Endangered coho salmon returning to California streams

There has been a very welcome sight in several Northern California streams over the last few months: endangered coho salmon.

The salmon's spawning season runs from November to January. Last year, California saw more precipitation between October and December than in the previous 12 months, the National Weather Service said, and this substantial increase in rain and snow helped more fish make it this spawning season from the Tomales Bay watershed to tributaries of the Lagunitas Creek.

"We've seen fish in places that they haven't been for almost 25 years," Preston Brown, the Salmon Protection and Watershed Network's director of watershed conservation, told Reuters.

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California has been experiencing a long drought, and the rain and snow have been beneficial for agriculture and other industries that rely on water. Todd Steiner, executive director of Turtle Island Restoration Network, told Reuters that coho salmon "like these really tiny small streams, and that's where their survival is the highest. If we give the fish a fighting chance at survival, they will come back."