Muir Woods National Monument

Alice Eastwood

Laura Lyon White

William Kent: Conservationist and Anti-Immigrant Politician

Ynes Mexia

As a result of this El Niño, heavy surf and rains severely eroded beaches and fragile sea cliffs in coastal California. National Park System units in California affected by the 1982–1983 El Niño event were Point Reyes National Seashore, Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and Pinnacles National Monument.

The San Francisco Bay Area Inventory and Monitoring Network’s Coho and Steelhead Monitoring Program has preliminary results from this year’s summer monitoring. Also, winter spawner monitoring is now underway. While the water is still too low for migrating fish on Olema and Redwood Creeks, partner groups have recorded some surprising salmon sightings on Lagunitas Creek.

Early January saw enough rainfall for adult coho salmon and steelhead trout to reach their stream spawning habitats. Despite this long wait, the coho and steelhead spawning run in both Olema and Redwood Creeks was larger than anticipated, even when factoring out the addition of hatchery-released coho in Redwood Creek.

Coho smolt monitoring traps have just been installed on Redwood and Olema Creeks, but not before a few smolts were seen getting ready to head to the ocean even earlier in the month. Even more surprising were a few large schools of steelhead smolts and seven hatchery-reared adult coho spotted still hanging out in a pool in Redwood Creek in early March.

During the winter months, coho and steelhead return from the ocean to their natal stream to spawn. Park biologists, partners, and volunteers survey these “spawners” to assess their success. Counts for both coho and steelhead were strong in Redwood and Olema Creeks. This year was also the last year of the Redwood Creek Captive Rearing Project, a multi-organizational collaborative effort to "jumpstart" our local coho population from the brink of extinction.

The coho and steelhead smolt trapping season got off to a late start this year. It has also been interrupted by late season storms. Although May is not over yet, it has already been one of the wettest in recent history with over 4.5 inches recorded at the Bear Valley rain gauge. Still, the numbers of year-old smolts migrating out to the ocean have been especially promising on Redwood Creek where biologists are operating one of their two traps.

Summer juvenile salmonid monitoring has revealed that the juvenile coho population was smaller than expected on both Olema and Redwood Creeks given the substantial spawning activity seen during the winter of 2018-2019. Possible reasons for lower survival rates include the major storm events that occured in February of 2019.

The northern spotted owl monitoring season is winding down, and the results are nearly final as biologists complete the season's surveys. Reproduction for this year was near the average with nineteen fledglings counted from twelve successful nests. One nest failed, and ten pairs of owls did not nest this season.