Conservation Highlights
Giving Fish a Fighting Chance - Corralitos Creek, Watsonville
After. Apple farmer Mitch Bulich shows off the restored section of Corralitos Creek he hopes will once again support large numbers of threatened fish.
Second-generation apple farmer Mitch Bulich will tell you he doesn't smile much. But, he can't keep from smiling about his work to restore a vital stretch of Corralitos Creek that runs through his 60-acre apple orchard in bucolic Watsonville.
During a recent visit, Mitch said (with a smile), "I hope this project will bring back the fish that used to be here. I remember coming down to the creek when I was younger. there were so many, I never had trouble catching the limit."
Through the mid-1900s, Corralitos Creek was one of Santa Cruz County's most productive steelhead breeding grounds. By the 1990s, steelhead populations had declined dramatically on Corralitos Creek and across the southern part of California's Central Coast.
In 1997, the federal government listed the species as "threatened." Among other factors, decades of dirt-laden runoff has clogged once-clean streams and buried gravel beds needed for spawning. Sediment in the creek also flows into the Pajaro River - one of the nation's most ailing waterways according to the nonprofit American Rivers - and eventually the ecologically rich Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.
That was Mitch's problem. In 2006, a series of heavy rains turned the usually calm stretch of Corralitos Creek that meanders through his orchards into a rushing, theme-park water ride. Fast-moving currents broke off and swallowed a large swath of his orchard - more than 15,000 cubic yards of soil, enough to fill nearly a halfdozen Olympic-sized swimming pools.
Standing His Ground
In Progress. Installation of streambank protections after a flooded Corralitos Creek carved out part of an apple orchard. Work was conducted in the summertime to avoid harming fish..
To keep from losing more land and help the Corralitos return to the fish-friendly waterway it was decades ago, Mitch and the RCD of Santa Cruz County completed an audacious streambank stabilization project using Sustainable Conservation's Partners in Restoration program. Restoration efforts involved installing a series of timber and rock "speed bumps" that not only slow the creek down to a less-destructive pace, but also redirect its flow away from the streambank to keep Mitch's orchards safe and the creek dirt-free. engineers used redwood trees that fell into the creek back in 2006 to construct the velocity-reducing bumps (pictured behind Mitch).
According to RCD of Santa Cruz County executive Director Karen Christensen, "the cool water and riparian cover Mitch's project has produced is critical to bring back populations of endangered fish to this important watershed. Corralitos Creek is the lowest tributary to the Pajaro River, and is accessible to fish even in dry years when other portions of the river aren't."
More fish will mean more smiles from Bulich ... something he's getting used to.