Salmonid Restoration Federation

The Salmonid Restoration Federation, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the City of Santa Barbara will host the 32nd Annual Salmonid Restoration Conference in Santa Barbara, CA on March 19-22. The theme of this year’s conference is “Recovery Strategies for Coastal Salmonids” and the conference agenda highlights innovative strategies and implementation techniques to restore and recover salmonids. This conference agenda also explores large-scale issues affecting fisheries recovery including climate change and drought as well as the social aspects of how we steward water, plan for resiliency, and leverage limited resources.

Workshops will examine innovative and successful restoration practices including reopening blocked fish passage, innovative stormwater and water conservation programs, steelhead and beaver interactions, and new resources for coastal monitoring.

We leave Tuesday and if you wonder if I’m nervous the answer is YES. I’m nervous about the drive, nervous about my talks, nervous about my computer, and nervous about my constitution because my health ain’t what it was before I went into the hospital. I’ve practiced with a stopwatch and looked over the maps and rehearsed everything I can think of while making lists of what we need to bring. God willing it will all work out okay.

I work Monday and we drive down Tuesday. The steelhead-beaver panel is wednesday morning, and Michael Pollock, Mike Callahan, Mary Obrien & Sherry and Ted Guzzi are coming for dinner that night. Then we have Thursday to relax but on Friday Duane Nash and Rick Lanman are coming for lunch with some folks from DFW who want to talk beavers and reintroduction! That night is our poster session and the following morning is my talk on using beavers to restore urban streams with Ann Riley’s group.

Then we drive home. Is that a beaver whirlwind? I ‘m planning on stopping at Castoro cellars on the way down and Cambria on the way back to add a little wine-tasting excitement to the trip. But I’m terrified we’ll break down on 101 and sit in traffic with an upset stomach for hours before being rescued. Wish me luck!

A lovely bit of good cheer came this morning from illustrator Patrizia Donaera, who said she’s “charmed by our story” because “beaver are her muse”. I think that’s an excellent muse to have, and I love her “Mouse and Beaver” which she did for a story book illustration a while back. Thanks Patrizia!

The lineup for the Salmonid Restoration Federation Conference was just published and I had to share a slice. Don’t you want to be there? You know you really should.

And as IF that wasn’t exciting enough, look at the team I’m playing for!

In case you need reminders, the first speaker is ‘Wikipedia Rick’ the senior author on both our Historic prevalance papers, and the second name is Eli Asarian who did the maps and graphs for both papers. Then that crazy lady from Martinez who probably needs no introduction. And after me is Michael Pollock who did pretty much every research on beavers and salmon EVER. Then Tim Robinson who is running the whole show and invited me to speak. Then Kate Lundquist from the OAEC who many of you met at this year’s beaver festival and finally the only person I don’t know but am very excited to hear! (And for us non-fish-scientists in the room, “thermal refugia” means moving to a hangout place that has colder temperatures. I looked it up.)

Wait, there’s more:

Ann Riley is the author of the most famous creek restoration book ever, and partner of Lisa Owens Viani who has been a Worth A Dam supporter since way back in the beginning. You might also recognize the name of Mike Vukman who used to be on the Urban Creeks Council and was a big help during our sheetpile fiasco. Now he’s in the private sector working for Stantec, but still a friend of beavers. Ann and Lisa are regulars guests at our Worth A Dam New Year’s ravioli feed and Ann asked me to talk about what beavers have done in our urban stream. (They are sitting together at the back.)

Oh and the best part of all this? I found out that the conference program had been released by a woman I don’t know from Napa RCD who saw it the beaver workshop and thought I’d be interested! Turns out the folks in Napa have used this website to help with beavers the growing beaver population in Napa and she’s happens to be a friend of Ann’s.