California Department of Fish and Wildlife
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Range-Wide Coho Salmon Recovery Team (CRT)

The CRT is an advisory group made up of 21 members from a wide range of interests, professions, and perspectives. The team represents county, State, and Federal governments, native tribes, commercial and recreational fishing, forestry, agriculture, ranching, water management, and environmental interests. The CRT first met and commenced its work in December 2002. Since the Coho Recovery Strategy was published in 2004, the CRT has met annually to discuss the implementation status of the plan.

The team addresses many significant issues affecting coho salmon range-wide: coho salmon habitat; coho salmon population numbers; water quality, quantity and use; public works – such as road maintenance, bridges and culverts;

  • agriculture, forestry, and ranching
  • legacy effects of activities that took place decades ago
  • the role of regulation in the recovery process
  • increasing population pressure, subdivisions, and water demand
  • monitoring of habitat improvement efforts
  • the balance between private property rights and public trust resources
  • incentives to promote voluntary efforts to improve habitat; prioritizing recovery actions across the range of both ESUs
  • restoration of Tribal, recreational, and commercial fisheries.

The CRT recognizes that recovery of the coho salmon requires a cooperative effort across entire watersheds, considerable financial investment, and many years of effort. The CRT developed a mission statement to guide their effort to aid CDFW: Within our vision of restoring populations of coho salmon, including healthy, wild, naturally reproducing populations throughout its range, and restoring Tribal, commercial, and recreational fisheries in California, it is our mission to aid CDFW in the development of a recovery strategy for coho salmon, with the goal that the species will no longer warrant listing.

CRT Member organizations may be grouped together into the following categories: