The River is
Coming Home
On a bend of the Tuolumne near La Grange, crews are in the water right now, rebuilding the river so salmon can return this fall.
A generation ago, the Tuolumne had the largest salmon run in the entire San Joaquin Valley.
Today it has the smallest.
99%
— the decline in the Tuolumne’s
salmon run from what it once was
This summer, we are rebuilding what
brings them back.
It’s early on a summer morning at a bend in the Tuolumne River, just below La Grange, and a crew is already in the water. For years, this stretch was cut off from the life of the river: a straightened channel and old mining gravel where salmon couldn’t spawn and young fish had nowhere to feed or hide.
The crew is giving the river room to spread out again, into the slow, cool, shallow water where young Chinook grow strong enough to reach the ocean. For the first time in a long time, this bend is getting ready to hold salmon again.
The habitat we build this summer is what the salmon come home to this fall.
Miss the window, and we wait another year.
Hit it, and a river that was nearly written off takes one more real step back toward life.
Your gift goes
straight to
the ground
Restoration is slower and less glamorous than the word suggests. Most of it happens with no one watching: crews out in the heat, moving gravel the river will sort for itself, planting the young trees that will one day shade the water.
Bring the salmon back, and the rest of the river comes with them: the birds, the wildlife, and the clean flows that towns and farms downstream depend on.
Your gift is what keeps the work moving while the window is open.
3 Million
Californians drink water carried by these rivers
480,000
Acres of Central Valley farmland nourished by these watersheds
600+
wildlife species supported
40+ years of on-the-ground conservation
help bring
the salmon
home
The fall run is coming. Would you make a gift while the crews are still on the ground? The supporters who step up first are the ones who make everything that follows possible.
750ft
New channel meander
Know someone
who loves
this river?
Not every gift is a dollar. Sharing this page puts the river in front of someone who has been waiting for a reason to stand up for it.