Back in Person! 23rd Annual Coho Confab to be Held on the Navarro River Aug 20-22, 2021
Evolving Strategies to Enhance Coho Salmon Habitat
Salmonid Restoration Federation (SRF) is coordinating the 23rd Annual Coho Confab that will take place August 20-22 on the Navarro River in Mendocino County. This year’s Coho Confab will be held at River’s Bend Retreat Center in Philo which is nestled in the redwoods.
The Coho Confab is a field symposium to learn about watershed restoration and techniques to restore and recover coho salmon populations. The Coho Confab will feature opening talks about life cycle monitoring in Mendocino, flow enhancement strategies in the Navarro, and a special keynote talk by Brock Dolman titled Ridge to River, Rethinking and Retrofitting for Rehydration.
The Confab weekend includes a flow enhancement workshop that will highlight the California Environmental Flow Framework, evolving flow enhancement techniques to address climate change, community-based water storage and forbearance efforts, water transactions to protect flows, and forest evapotranspiration implications for forest management.
Saturday field tours include large wood installation projects in the North Fork of the Navarro and the Mendocino Coast, and a tour of water storage projects in the Navarro to restore stream flows to benefit fish and people. The flow tour will meander along the middle reach of Mill Creek and visit off stream storage and rainwater catchment, and large wood projects. This tour will end at Husch Vineyards where participants can see the catchment pond, native plant/pollinator rain demonstration garden, and sample Husch’s delicious wines.
The Open Forum on Saturday evening will focus on flow enhancement strategies for climate change resilience and will feature a roundtable discussion with some of the presenters from the morning flow enhancement workshop.
The last day of the Confab will include a tour of Ten Mile River Estuary/Floodplain Restoration Project including three construction phases geared for coho and steelhead recovery on the Mendocino Coast. Concurrently, there will be a tour in Sonoma County: Realtering the Laguna: Restoring Lost Habitat and Improving Water Quality, where participants can learn about restoring the largest freshwater system in Northern California.
SRF’s partners in this Confab include CDFW, the Mendocino Coast RCD, Trout Unlimited, and The Nature Conservancy.
To register for the Confab or to view the full agenda please visit our website:
www.calsalmon.org.