Month: August 2023

Los Angeles River

Lower L.A. may get its own fish passage

During the past 10 years, the Los Angeles River has moved from object of dumpster humor to a symbol of urban rewilding. According to the city’s LARiverWorks, there are nine projects worth $500 million in the pipeline, from funded design stage to construction. Although two fish passages are envisioned, one in downtown Los Angeles, the Lower LA River Channel Restoration and Access stands out for conservationists.

“The LA River restoration effort is not about fishing, and it’s not really about trout,” said Bob Blankenship, of TU’s South Coast Chapter, who along with another TU board member, Karen Barnett, spearheaded the effort. “It’s about helping local people reimagine their local river, with global exposure that will jump start other restoration efforts.”

According to the LA Master Plan, many histories of the LA River focus on two central narratives: the devastating floods of the 1930s, and the rapid development in the first half of the 20th century that led the United States Army Corps of Engineers and the LA County Flood Control District to channelize and line LA’s main inland waterway. Now, designers, engineers and conservationists are reimagining how 51 miles of mostly concrete that cuts through neighborhoods, many of them underserved, can be knitted back together. 

The idea of “urban rewilding” is one that has gained traction in other major cities, both in America as well as Europe. The Associated Press reported

Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium and the nonprofit Urban Rivers are installing “floating wetlands” on part of the Chicago River to provide fish breeding areas, bird and pollinator habitat and root systems that cleanse polluted water. Or the Rewild London Fund that plans to spend more than $850,000 dedicated to increasing, for example, water voles in freshly restored waterways, as well as helping swifts and sparrows to again flourish in the city. 

Back in Los Angeles, working with grant money of $300,000, the South Coast Chapter’s project team, as well as the City of Paramount, and the Odyssey STEM Academy, completed a conceptual design for the Lower LA River that incorporates seasonal public access and open space in a naturalized river channel.

David Johnson, Community Services Manager for the City of Paramount, put it well.

“Paramount residents live in a highly urbanized, built-out environment. A reconstructed natural river segment here would provide an amazing opportunity to connect with the natural environment in our own backyard,” he said. “It is important for residents to look upon the Los Angeles River as something that is functioning and crucial to protect, particularly for any impacts downstream where it flows to our local beaches and ocean.

Trout Unlimited basically turned the design element on its head, by involving local residents — most notably students from the Odyssey Stem Academy — then from that input, nudging the design professionals to technically stretch to meet the neighborhood’s criteria. A prime concern is in any river reimagining is the possibility of a 100-year flood event. In the case of the lower river project, that means a fish passage that allows returning steelhead to rest and regenerate in its pools and shade, also must be able to move enough water through the channel to avoid flooding.  

Nicole Bottomley teaches in the STEM (science, technology, engineers and mathematics) curriculum at Odyssey Stem Academy, a public school in the Paramount Unified School District. Senior capstone projects were interdisciplinary, which included advisers in math, English, science and Spanish. 

“I am so grateful for this organization to have given this to our community and these scholars,” Bottomley said. 

Gerardo Silva, was graduated last year and is currently studying biology at Cerritos Community College with the hope of transferring to UCLA. He and his partner choose biodiversity and its effects on aerosols as their seamster-long project. To compare how rewinding a place contributes to healthier air, they chose to compare Glendale Narrows, an area of the river north of Paramount, that still has a soft bottom section, with the area around Dills Park and a housing development unique to Paramount called the “Sans” neighborhood, because each street is named for a saint and begins with the word “San.”

The riparian area of the Narrows is home to dozens of bird species, including snowy egrets, great blue herons and migrating Canadian geese. They are drawn to the flowing water, as well as to the native plants here that include native Arroyo willows and water cress. It’s also one of the best places to imagine what the migration of the endangered Southern California steelhead was like, when thousands of these fish returned to the San Gabriel Mountains several dozen miles away to spawn.

“The majority of our project was tons and tons of research to back up our hypothesis and claims,” Silva said.

Although Silva intimately was unable to prove his hypothesis because of lack of time, when you speak with him you get the feeling this project will help propel him into a science career. And one day he may see the Lower River Channel Restoration realized, along with an urban community’s dream of a greener future. 

See you on the river, Jim Burns

This piece originally ran in TROUT magazine, summer 2023

Ecology

Trout relocation a boon for fishers
Typical native rainbow from 2020 before the Bobcat Fire.
Bigger ‘bo from this year. (left and right, Jim Burns)

This quote from a 2003 Los Angeles Times article says a lot about fishing the West Fork of the San Gabriel, at least downstream.

