August 7, 2026 — When any habitat restoration project finishes, a critical question remains: Will the project help threatened fish and other species recover? Answering that question requires rigorous long-term monitoring.
At the Prairie Creek salmon habitat restoration project in Northern California, researchers from NOAA Fisheries’ Office of Habitat Conservation, Cal Poly Humboldt, and other partners have conducted monitoring before, during, and after construction to determine whether the project would improve the survival prospects of threatened Southern Oregon/Northern California Coast coho salmon.
The project transformed a former lumber mill site into wetlands, side channels, and off-channel ponds where juvenile salmon can rest, feed, and grow before migrating to the Pacific Ocean. Juvenile salmon that grow big and strong in freshwater have a better chance of surviving their time in the ocean and returning as adults to spawn.
Early findings suggest that juvenile coho salmon using the restored habitat are growing faster and experiencing higher ocean survival than prior generations from the same watershed. Preexisting monitoring data going back to 2011 gave the team an unusually long baseline against which to measure change. Their findings are also changing what scientists understand about how juvenile salmon use coastal watersheds.