Extreme Heat On Pace to Kill Off Species of Salmon

RIO VISTA, CA - MARCH 25: Fingerling Chinook salmon are dumped into a holding pen as they are transfered from a truck into the Sacramento River on March 25, 2014 in Rio Vista, California. As California continues to suffer through its worse drought in history, low water levels on the Sacramento River have forced wildlife officials to truck more than 400,000 fingerling Chinook salmon from the Coleman National Fish Hatchery in Anderson to the Sacramento River in Rio Vista, a nearly 300 mile journey. The fish usually make the trip on their own but would risk be targets of predator fish. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

A historic heatwave baking the West coast is on the verge of driving a species of salmon to extinction.

Water in the Sacramento River is too warm to support the lifecycle of juvenile chinook salmon and authorities charged with managing the river’s temperature by diluting it have warned that they will soon run out of cooling water.

Nearly all of the young, endangered juvenile chinook salmon in the Sacramento River could die because temperatures above 100 degrees for extended periods of time are overheating the river, California officials say. https://t.co/LVO6oKkV2O
— CNN (@CNN) July 14, 2021

Given that the salmon generally have a three-year life cycle, a near-total wipeout of one year’s run of juveniles “greatly increases the risk of extinction for the species,” Doug Obegi, a lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council, told the Sacramento Bee.

“We could lose salmon here in California if we continue with business as usual and the climate continues to warm,” John McManus, president of the Golden State Salmon Association told CNN. “There’s a very real possibility we could lose salmon forever here.”

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has successfully relocated 1.1 million salmon from another imperiled river in northern California by trucking them to the San Francisco Bay. They’ll conduct similar efforts throughout the summer.

“We’re going to be serving as Noah’s ark,” Chuck Bonham, director of Fish and Wildlife, told the Sacramento Bee.

But the process is prohibitively expensive and time consuming.

A long-stalled plan to save Sacramento winter-run chinook salmon, a critically endangered species, proposes trucking them twice in their lifetimes. https://t.co/irU1RqkmrB
— San Francisco Chronicle (@sfchronicle) July 11, 2021

Amid prolonged sky-high temperatures, California Gov. Gavin Newsom has asked residents to reduce their water consumption. If more water is reserved for fisheries, authorities are better equipped to manage life-sustaining water temperatures.