photo credit: Marc Albert/KRCB
Young salmon grow faster in floodplains, aiding survivability.

Salmon, the silvery fish that transition from fresh water to salt and back again, have been on the ropes in California.

On Tuesday, a day after touring two habitat restoration sites on the North Coast, Governor Gavin Newsom announced a half dozen priorities aimed at saving salmon from the fate of grizzly bears in the state. 

Newsom is doubling down on dam removal, calling attention to efforts underway to remove several obsolete dams on the Klamath River.

And he says officials will step up habitat restoration, modernizing hatcheries and, "protecting water flows in key rivers at key times." 

Darren Mierau is North Coast Regional Director at CalTrout. That's a nonprofit heavily involved in restoration efforts around the state.

Mierau praised the new commitments.

"If you took a step back and consider that in the last 170 years we've transformed our river ecosystems, we've constrained them with levees, and we've diverted their water, we've constructed dams and those things, cumulatively have had ginormous impacts on salmon and steelhead populations, we know that already. What we're trying to do now is reverse some of those things," Mierau said.

But not everyone is in agreement.

Barbara Barrigan Parilla is executive director of Restore the Delta, a group fighting the proposed delta tunnel project.

She says salmon are having a tough time now, partly because of water diversions to agriculture during a deep drought several years back.

And she says she has doubts that this week's announcements from Newsom will bear any real fruit.

"He continues to say we're going to cut a deal with water districts, it's going to be an eight year experiment, they are going to put habitat in, and the truth is, without science-based flows, there is no salmon recovery," Parilla said.