Salmon Run supports Matilija Coalition

16th Annual Salmon Run – 5K Run/3K Walk

Sunday November 8 - Around 400 runners and walkers turned out for the annual 'Fun Run' event sponsored and organized by our good friends at Patagonia. This year's proceeds benefit the Matilija Coalition, a program started in 2000 by the Ventura County Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation to focus attention on the removal of Matilija Dam.

More here: http://www.patagonia.com/web/us/patagonia.go?sssdmh=dm23.117360&assetid=15737&src=store_event

The money raised from the event will directly support steelhead surveys in the Ventura River. Ongoing monitoring is a critical piece of the efforts to restore the river. (We have also applied for another grant from the California Department of Fish and Game for next year's study.)

Here is the short overview of the Matilija Coalition and the Ventura River:

Award winner!

'Watershed Revolution' won 'Best Short Documentary' in the Ojai-Ventura International Film Festival this weekend.

Apart from the fact that it was great to see our film played in a real theater, Watershed Revolution also received a great response from attendees of the film festival.

Each showing was followed by audience question and answer. The number one question - "When will Matilija Dam come down?"


photo: Co-Producers Rich Reid and Paul Jenkin at the Ojai Theater after Sunday night's showing.
Press: Ojai Valley News

Ojai Film Festival

Watershed Revolution will be featured in the Ojai – Ventura International Film Festival this weekend.

Our film will be screening twice during the event in Ojai:

Saturday, November 7, 5:30 pm at Matilija Auditorium
Sunday, November 8, 3:00 pm at Ojai Theater

Individual tickets are $10 and can be purchased at the door, and you can purchase a 4 or 6 pack of tickets online.

Watershed Revolution is a locally produced film that asks the question, “What is a watershed?” The answer is explored through interviews with people working to protect and preserve the Ventura River, while stunning high definition cinematography brings to life the beauty of the river.

The 30-minute film profiles community members and organizations working to protect and restore our watershed. It highlights the need for open space and floodplain protection, sustainable agriculture, and community awareness of our most precious resource: water.

“We are honored to be accepted to the Ojai Film Festival, an internationally recognized event,’ said Rich Reid, producer of the film. “This also provides an opportunity for those who missed the premiere screenings this summer to view the film and participate in the discussions.”

For more about the film and our watershed please visit www.watershedrevolution.com

Steelhead Revival

Over 120 people attended the Steelhead Revival presentation yesterday at Patagonia headquarters in Ventura. The event was organized by Matt Stoecker and Mauricio Gomez to provide an overview of the federally endangered southern steelhead trout and highlight efforts to restore this magnificent, iconic species to our local watersheds.

This event, fourth in a series, focused on the Santa Clara and Ventura River watersheds, both of which drain to the ocean in the city of Ventura. Matt provided a lively overview of the species, a presentation filled with photos and video that brought the fish to life. Matt also highlighted some of the recent progress made in our region with removal of small barriers that have reopened upstream habitat critical to the recovery of this endangered species.

I was invited to provide an update on the work of the Matilija Coalition, a program that has benefited from the support of Patagonia since 2000. I gave a brief overview of Matilija Dam and the steelhead monitoring that we have been sponsoring for the past 2 years.

The Q&A included much discussion of the Matilija Dam removal project, and the current impass on sediment management. There was interest in the before and after 'vision' for Matilija canyon, an image that has been integral to the planning process. This is also posted in video format here


If you missed it, there are two more events coming up:

November 7, 3:30 pm, Arroyo Hondo Preserve – Gaviota Coast
In coordination with the Land Trust for Santa Barbara County, this presentation will focus on theGaviota Coast (Jalama to Goleta) Watersheds.

November 19, 7:30 pm, Solvang Library, 1745 Mission Drive
In coordination with the Santa Ynez Valley Natural History Society, this presentation will focus
on the Santa Ynez River Watershed.

For additional information and specifics on upcoming events please contact:
Matt Stoecker matt@stoeckerecological.com or Mauricio Gomez mgomez@schabitatrestoration.org.

Many thanks to Patagonia for making this series of events possible.

The Ventura Experiment

The Ventura Experiment
Wednesday, Oct 28th - The Green Coalition of Ventura County

A student group from the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at UCSB presented their project which will feature Ventura as a model city working to reduce community carbon emissions. The goals of the study are to determine what to do, how to do it, and how much it will cost.

Around the world a selection of “Pioneer Cities” are undergoing similar projects. Ventura will be linked to Wuxi, a city on the Yangtse River in China. The group in Ventura on Wednesday night included a student from China, who also presented some insights from his country.

The study will have three steps. Bren students will evaluate our carbon footprint as a community. They will design a menu of strategies for reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. Then they will develop a feasibility analysis of the political and economic factors of our community. In addition to a set of recommendations for Ventura they hope to create a toolkit adoptable to other communities.

Of note was a 'wordle' taken from their initial work. (Wordles are like the label cloud on this blog, or this.) In this case, Water turned out to be the primary word. The group discussed how low flow shower heads and other water conservation measures can reduce carbon emissions - yes, saving water reduces energy used in pumping and heating the water we use on a daily basis.

The project web page has a wealth of information on the project and references on technologies and strategies. We can look for the results in the spring of 2010.

DFG Grant proposal

On Monday Oct 19, I presented a proposal for steelhead monitoring to the Tri-county Fish Team and Department of Fish and Game (DFG) representatives. The Matilija Coalition would like to use a Fisheries Restoration Grant to support two years of comprehensive monitoring to compliment the studies that began in 2003 with habitat assessment for the Matilija Dam Ecosystem Restoration project. We have cobbled together DFG and Patagonia funding to support the program for the past 2 years.

The objective of these studies is to establish baseline conditions prior to dam removal and contribute information on the variability of populations for the Steelhead Recovery Planning process.

The key scientific question is the variation in annual populations in the drought-and-flood climate of Southern California, and the ultimate response of fish populations to a large-scale watershed restoration project such as dam removal.

Port Orford EBM Conference

West Coast EBM Network 2nd Annual Meeting was held October 21‐23, 2009 in Port Orford, Oregon.

The primary objectives of the meeting were to learn about the Port Orford project in depth and share ideas and opportunities on emerging issues.

Port Orford is one of six community-based initiatives focused on the successful implementation of ecosystem-based management (EBM) along the coasts of Washington, Oregon and California. The Network was formally organized in 2008 (visit the website to learn more about the other projects, including Ventura.)

Having the opportunity to visit these sites and meet the people involved in these community efforts is always interesting. In Port Orford, their effort has resulted in the Port Orford Ocean Resource Team (POORT.)

POORT aims to protect their historic fishing grounds through integrated management of a Community Stewardship Area. The knowledge of the local fishermen was used to identify the marine portion of the ecosystem that were most relevant to the management goals. However, POORT also recognized the necessity to include the upland watershed terrestrial portions of their ecosystem that impact the marine portion and associated nearshore fisheries. As a result, their ecosystem planning area also includes roughly ¼ land area and ¾ ocean area.

The specific boundaries of the Community Stewardship Area were based on input gathered at public meetings and workshops in Port Orford. The primary considerations were socioeconomic (e.g., historic fishing grounds) and political (e.g., north and south boundaries are halfway between adjacent ports).

The Port Orford Community Stewardship Area is biologically diverse and encompasses terrestrial, freshwater, intertidal, and ocean environments. The Community Stewardship Area is 1,320 square miles, and includes 385 square
miles of terrestrial habitat and 935 square miles of ocean habitat. The area is 30 miles long (north to south), extends 18 miles offshore (west), and encompasses the Elk and Sixes River watersheds.