The Lagunitas Creek Watershed in Northern California is arguably one of the most important habitats for endangered California Coastal Coho Salmon, so when Turtle Island’s Executive Director Todd Steiner learned that an aging dam was blocking their natural migration route he took action and SPAWN, Salmon Protection And Watershed Network, was born. SPAWN working with a large collaboration of community members and local environmental groups was able to successfully remove Roy’s Dam in 1999, creating Roy’s Pools. But now, our flagship project is in need of updates to continue to support healthy fish migrations.

SPAWN plans to build a new, natural channel at the site of Roy’s Pools that will allow young juvenile fish to swim downstream to the ocean, and adult coho salmon can swim upstream to spawn. This new channel will support salmon during all of their life stages and hopefully increase the number of spawning salmon seen in our watershed each year.

A public meeting will be held on August, 25th at 10 am at the Banquet Hall at the San Geronimo Golf Course to discuss the project, approach, design and objectives. Engineers from the design firm ESA-PWA will share their vision of the project, the County of Marin will discuss permitting and how the design will incorporate modifications to a public bridge. The meeting is free and open to the public and everyone is welcome to attend.

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