| The Magazine of the CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES |
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habitats Planet of the Steelhead A joke around this office: A nature writer goes on an expedition to find the elusive, long-lashed channeling thespian bear. If he finds one, he sells the story to National Geographic. If he doesn't--finding instead an ineffable sense of wonder and a profound concern for the channeling thespian bear's predicament (It's so endangered even the author, the filmmaker, and their army of sherpas couldn't find it!)--then he tries to sell the story to us. We don't need another story like that. So why did I go to Malibu Creek in October to report this story on California's endangered steelhead trout even though the last confirmed sighting was three years ago and the chances of my finding one are only a little better than those of my seeing a thespian bear? Two reasons: First, the tiny Malibu Creek population of steelhead is arguably the most important one in the world. Second, its restoration may be feasible, and is linked to the removal of a dam that almost nobody defends. Since dam politics are usually red hot, I wanted to see this outcast one for myself. California steelhead have been hit hard by a century of water diversions, dam building, pollution, and other river and stream degradations. These trout were once abundant up and down the coast, and penetrated high into the headwaters of the state's mountain chains. Overall, California populations have dropped by more than 90 percent, and the farther south you go, the worse the situation is. One hundred and twenty-two streams south of San Francisco Bay are known to have once contained steelhead; 33 percent no longer have any, and all of the remaining steelhead streams are in decline, some of them in population nosedives. Last summer, these statistics moved the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), the federal agency overseeing anadromous fishes, to list the southern coast populations of steelhead trout--those found from the Santa Maria River to Malibu Creek--as endangered. The listing was desperately opposed by those interests most directly responsible for the decline: water districts, agribusiness, and developers. The listing was backed by a variety of environmental groups, but most energetically by anglers. "To fish for steelhead on a pristine western river is considered by many to be the pinnacle of freshwater angling," reads a call to action published by California Trout. When you catch a steelhead, says Jim Edmondson, executive director of that organization, "it's like a bolt of lightning striking the tip of your rod--they are that strong." The shimmering silver-blue fish have even been known to reduce otherwise good writers to spasms of purple prose: "His heart is that of a warrior, his speed like a shooting star, his power a reckless dynamo," writes Clark C. Van Fleet in his 1951 book Steelhead to a Fly. But it's not the fishing we want to save, it's the fish, says Edmondson. And by just about any standard the fish are worthy of preservation. Like salmon, steelhead are born in freshwater streams and migrate to the open sea to live as adults. And like salmon, they return to their freshwater origins to spawn. But unlike salmon, who make this trip only once before they die, steelhead may make numerous round trips. Given the radically different physiological requirements of living in both salt and fresh water, this is an extraordinary achievement. Deviation from the norm is the norm for animals, wrote Leo Shapovalov and Alan Taft in The Life Histories of the Steelhead Rainbow Trout, "and of the vertebrates the trouts are among the most variable of all. Further, of the trouts the steelhead is the most variable form." Some steelhead, known as rainbow trout, remain in fresh water all their lives; although genetically the same as steelhead, rainbows necessarily have a very different physiology. Some steelhead make one trip to the sea, return to fresh water to spawn, and then spend their remaining years upstream. These different potential life histories, costly as they must be, are extremely adaptive for a fish whose migration route may be blocked by drought for years at a time. These are amazingly adaptable fish, says Jennifer Nielsen, an aquatic biologist who studies steelhead at Hopkins Marine Station in Pacific Grove. And they've had to be adaptable in order to exploit resources in the rivers, streams, and the ocean, as few species do. And if steelhead trout are the most adaptable of vertebrates, the southern population is probably the most adaptable of all the steelhead. Nielsen's DNA studies of the Malibu fish show them to be the most genetically diverse of any known trout population. And that genetic variety may spawn adaptations that are critical for the survival of the entire species, since, as the southernmost population, they may also be the most tolerant of demanding, marginal conditions such as high temperatures and wildly unpredictable water flows. "These are very, very important fish," she says.
