Let’s talk about fish for today. And those high-powered lawsuits that get folk willing to spend millions of dollars to save them but not spare the lives of the beavers who would do it for free, Yesterday our favorite news agency who writes about beavers all the time without actually realizing it wrote this:

California salmon will have places to chill with dam removal

A $100 million project removing dams and helping fish route around others is returning a badly endangered salmon to spring-fed waters in northernmost California, giving cold-loving native fish a life-saving place to chill as scientists say climate change, drought and human diversions warm the waters.</em >

State and federal officials, in a years-long project with dam-owner Pacific Gas & Electric Co., plan to release 200,000 young, endangered winter-run Chinook salmon over the next two months into the north fork of Battle Creek, where melted snow percolating through volcanic rock provides ideal habitat for native salmon and steelhead that thrive in cold mountain water.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ranks winter-run Chinook as one of eight marine species most at risk of extinction.

Because of Battle Creek’s spring-fed cold water, and the difficulty of keeping the Sacramento River cool enough for the winter-run Chinook, state and federal agencies made a priority of making Battle Creek accessible to winter-run Chinook again.

“Battle Creek has long been recognized as an ideal resource for cold water from snow melt,” said Doug Killam, a senior environmental scientist with the state wildlife agency. “It’s kind of a jewel of the system

That’s right. Just shoot the chinook in at top dollar and hope for the best. I’m sure you’re doing everything you can. It’s not like there was this resource that made cooler waters in CA that was just getting ignored and thrown away. Right?

Oooh, I’m sure that part of California doesn’t even have any of those fish saving beavers. They probably never got that far north. I’m sure if they had we’d be in having a different conversation now.

Well sure, some of those beavers were killed in Tehama and Shasta Counties, but look, In 2015 fewer beavers were killed in Shasta county and no beavers at all were killed in Tehama were. That’s good news right?