Science and Research Blog

Working within the structure of the One Tamalpais Collaborative, the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy received $400,000 in funding through the California Wildlife Conservation Board’s pollinator rescue program to invest in protection of monarch butterflies in Marin County.

For two weeks in October 2024, the San Francisco Bay Area Network fish crew travelled daily to Lake Sonoma’s Warm Springs Hatchery. There, we marked approximately 3,000 juvenile coho for release into Redwood Creek. This effort was time well spent, as these fish present unique research opportunities—as well as a chance to increase the future viability of the small wild population in Redwood Creek.

Meet Justin Jang and Val Kostelnik, Watershed Stewards Program corpsmembers who recently began 10.5-month terms with the salmonids monitoring team based at Point Reyes National Seashore.

Each summer, the San Francisco Bay Area Network fisheries crew spends a majority of its time in three Marin County, CA streams, Olema Creek, Pine Gulch Creek, and Redwood Creek, monitoring juvenile coho and steelhead populations. After completing this season's surveys, we found that 2024 was a decent year for juvenile coho!

Leaf-cutter ants may get all the nature documentary attention, but have you ever seen a leaf-cutter bee? They are no less amazing, tidily snipping pieces of leaves or petals and using them, sometimes along with tree resin, to build their uniquely shaped burrows. The Bay Area is home to an endemic leaf-cutter bee species—the San Francisco leaf-cutter bee. But no one had recorded this special status species since 1980—until now!

With the coho spawner season over, our San Francisco Bay Area Network fisheries crew shifted focus to a different generation of salmonids in Redwood Creek. Deep pools and sheltered banks below the creek’s surface are home to juvenile coho salmon and steelhead trout. Crew members braved the cold and plunged into the 47°F water to conduct snorkel surveys and assess winter habitat use by these populations.

This year Redwood Creek, Olema Creek, and Pine Gulch are all playing host to adult Chinook salmon, also known as king salmon due to their impressive size, for the first time in monitoring history. To date, our San Francisco Bay Area Network fisheries crew has recorded over 80 Chinook across the creeks we monitor! For comparison, the highest historic number of adult Chinook for Lagunitas Creek, the nearest creek with a frequent spawning run, was 65 in winter 2018-2019.

This year, the San Francisco Bay Area Inventory & Monitoring Network’s Botany Team has been confronted by a tenacious trio of problematic species collectively referred to as “broom”.

Congratulations to the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory, a 2023 recipient of the National Park Service’s coveted “Excellence in Volunteerism” award, in the category of “Innovation”. From the NPS, “this award recognizes a volunteer initiative within a park or program that has demonstrated significant innovation or creativity in meeting a park/program goal or need through volunteerism.”

Some years, the San Francisco Bay Area Network coho and steelhead monitoring team is alarmed by the low number of coho salmon returning to spawn in Marin County creeks. Last year, they didn’t spot a single live adult coho salmon. This has not been one of those years!