This month, California's Department of Fish & Wildlife (CDFW) voted to list Southern California steelhead trout as an endangered species.

Salmon in California are struggling – facing drought, river heatwaves, polluted runoff, poor spawning habitat, and barriers to fish passage – is it a wonder that the salmon fishing season in California is canceled, again. Robert Lusardi, Associate Director at the Center for Watershed Sciences and faculty member in the Wildlife, Fish, & Conservation Department at UC Davis, says almost half of California's native trout and salmon species could disappear in the next 50 years.

Karrigan Börk, Associate Director at the Center for Watershed Sciences and acting professor of law at UC Davis' School of Law, has been awarded the Morrison Prize for his 2023 legal paper on water extraction rights. The $10,000 Morrison Prize is a distinguished honor; it is awarded annually to the author of the most influential academic legal article on environmental sustainability pu

Using five years of post-treatment data on farm-level water use, we find that water conservation doubles between the first and fifth year of the tax. – Bruno et al. 2023

New research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) has uncovered how kelp forests shape beach food webs and ecosystem dynamics. The study was recently published by Jonathan Walter (CWS Senior Researcher, lead author), Kyle A. Emery, Jenifer E. Dugan, David M. Hubbard, Tom W. Bell, Lawrence W. Sheppard, Vadim A. Karatayev, Kyle C. Cavanaugh, Daniel C. Reuman, and Max C. N. Castorani.