Biologist Richard W. DeHaven: “Gualala River: On its Deathbed or Verge of a Miracle?”

Saturday, October 18, 2008
3:00 – 5:00 p.m.
Gualala Community Center
47950 Center St., Gualala

Learn the answer to this burning question as revealed by biologist Richard W. DeHaven, during a seminar from 3:00 – 5:00 p.m. on Saturday, October 18, 2008 at the Gualala Community Center.

Mr. DeHaven retired from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2004, after a 4-decade career. Before retiring in 2001, he initiated a 10-year population study of steelhead on the Gualala River. Now, with 8 years tallied in this effort, sufficient results have been compiled to answer the “deathbed” question and reveal such related Gualala secrets as:

• How many steelhead and coho salmon did the river support historically?
• How many steelhead are still returning from the ocean today?
• Why are coho essentially extinct, with little chance of returning soon?
• Why are “band-aid” restoration efforts not the best approach to restoring salmonids?
• What impacts are most effectively killing the river ecosystem?
• What single, most-critical habitat need should be capturing our focus?
• What new strategy exists for best meeting this critical habitat need?
• How can mitigation banking effectively offset future impacts in the watershed?

For the answers to these and other questions, join us from 3:00 – 5:00 p.m. on Saturday, October 18, 2008 at the Gualala Community Center. Admission is free and open to everyone, courtesy of Friends of the Gualala River.

For additional information, contact Mr. DeHaven at drdehave@hotmail.com or 916-206-9934, or visit his website, www.GualalaRiverSteelhead.info.

See also:

Summertime Dewatering: Slow but Sure Death to the River!
As summer progressed, more and more main-stem, downstream reaches have developed intermittent surface flows characterized by a series of slowly drying pools, or worse – up to hundreds of linear feet of stream without any surface flow at all!