle Detail That Puts the Numbers in Context
Understanding why this season’s count matters requires a brief detour into biology. Coho salmon have a three-year life cycle, spending roughly 18 months in freshwater and 18 months in the ocean, according to NOAA Fisheries. The adults counted returning in winter 2024–2025 were born to parents that spawned in winter 2021–2022, meaning the fish now arriving are the direct offspring of a cohort that benefited from earlier restoration work. The generational link connects each infrastructure project back, concretely, to what is swimming upstream today.
Joshua Fuller, NOAA’s Coastal California Branch Supervisor, framed the broader significance carefully: ‘Recovering salmon is undeniably challenging, particularly for a species that must successfully navigate both freshwater and marine ecosystems during its lifetime. These numbers are very encouraging and demonstrate that recovery is possible when management, habitat, ocean, and hydrologic conditions are aligned.’
The aligned conditions Fuller describes are not guaranteed to hold. Ocean and hydrologic factors sit largely outside the control of restoration managers, which means the coalition’s work creates opportunity rather than certainty. What the programme has done is ensure that when conditions do align, the habitat is ready.
Early counts for the current season suggest the momentum has not stalled. Some 400 coho have already been recorded on the North Fork Navarro River alone, well above normal estimates for that waterway at this stage of the run. The full tally will emerge as spring sampling concludes.
