MENDOCINO CO., 4/19/26 — At the Mendocino County Fish and Game Commission’s April grant hearing, commissioners spent the better part of an afternoon listening to some of the most ambitious habitat restoration pitches the North Coast has produced in years: a plan to wipe American bullfrogs out of the Ten Mile Creek basin by 2036, a red abalone captive-breeding lab in Noyo Harbor, a kelp restoration project in Caspar Cove meant to carry on the legacy of a recently deceased diving advocate, steel bollards to finally keep trucks out of salmon redds on the Garcia River, and a wildlife telemetry antenna that would fill a 150-mile gap in the Pacific Flyway monitoring network.
Except they have $80,000 to spread across all of it.
And next year they’ll have less.
The commission — Chair Randy Vann, plus commissioners Kyle Farmer, Joe Prestino, Traci Pellar, Domenick Weaver and Patty Madigan — heard 13 propagation grant applications Tuesday. Ten applicants showed up in person or on Zoom to present. Three did not. A few highlights before the money talk:
Prestino reported that 24 to 25 steelhead have returned to the Russian River hatchery so far this season, with one more spawn day left. Weaver, who tracks ocean fisheries, said the Pacific Fishery Management Council had approved tentative salmon seasons Sunday, and the Point Arena-to-Shelter Cove stretch now has its own area-specific quota — meaning more fishing days for 2026 than coastal anglers have seen in a while.
Groundfish rules are loosening, too: Yelloweye and quillback rockfish, which had forced fishers out into the narrow 20-fathom shelf, have been declared rebuilt, so depth restrictions are coming off. Weaver also flagged two white shark incidents on the Mendocino coast since Jan. 1, unusual for winter, along with warming water and a looming El Nino.
On the other side of the ledger, the red abalone moratorium has been extended to 2036. When a state commissioner was asked about revisiting it, Weaver reported, the answer was that reopening “puts too much demand on our staff.” There was a long silence in the room when that line landed.
The projects on the table are vital
The Eel River Recovery Project wants to start systematically removing American bullfrogs from 14 ponds in the Ten Mile Creek basin — the east branch of the South Fork Eel, just off Highway 101 near Laytonville, not to be confused with the Ten Mile River on the coast. Bullfrogs eat native red-legged frogs, turtles and basically anything that moves.
Wildlife biologist Thomas Kirk wrote the management plan, and when outreach coordinator Erin Newroth put the word out for 10 student interns from Laytonville High, she got 31 applications. The students would do four pond visits a month, earn a $500 stipend and train as wildlife technicians. Pat Higgins, who runs the recovery project, said feral pigs are a longer-term target, but he wants to “scope the heck out of the community” before touching that one.
The Noyo Center for Marine Science, now 10 years old and operating out of three facilities in Fort Bragg, including the old Cliff House/Crinies building in Noyo Harbor, is building out a regenerative aquaculture wet lab. Director Sheila Semans made the case plainly: Red abalone populations are down roughly 80%, and the species will not survive without intervention.
The center is already working with the Kashia Band of Pomo Indians on restoration dives along the Sonoma coast, where more than 70 tons of purple urchin have been removed, and is months away from getting adult abalone broodstock into tanks. The grant would help pay for the next phase: actually spawning the animals.
Wild Blue Aquaculture, a year-and-a-half-old Fort Bragg outfit run by Jake Gourd, is the for-profit cousin of that work — ranching purple urchin commercially and now trying to add abalone. Gourd, in a moment of unusual candor for a grant hearing, told the commission that if it came down to a funding stalemate, they should give the money to the Noyo Center instead of him.
Reef Check, represented by Fort Bragg-based regional manager Ian Norton, is asking for help monitoring and restoring Caspar Cove — which, as Norton pointed out, is the only place in California where recreational divers are allowed to cull purple urchin in the water. That regulatory exception exists largely because of the late Josh Russo of the Watermen’s Alliance, who died recently. Norton said the project is partly meant to carry Russo’s work forward, and Chair Vann passed on the commission’s condolences.
Mendocino Redwood Co.’s Hayley Ross brought photos of trucks stuck in the Garcia River at Voorhees Memorial Grove, a public access point dedicated in 1974 by Louisiana-Pacific at the request of former landowner Dick Holms in memory of Earl Voorhees. Randy Vann produced a 1989 Observer article about L-P closing the same gate for the same reason. MRC wants to install steel bollards four feet apart to keep trucks off the spawning gravels without shutting the public out entirely.
Rounding out the list: Mendocino Fawn Rehab, the only permitted wildlife rehab in the county, which has released 63 blacktail fawns since 2018 and fielded 523 wildlife calls last year; the Redwood Forest Foundation’s Motus wildlife telemetry antenna, which would fill a gap between Santa Rosa and Humboldt Redwoods State Park in a global bird migration monitoring network; the Bill Townsend Conservation Hatchery on the Russian River, which runs on 1,247 volunteer hours a year; and a private streambank stabilization project on Ten Mile Creek by Greg and Tanya Musgrave, who are kicking in $30,000 of their own money toward a $150,000 fix.
The math problem
Here is the part that should bother people.
The propagation grant fund — the pot of money all these projects are competing for — is filled by fines and penalties collected from Fish and Game violations in Mendocino County. Poachers pay for conservation, essentially.
Last year, the fund took in about $1,800.
Farmer explained the arithmetic. There used to be years when the fund brought in $12,000 to $20,000 — mostly from abalone poaching cases back when there was still an abalone fishery. As the number of wardens working the county has dropped, and as cases have struggled to get prosecuted in the district attorney’s office, the revenue has thinned to almost nothing.
Grants were historically capped at $5,000 per project. Vann and Madigan pushed the Board of Supervisors a few years ago to lift the cap to $25,000 so the commission could fund projects of real consequence. It worked. But at current revenue, the commission can barely refill the pot between cycles. The $80,000 available this year already represents drawing the balance down. Next year is projected to be closer to $50,000. After that, Farmer noted, “we’ll be done.”
The commission will meet again at 2 p.m. May 5 to rank the applications and decide who gets funded. Madigan suggested they also try to get on the Board of Supervisors agenda afterward — partly to show off the projects and partly to have a frank conversation about wardens, prosecutions and what happens to local habitat work when the enforcement pipeline runs dry.
In the meantime, there are 13 very good ideas and a fund that’s running on fumes.
The commission rotates its meetings between Ukiah, Willits, and Fort Bragg. The next meeting’s location will be in the agenda at Fish And Game Commission | Mendocino County, CA.