When dams come down, fish come home
In October 2021, ecologists shattered the top of a dam on Mill Creek, near Davenport, California, with a hydraulic hammer. Within hours, the entire structure was down. For at least 110 years, the long-obsolete dam had kept threatened steelhead from reaching important spawning habitat just upstream. …. Then, in September 2022, [Ian] Rowbotham’s team spotted juvenile steelhead above the former dam site. To their surprise, they also found 15 juvenile coho salmon downstream. It was the first time coho, an endangered species, had ever been recorded in Mill Creek….The experience adds to a growing body of research documenting the speedy recovery of fish and other species after dams are removed