California’s spring-run Chinook salmon were already in the midst of a population crash before the Park fire exploded into the state’s fourth-largest wildfire in history . Biologists now worry the fire could push the fish closer to extinction by scorching forests along creeks that provide critical spawning habitat. The wildfire has been burning through the upper Mill and Deer Creek watersheds, threatening forested canyons that provide some of last intact spawning habitat for spring-run Chinook salmon.
“This fire entering the upper watershed, where we have sensitive spawning and rearing habitat, is concerning,” said Matt Johnson, a senior environmental scientist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. “You have a wildfire that is coming at a very inopportune time for the species and a wildfire that’s being driven by a hundred years of fire suppression activities and a warming climate.” The two creeks are considered vital strongholds for federally threatened spring-run Chinook salmon, which have suffered long-term declines because of water diversions, dams that have blocked them from reaching spawning grounds, and increasingly severe droughts worsened by climate change .
Even before the fire, biologists were so alarmed about a recent crash in the spring-run salmon population that last year they began capturing juvenile fish from Deer Creek to breed them in captivity. The fire is burning near creek areas where adult fish typically spend weeks swimming i.