page_title: Los Gatos Creek (Santa Clara County)
section_title: Habitat and wildlife
hierarchical_section_title: Los Gatos Creek (Santa Clara County) / Habitat and wildlife
caption_attribution_description: Beaver dams on upper Los Gatos Creek- Santa Cruz Mountains - 2009.
context_page_description: The Los Gatos Creek runs 24 miles in California through Santa Clara Valley Water District's Guadalupe Watershed from the Santa Cruz Mountains northward through the Santa Clara Valley until its confluence with the Guadalupe River in downtown San Jose. The Guadalupe River then continues onward into San Francisco Bay.
  The creek begins in the Santa Cruz mountains near the Santa Clara/Santa Cruz County border, just south of the peak Loma Prieta. It then flows northwesterly to Lake Elsman, a reservoir owned by the San Jose Water Company, then on to Holy City and Chemeketa Park, then northward into the Lexington Reservoir. The creek then flows through the Los Gatos Canyon and through the town of Los Gatos and Vasona Reservoir, then northeasterly through Campbell and San Jose where it meets the Guadalupe River.
context_section_description: Fish were plentiful for the first settlers of Los Gatos Creek. Newspaper stories in the 1880s describe catches of 100 to 200 trout a day. One pioneer wrote that "speckled trout were so plentiful, they could be caught with your hands." Based on the locations of fish collections made in 1895 and historical habitat condition suitable for salmonids, Los Gatos Creek likely supported a healthy population of steelhead trout (coastal rainbow trout) (Oncorhynchus mykiss irideus). A 1952 California Department of Fish and Game document stated that substantial steelhead runs had not been seen in Los Gatos Creek since 1937, when agricultural pumps lowered the water table throughout the Santa Clara Valley and dewatered the lower reach. However, stream resident coastal rainbow trout populations remain in the portions of the creek maintaining permanent flow, just below and above of Lexington Reservoir. The Santa Clara Valley Water District reservoir system has now raised water tables sufficiently that lower Los Gatos Creek once again supports steelhead trout. However, stream resident rainbow trout may produce offspring which become anadromous.
  Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) that migrate up the Guadalupe River and Los Gatos Creek from San Francisco Bay. Both chinook and steelhead have been spotted as far up the creek as Hamilton Avenue (see inset photo). Although some have asserted that the Chinook salmon in the Guadalupe River watershed (which includes Los Gatos Creek) are strays from Central Valley hatcheries, a 1992-1994 genetic study of 29 fish showed that some have haplotypes not found in Central Valley wild or hatchery salmon, but found in the Russian River. This is significant because the California Coast Chinook salmon Evolutionarily Significant Unit (ESU) was considered federally threatened September 16, 1999 (64 FR 50394) and reaffirmed June 28, 2005 (70 FR 37160), although the Russian River is normally considered the southernmost limit for this ESU.
  Between Lake Elsman and Lexington Reservoir, the creek is pristine and closed to the public. Here, along with rainbow trout, beaver, bobcats (Lynx rufus), wild boar (Sus scrofa) and puma (Puma concolor) are extant. The beaver were restocked to the portion of Los Gatos Creek where it enters Lexington Reservoir sometime before spring 1992, and recently, a beaver reportedly served as "a hearty meal" for a local mountain lion. Historical evidence of beaver in the area includes reference by Captain John Sutter who around 1840 recorded that 1,500 beaver pelts were sold "at a trifling value" by the Indians to Mission San José, the latter only 25 miles from the town of Los Gatos. Physical proof of golden beaver in south San Francisco Bay tributaries is a Castor canadensis subauratus skull in the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History collected by zoologist James Graham Cooper in Santa Clara, California on Dec. 31, 1855. Cooper lived in Mountain View, California from October to December 1855 and collected most of his specimens on Saratoga Creek (then "Quito Creek").
  Osprey (Pandion haliaetus) began to re-colonize the watershed after at least a 150-year absence with documentation of nesting sites in 2004.
caption: Beaver dams on upper Los Gatos Creek. Note dead conifer(s) reflected in pool and in background are critical for cavity-nesting birds like wood ducks, American kestrels, mergansers, Pacific-slope flycatchers, tree swallows, owls, etc.
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