” ‘The trash needs to be cleaned up,’ said Jason Conway, 27, who traveled from San Bernardino for the trout. He had just reeled in a six-incher.”

Or maybe this, also from the LAT, but from 1988:

” Since 1981, the West Fork, one of the most heavily fished streams in the state, has endured a man-made flood, fire, drought and a destructive release of mud from Cogswell Dam that reduced the fish population.

“’It has been hit with every disaster possible,” Edmondson said. “It has been so beaten down. This stream is a real underdog.’ “

This forest fire on the West Fork was captured by a photographer on Sept. 29, 1924. (Huntington Library)

Edmondson is Jim Edmondson, who at the time was  the Southern California manager for California Trout, the non-profit dedicated to the preservation of wild trout in our state. He was looking for bug life, one of the keys to a healthy river, and he found it.

Flash forward more than 30 years and the West Fork seems periodically bound to be smote by God, or at least the weather, and just as surely to come back to life.

In 1979, the Department of Fish and Wildlife (Then called Department of Fish and Game … times change) estimated around 20,000 trout enjoyed life in the water of the West Fork. But two years later, while repairing Cogswell Dam, the county Flood Control District released an estimated 200,000 cubic yards of silt into the stream, killing thousands of fish and burying their spawning ground, according to the LAT. That caused CDFW to sue the Department of Public Works for $2 million.

Five years after that, a fire around the river burned close to 4,000 acres of bush that held soil in place. Without it, winter rains pushed mud by the tons downstream, again burying trout spawning gravel. And, according to the article, “Just a year after that, the Public Works Department released tons of water while testing valves at the dam during the spawning season, flushing away much of a generation of trout in 70 minutes, Edmondson said.”

But the good news from all of these fish-tragic events –that Public Works, the Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife would meet regularly, study water flow and release water more slowly from the dam to avoid damage — echoes today.

I had quite a round robin with these three agencies over the last several weeks trying to track down a tip from a guy who told me he spoke with a biologist who was releasing trout at the bridge before the East Fork parking lot. By the time I got there, he was nowhere to be found. Emails to both the Forest Service and CDFG at first floated along without any definitive answers.

Then, several Saturdays later, while fishing with two TU buddies on the West Fork, we struck up a conversation with three guys in a red pickup truck, headed down from Cogswell Dam. The driver wore a brown CDFW shirt. He confirmed that during ongoing work on the far side of Cogswell, the department had, indeed, been saving trout, relocating them to both the West and East forks. If only I’d not been under the influence of trout fever, I would have gotten his name.

At any rate, here’s what I’ve found out, officially. No, say the agencies, there are no fish being relocated from Cogswell, but, yes, Los Angeles County Public Works is moving fish out of the San Gabriel Reservoir construction area, which includes portions of the West Fork and East Fork San Gabriel River.  In general, fish captured in the West Fork are relocated farther upstream in the West Fork. Fish captured in the East Fork are relocated farther upstream in the East Fork. This is all part of the San Gabriel Reservoir Post-fire Emergency Restoration Act that began in June, 2021, and will run through 2026, according to Lisette Guzman of Los Angeles County Public Works.

The number of fish relocated varies week to week, depending on the areas fished and site conditions. The fish species that are relocated include the Santa Ana sucker, Santa Ana speckled dace, arroyo chub, and our favorite rainbow trout.

“On a typical day, fisheries biologists begin their day by coordinating with other project activities that could affect aquatic resources,” Guzman said via email. “Captured fish are placed in aerated coolers and monitored regularly while fishing activities continue.”

Once the fish arrive at their new homes, they are inventoried, released and monitored. These ongoing efforts are split between the East Fork, the West Fork and the North Fork. When is the last time anyone caught a fish on the North Fork?

Any of us who fish these waters regularly and over time have seen a jump in numbers and size of rainbows this season.

Joseph Stanovich, an environmental scientist who monitors the trout population in the upper San Gabriel River for the CDFW put these efforts into perspective.

“Spawning grounds are influenced by water availability and water quality for our native resident rainbow trout. Water temperature, forage and size of habitat availability are big players in how fast they develop,” Stanovich said. “It can take a half-year to a year to get to hand size, but based on environmental variables it’s hard to estimate.”

This season, a hand-size trout, once all I caught in this watershed, has given way to bigger fish.

See you on the river, Jim Burns

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One of the tool used by biologist to relocate fish is electroshock. (Credit L.A. County Public Works)