Coast Highway One crosses over the lagoon, and there is no escaping the roar of its traffic. But the coots, egrets, and ducks don't seem to mind, nor do the huge dragonflies that all seem to be mating simultaneously among the bullrushes, nor the schooling minnows and other fish darting about the lagoon, nor the schoolchildren investigating the lagoon on a science field trip. Into the concrete of the highway's huge support structure are carved stylized fish forever headed toward--but never getting any closer to--the Pacific. My next stop is the one-hundred-foot-high Rindge Dam, two-and-a-half miles upstream. That reach, about a mile of which is lined by the affluent little Hollywood-fed town of Malibu itself, is the only portion of the stream available to spawning steelhead. But if Suzanne Goode, resource ecologist for Malibu Creek State Park, has her way, that will all change soon. The Rindge Dam, named for the family that owned most of Malibu Canyon early in the century, was built 70 years ago to impound water for Frederick Rindge's ranch. It turned out to be a bum investment, though, completely silting up in only 20 years. It is an impressive structure, curving across the bottom of a canyon one-third as deep as the Grand Canyon, but since 1950 it has done little except hold onto the sand that should have replenished the beach at the mouth of the lagoon, and prevent the steelhead from swimming upstream to spawn. "We need to take this dam down as soon as possible," says Goode, who stands beside me looking down into the Malibu Canyon. "It will free up another eight miles of prime spawning habitat upstream. And though steelhead are the keystone species that would benefit from the removal, there is also the Pacific lamprey, another anadromous fish found in the creek." The steelhead that used to run here also brought a lot of nutrients from the ocean back into the upper portions of the creek. Furthermore, the intertidal creatures that depend on the beaches at the mouth of the creek need the sand and nutrients now trapped behind the dam. There are a couple of downsides to removing the dam, however. First, extracting the 900,000 cubic yards of sediment that reaches about a mile upstream behind it would also mean removing the willows and other riparian habitat that have established themselves there. "I hate to see that," says Goode, "but if you want to make an omelet you have to break eggs. And once the natural streambed is reestablished, the vegetation should grow back pretty fast." Second, according to the Bureau of Reclamation's estimates, removing the dam will cost about $18 million. It is possible, now that the federal government is committed to steelhead restoration, that funding could come from the NMFS or elsewhere in Interior. "I'm hoping that some wealthy person with imagination--someone like Ted Turner or George Soros--will come in and say, 'I'll pay to take it down' Or that they'll just supply some seed money. Because getting the funding is going to be as difficult as doing the work." And doing the work is going to be difficult indeed. There is no easy way to move 900,000 cubic yards of sediment out of this deep canyon. After considering a number of alternatives, the Bureau of Reclamation has recommended removing it one truckload at a time, which will take a long while and will disrupt traffic on Malibu Canyon Road, a busy commute route to LA. Last year, Congress gave the Army Corps of Engineers $100,000 to conduct a study of the dam removal.
Finally, I do find my way back to the trail and then to the creek, which, gurgling through the rugged canyon and willows that rise around it, is stunning. Also stunning, though, is the presence of a film crew and its six huge trucks full of equipment and its catering table stacked with donuts. I read on a plaque that both the film and TV versions of "MASH" were shot here, as was "Lost in Space." What's more, this area was the backdrop for the film classic, "Planet of the Apes." I only remember the end of that movie, which struck my ten-year-old self as hauntingly ironic. Charlton Heston, having escaped from the ape-like creatures who ruled over a presumably faraway planet, is fleeing down a beach and comes upon the arm and head of the Statue of Liberty, which is sticking out of the sand, the rest of the statue having been silted in over the centuries. I imagine a sweaty, fugitive Heston standing beneath the dam. Suddenly a limo pulls up to a trailer, out of which steps a late-middle-aged woman with curly red hair, but sunglasses obscure what I hoped would be the famous long lashes. Could it be....? Like a cougar's tail disappearing into the brush, she vanishes with the dull thud of the limo's door and I am left in the uneasy limbo of an unconfirmed sighting. Gordy Slack is an Associate
Editor of California Wild. His email address is gslack@calacademy.org
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Winter 1998
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