Salmonid Restoration Federation
Reconnecting with Resilience
April 19 - 22, 2022
Santa Cruz, California

It Takes A Watershed: Fisheries Recovery in the Butano/Pescadero Watershed

20 April 2022
9:00am - 5:00pm

Field Tour Coordinator: Amy Kaeser, San Mateo Resource Conservation District

Tour Leaders: Jim Robins, Alnus Ecological; Julie Casagrande, San Mateo County Parks; Chris Hammersmark, cbec, Inc.; Ryan Diller, California State Parks; Sean Cochran, California Department of Fish and Wildlife; Laura O’Leary, Peninsula Open Space Trust, and others.

The Pescadero-Butano Watershed is a critical independent watershed for CCC Coho, is home to myriad special status species, had a TMDL adopted in 2019, and contains the Pescadero Marsh Natural Reserve which has been a management flashpoint for 30+ yrs. The tour will make stops at locations on Butano and Pescadero Creek to enable participants to learn about the unique issues, solutions, and partnerships necessary to address the critical stressors of water quality, fish passage, habitat complexity, sediment transport dynamics, and instream flows. We will visit an array of representative projects from the redwood forests of Memorial County Park to a scenic hilltop vista to the marquee Butano Reconnection project within the Marsh. Each stop will allow for robust discussion of project life cycle and the interplay between science and restoration practice.

Pescadero Creek
Pescadero Creek
  • Pescadero Creek
  • A bird's eye view of Pescadero Lagoon
  • Hardwood LWD installed for the Butano Floodplain
  • Butano Creek flooding Pescadero Creek Road