This project will continue our effort to determine how large-scale hydrologic reconnection efforts contribute to the persistence and recovery of threatened coho salmon in prairie creek

The prairie creek watershed is protected within the boundaries of the redwood state and national parks in northern california and is managed to protect old growth stands of ancient coast redwoods and their plant and animal inhabitants, including extensive recent efforts to restore rearing habitat for juvenile coho salmon. In our initial three-year monitoring effort, we established a substantial population of fish marked with permanent transponder tags as they reared as juveniles in different habitats. This effort has already provided valuable data on the proportion of the population that uses restoration sites, the seasonal timing of their use of restoration sites, and their survival to ocean outmigration. Coho salmon have a three-year life cycle, so continuing the monitoring effort for an additional three years will allow US to close the loop, using our tagged fish to assess the contribution of the restoration site to returning adult spawners and the production of the next generation. More specifically, this project will address key NOAA tier II monitoring questions including: a) how has hydrologic reconnection affected nekton community biomass, composition, survival, distribution and/or species richness and density? B) is the water quality in the project area (e.g. temperature and dissolved oxygen) suitable for the target species? And c) what is the timing of use for the target species?