Navarro River, two more Mendocino Coast watersheds to see salmon habitat restoration

MENDOCINO Co, CA, 5/8/23 — Linda MacElwee, watershed coordinator for the Mendocino County Resource Conservation District (MCRCD), still receives numerous calls every fall as a bar of sediment builds up at the mouth of the Navarro River. She explained that the state used to open up this bar, which is created by low flows and big waves and blocks fish passage into the river. 

“What we have kind of come to understand is, we don’t want to open up that bar,” she said. “It means that we would be inviting fish into the system when there isn’t really sufficient flow to support them, even once they got in.”