Marin County Ghost Town Cleared Away to Save Lagunitas Creek’s Coho Salmon
The rumble of heavy machinery might as well have been harp music to Todd Steiner, who stood on a bluff next to Lagunitas Creek in Marin County last week and admired the channels and trenches the belching excavators were digging out of the banks.
The mile-long network of machine-carved features that include tree-covered islands, carefully sculpted banks with overhanging branches, strategically placed logs and a tableau of freshly planted trees and bushes are part of an eight-year effort to transform a creekside ghost town into a floodplain for endangered coho salmon.
The effort is the most ambitious salmon habitat restoration project that Steiner, the executive director of Turtle Island Restoration Network, has ever put to work on the picturesque waterway, which supports the largest wild population of coho in the region.