The draft HCP would impose far more serious and expensive conservation measures than those in California Forest Practice Rules. Higgins' Exhibit A is KRIS-coho, a research database he created that contains more than you ever wanted to know about North Coast salmon habitat. On a recent visit to his Arcata office, he gave me a tour of fish surveys in the Van Duzen River basin from 1972. Today, coho salmon do not run up these creeks. Extensive logging, he says, has loaded streams with sediment, causing channels to spread and become shallower and warmer.
Tree stands are no longer dense enough to create a cool riparian microclimate.
There are some steelhead left but mostly these streams are dominated by roach. Now squawfish are invading. It's a hostile takeover by warm-water fish. Higgins talks fast, often showing his gift for metaphor. The Bear River had chinook and coho until 1955, and it could have them again.