The Woodard & Curran Foundation has awarded its annual $100,000 Impact Grant to Turtle Island Restoration Network (TIRN), a California-based nonprofit that has been protecting threatened coastal species for more than 30 years. TIRN will apply this funding to the Lagunitas Watershed Resiliency Project, that aims to protect and enhance habitat for the endangered coho salmon.
The coho keystone
Biodiversity may be a hot topic in environmental circles today, however, the importance of variety in plant, animal, and fungal species is nothing new. Heterogeny — on both a local and a global scale — has long served as an indicator of ecological health. Furthermore, this diversity of life upholds our supply of food and medicine and even provides natural resiliency measures in the face of a changing climate.
Coho salmon are a keystone species — like the keystone in a stone bridge, they have a disproportionate impact on their environment. They balance pressure on both sides of the food chain to support a healthy arch of biodiversity. In praxis, the presence and health of coho populations affect everything from water quality in the creeks where they spawn to annual birth rates among orca whales.
The Foundation’s $100,000 Impact Grant is funding work to be accomplished by the Salmon Protection and Watershed Network (SPAWN), a program under TIRN that over the last 20-plus years has produced measurable gains through partnerships with state and federal agencies, local organizations, and landowners. TIRN-SPAWN outreach and education programs engage hundreds of people each year throughout the San Francisco Bay Area to learn about endangered Coho salmon and the urgency of saving this species through watershed restoration, native plant propagation, and riparian revegetation.
