River Partners
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River Partners is dedicated to creating wildlife habitat for the benefit of people and the environment. Restoring rivers and floodplains since 1998.
Senior Restoration Ecologist Corey Shake visited one of our newest restoration projects, the 1,721-acre Battle Creek Ranch, which we acquired this year, last fall, to start scoping our monitoring and restoration planning efforts. He and Director of Restoration Science Michael Rogner spotted these fall-run chinook salmon making their way up Battle Creek near the ranch. As one of California’s most important salmon-bearing waterways, Battle Creek is a vital salmon and steelhead stream in the Sacramento River watershed and supports all four runs of salmon, including these fall-run Chinook salmon.
Fall-run Chinook salmon are the most abundant of the four salmon runs in the Sacramento River, California’s largest waterway. An ecological pillar, salmon have long had an intimate connection with Indigenous Tribes throughout our state. Salmon are also a keystone species in the ecosystem. When they aren’t doing well, we know a lot of things aren’t as healthy as they’ve been in the past. Salmon populations in California have declined 90% over the last two decades, forcing the federal Endangered Species Act to list fall-run salmon as a Species of Concern. Ninety percent of their historical spawning habitat has been blocked by dams, leading to cramped living conditions in small river stretches. And drought, historic heat, and low water levels are creating warmer water temperatures, which lead to an inhospitable environment for salmon egg incubation.
River Partners is undertaking several efforts to try to boost salmon numbers within the Sacramento River, from restoring salmon habitat and side channels and learning more about their migratory journeys to our organizational mission to reconnect floodplains. Our future restoration at Battle Creek is yet one more opportunity to help one of our state’s most important fish species. So, seeing this group of salmon in Battle Creek reminds us that every year that passes is an opportunity that shouldn’t be missed to improve habitat conditions for salmon. The offspring of these fish will return in just 2-4 years to spawn themselves, and so our quick action to improve conditions on the river will be paid back relatively quickly in numbers of adult returns. We just have to act, and act now.
To read more about the wildlife River Partners comes across in the field, please read our story here: https://riverpartners.org/news/eyes-in-the-wild-a-river-partners-wildlife-journal-april-edition/
05/26/2026
A coyote and an American badger hunting together at night. Quite a sight, huh? That’s what one of our camera traps captured at the Finney-Ramer restoration site that we’re leading with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the California Conservation Corps, south of the Salton Sea. The collaborative hunting agreement between the American badger and coyote is a fascinating example of “collaborative hunting.” While the scene in the photo may look like two pals hanging out at night, this is actually a calculated hunting strategy that leverages the unique physical mechanics of two very different and effective predators.
Who does the work here in this sophisticated, mutualistic hunting partnership? The American badger typically performs the most physically demanding labor, using its powerful forelimbs and shovel-like claws to breach complex underground tunnel systems in search of prey. Meanwhile, the coyote secures the perimeter, employing its superior speed and height to monitor the many escape hatches of potential prey in a burrow that the badger can’t see while its head is in the dirt.
So, which animal benefits more from this arrangement? Research shows that coyotes hunting with badgers catch prey about one-third more often than they do when hunting alone—it simply waits for the badger to flush the prey out of the hole and saves huge amounts of energy by not chasing prey across open ground. And while the badger’s benefit is less dramatic, the coyote’s presence prevents prey from attempting its getaway above ground, often forcing the rodent back into the tunnel where the badger is already digging for an easy catch.
See more fun critters from our "Eyes in the Wild" series: https://riverpartners.org/news/eyes-in-the-wild-a-river-partners-wildlife-journal-february-edition/
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Chico, CA
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