by Craig Smith

Rusty Cohen was out for a neighborhood walk along Soscol, when near the Hawthorne Inn he noticed a lot of small, chewed trees in the creek. He explored a little bit and found a beaver dam there. After that, he stopped by every day while walking. It changed everything for him.

Cohen and his family moved to Napa from Albany in 2011. His daughter was attending a special needs school here, he was retiring, and it seemed like a good move. During one of his daily walks, he discovered the beaver dam, not fifteen minutes from his house.

He wasn’t much of a photographer until he discovered beavers, which are the largest rodent in North America and one of the few species which significantly modify their environment. Cohen bought a point-and-shoot camera, which kept him busy for a while, but met a photographer who suggested he invest in a good DSL camera. He has developed a lot of skill as a photographer, and his shots of river wildlife is stunning.

For Cohen, the appeal of beavers is in part that they are a keystone species. Beaver ponds attract a wide variety of other furbearing animals including mink, muskrats, otters and raccoons. The unique dam- and pond-building attributes of beavers create favorable habitat for a variety of wildlife species, including fish, ducks, shorebirds, amphibians and reptiles.

Three facts about beavers:

If they weren’t continually wearing their teeth down, the constant growth would prevent them from feeding, and could eventually kill them.
Not all beavers build dams. They're fine as long as they have an area to build their lodge, like a riverbank; food; access to mates; and water that allows them to escape from predators—the reason they build dams in the first place.
Beavers have vanilla scented butts –at least to some people’s noses. It’s a result of their diet of leaves and bark.

Report by Napa RCD

In 2009, Napa RCD began the Napa River Watershed Steelhead and Salmon Monitoring Program with the goal of better understanding steelhead trout and Chinook salmon populations in the Napa River watershed. Since the program was initiated, Napa RCD has conducted annual monitoring of smolt abundance, adult returns, juvenile distribution, and genetic diversity, as funding and environmental conditions allowed.

This monitoring program is intended to provide science-based information to all stakeholders involved in steelhead and salmon management and recovery. In addition to generating data on steelhead and salmon, the monitoring program also provides information about other native fishes and tracks ecological responses to ongoing habitat restoration.

A total of five Chinook salmon spawner surveys were completed between December 11, 2019 and January 9, 2020. The surveys covered approximately 40.0 kilometers (24.9 miles) of the mainstem Napa River between Calistoga and Oak Knoll Avenue. In total, 60 salmon redds, 14 live salmon, and zero salmon carcasses were observed.

2020 represented the 12th consecutive year of steelhead and salmon out-migrant monitoring using a rotary screw trap in the Napa River. Due to exceptionally low flow conditions throughout spring, the trap was only in operation for 11 days. 1,457 fish were captured, including 11 native and 3 non-native species. Native species comprised 99.5% of the total catch and non-native fishes accounted for 0.5%.

33 Chinook parr/smolts were captured; however, the trap was not operational during the peak Chinook smolt outmigration period of May and early June. The fish may have been moving, but we just weren't able to detect it this year.

The Chinook abundance in any given year appears to be primarily dependent upon (1) natural variability in the amount and timing of rainfall, and (2) inputs of stray salmon from other river systems and/or Central Valley hatcheries that opportunistically spawn in the Napa River.

44 steelhead smolts were captured,42 of which were PIT tagged. During the past eight years (2013 - 2020) 564 steelhead smolts have been tagged. Of that total, six have been re-detected in subsequent years by the Napa River PIT tag antenna. These tagging data represent the first known confirmation of steelhead returning to the Napa River.

To read the full report, please find it here on the Napa RCD website.