California salmon can’t survive if we continue to divert water, place dams upstream, and consume water wastefully. Furthermore, building homes in areas where homes shouldn’t be built (think hurricane and wildfire prone areas, in addition to naturally dry regions) affects water availability too. Drought exacerbates the situation as well. From the Napa Valley Register, CA:
Water is at the heart of the issue. Salmon require consistent flows of cold, fresh water in the rivers and streams in order to successfully spawn.
Prior to human influence, winter rainstorms would create massive river flows, making for just the conditions salmon need to migrate upstream to their spawning grounds.
But in modern days, a combination of upstream dams and diversion programs has drastically reduced flows in most river systems. In many cases, so much water is extracted or held back that the salmon are left with far less-than-ideal habitats for spawning, and have great trouble even reaching the spawning grounds.
These issues become painfully evident in seasons of drought like we are experiencing right now. In wet years, there is enough water to go around to irrigate all the farms, supply all the cities, and leave good flows for the fish.
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More rivers may face this same fate. The state’s human population continues to expand, most dramatically in regions which Mother Nature had designed as a desert and suitable for only a small community of people.
These new desert-dwellers demand more water, and that water now comes from river systems in the north part of the state.
The California State Water Project transports billions of gallons around the state each year. Much of this goes to the farms of the San Joaquin Valley and the urban areas of Southern California.
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