25th Annual Salmonid Restoration Conference

Mitch Farro (far right) was the recipient of the 2007 Restorationist of the Year award. He is pictured here with some former ROY award recipients including Bill Eastwood, Mel Kreb, Danny Hagans, Gary Flosi, Richard Gienger, Mike Cronin (standing in for his dad), Dave Highland, and Gary Peterson. (Photo: Eileen Baglivio)

Over 500 watershed enthusiasts migrated to the North Coast to attend the 25th Annual Salmonid Restoration Federation Conference in Santa Rosa, California. This silver anniversary conference was entitled, “Celebrating a Generation of Salmonid Restoration and Recovery,” and highlighted the evolving restoration field and global issues that are affecting salmonid recovery. The conference included full-day workshops on dam removal and FERC relicensing, fish passage barrier removal tools, and estuary and lagoon restoration. Field tours visited sustainable grazing sites in southern Sonoma and western Marin counties, vineyards with salmonfriendly agricultural practices, Dutch Bill Creek watershed, steelhead habitat restoration projects on Upper Sonoma Creek, bioengineering and in-stream restoration projects, a tour from the headwaters to the mouth of Austin Creek watershed, as well as a short tour of urban creek restoration projects in the Prince Memorial Greenway.

Concurrent sessions focused on environmental, biological, and policy issues that affect Salmonid habitat restoration and recovery of native fish populations including North Coast water diversions, Coho Recovery efforts in California, the economic, cultural and recovery impacts of fisheries closures, coastal watershed planning and restoration, salmonid and watershed environmental education, Salmonid recovery downstream of large reservoirs, measuring watershed condition and management performance, fluvial geomorphology, assessing Best Management Practices, and regional land use planning and implementation strategies in aquatic conservation.

The plenary session featured prominent keynote speakers including UC Davis Fisheries Professor Peter Moyle who addressed “Climate Change and the State of California Salmonid Recovery Efforts,” Nat Scholz from NOAA Fisheries who discussed coho recovery in light of toxicity in urban streams, Freeman House, author of Totem Salmon, who addressed grassroots watershed efforts in the face of global warming, and Brock Dolman who provided a local perspective on watershed restoration. Seth Zuckerman, editor of Salmon Nation, facilitated the Plenary.

Other highlights of the conference included the Wild and Scenic Environmental Film Festival, SRF’s annual meeting, a poster session and reception, and a cabaret, a Copper River salmon banquet, and a lively dance party with Latin-dance band, Sambada.

The 2008 conference will be in Lodi, CA in the San Joaquin Valley on March 5-8. To learn more about Salmonid Restoration Federation trainings, please visit www.calsalmon.org.

Restorationist of the Year: Mitch Farro

The Lifetime Achievement Award went to DFG’s John Schwabe (above) and the Golden Pipe Award for innovation in the restoration field went to Chris Larson of the Mattole Restoration Council. (Photo: Eileen Baglivio)

This year the ROY award went to Mitch Farro. Several of his cohorts (Jen Jenkins, Tom Weseloh, Gary Flosi, and Pat Moorhouse) staged a hilarious skit parodying the game show Jeapordy with a focus on watershed acronyms. Mitch not only won the coveted Restorationist of the Year award but he also won the award for the organization with the worst acronym: PCFWWRA!

Mitch Farro has been passionate about fish since he began fishing in his teens and spent several years fishing commercially. He was one of the pioneer fishery restorationists on the west coast and blended on-the-ground work with education and public advocacy.

In 1991 Mitch started the nonprofit Pacific Coast Fish, Wildlife and Wetlands Restoration Association (PCFWWRA) in McKinleyville, CA and has employed several former commercial fishermen since then.

Under Mitch’s direction PCFWWRA has assessed hundreds of miles of roads on the North Coast for sediment sources and decommissioned over 30 miles of road—including roads in the Headwaters Forest Reserve and Redwood Creek. In addition to his onthe- ground work, Mitch has also been deeply involved with the legislative process. He helped write SB 271 which provided $43 million toward salmonid restoration throughout the state. Mitch is renowned for his understated style, progressive techniques, and holistic approach to watershed and salmonid recovery and restoration.

This article originally appeared in the Summer 2007 newsletter.

Proceedings
PDF (125 pages)