Southern Steelhead Coalition 

What is the Southern Steelhead Coalition (SSC)?

The Southern Steelhead Coalition was formally the Santa Clara River Steelhead Coalition (Coalition) and currently serves as a vehicle for coordination among agency programs and private sector activities across jurisdictions to target high priority projects, and to improve the timeliness and cost-effectiveness of Southern California steelhead recovery in the Santa Clara River, Ventura, and Santa Ynez watershed. The Coalition is also exploring opportunities to secure and provide funding for steelhead restoration projects and extensive public engagement and outreach. By combining the experience and knowledge from a broad spectrum of fish passage improvement, biodiversity and water conservation proponents and projects, Coalition members are able to work more efficiently and in a highly coordinated fashion to identify and remedy technical and procedural obstacles as they arise.

The Coalition’s goal is to increase the pace, scale, and scope of watershed restoration projects leading to resilient Southern steelhead populations in high priority rivers of Southern California.

The Southern California steelhead is an iconic species on the South Coast of California. Southern steelhead are culturally important and serve as an indicator species to gauge the broader health of the entire watershed. Southern steelhead have an irreplaceable impact on Southern California watersheds and communities, but they are experiencing an alarming rate of population decline due habitat loss from human development.

The total loss of this species will have irreversible consequences. The Southern Steelhead Coalition is committed to the conservation of this amazing species by pursuing landscape level watershed restoration projects that support all native species and benefit the greater community as well.

The State of the Salmonids: Status of California’s Emblematic Fishes (Moyle et al. 2017) determined that Southern steelhead are of “Critical Concern,” with the population in danger of extinction with the next 25–50 years due to anthropogenic and environmental conditions.

Why the Southern Steelhead?

What does the Coalition do?

Coalition members are currently leading priority barrier removal projects, floodplain and riparian habitat restoration and headwater conservation. We are continually working with local, state and federal partners to help prioritize and amplify the positive benefits by building capacity within the restoration community. Most importantly we engage the people impacted by resource management decisions directly, working to advance our understanding of the simple fact that Southern steelhead are the best indication of total watershed health. A watershed, that we as a community, derive many ecosystem services from like drinking water, jobs and recreation.

The Coalition focuses on advancing comprehensive watershed restoration in the Santa Ynez & Santa Clara River Basin.

Implementing community-supported multi-species, multi-benefit restoration projects, advocating for resource conservation and engaging the public.