Tuesday, February 6, 2024

Tuesday, January 30, 2024

Saturday, November 11, 2023

Steelhead numbers in the Carmel River are on a downward trend

 

Steelhead are a threatened species whose decline in the Carmel River became a driving catalyst behind the state’s cease-and-desist order against Cal Am for the utility’s decades-long overpumping.

Over the long term, steelhead numbers in the Carmel River are on a downward trend. That is expected to continue as climate change continues warming the ocean and, locally, leading to more extreme droughts – just around 1 to 2 percent of steelhead that make the trip out to sea successfully return to spawn.

Info from MCW

Image from MPWMD

Thursday, October 19, 2023

Tuesday, June 27, 2023

Thursday, June 22, 2023

Rana Creek Ranch Was Recently Acquired by the Wildlands Conservancy for $35 million

 


Photo by: Courtesy of Hall & Hall

From: SF Gate

A sprawling 14,000-acre property in the Carmel Valley will become a public nature preserve. Known as Rana Creek Ranch, the land is an important site for the Esselen Tribe, and the tribe will be able to access the land again after the sale. Wolves, tule elk, beavers and the California condor all roamed the land 200 years ago.


Tuesday, April 25, 2023

Friday, February 17, 2023

Above Carmel Point

The South-Central Coast Steelhead Have Declined to the Low Hundreds


 From: Carmel River Watershead

 The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) published in 2013 a Recovery Program for our distinct population of steelhead trout named the South-Central Coast Steelhead (SCCS). 

The "grade" they gave the Carmel River steelhead recovery at that time was "Poor," as the numbers of adult steelhead in our river had declined to the low hundreds if even that many. 

NMFS stated that to delist (remove) our SCCS from the Threatened Species list a number of conditions would have to be met including: mean annual run size of 4,500 adults, adequate ocean conditions, density of spawning fish, and certain fish genetic histories in our river.

Thursday, February 2, 2023

Thursday, December 1, 2022

Baltazar's Rebellion of 1779


Baltazar came from the Point Lobos area known as Isxchenta, a Rumsen Ohlone village. He came to the Carmel Mission sometime around 1775 (the year he was baptized).

What began as civil disobedience and casual opposition by Baltazar eventually turned into an attempted coup. Batazar fled the Carmel Mission in 1779 along with a band of several other mission natives. Baltazar turned south to the Big Sur coast, meeting his daughter and her people, the Sargentaruc, who organized ways to resist Spanish forces.

As Spanish forces continued to cut off resources and reinforcements to Baltazar’s rebellion, it became increasingly difficult to sustain the resistance. Baltazar died in the fall of 1780 of unknown causes, and many members of his group hesitantly returned to the missions for the promise of seeing their family and friends again.

Art by Louis Choris- “Indian of California.” Painting is not of Baltazar, but of a typical Ohlone man in the Bay Area and likely similar to what Baltazar looked like.

 FROM: Point Lobos

Wednesday, November 2, 2022

“Isxchenta” is known as Point Lobos

 


 The area in/around Point Lobos is known by many of the local indigenous peoples as “Isxchenta” (pronounced EESH-hen-tah). The Rumsen, Esselen, and KaKoon Ta Ruk peoples, who still live in the area today, have kept their cultures alive despite many attempts by settlers to erase them.

From: Point Lobos State Natural Reserve

Wednesday, May 18, 2022

Carmel River Tributaries

 


Approximately 96% of the Carmel River flows from the many tributaries in the Santa Lucia Mountains, including San Clemente Creek and Cachagua Creek subwatersheds.

In contrast, the combined flow from the Tularcitos, Rana, and Chupines subwatersheds of the Sierra de Salinas produces only 4% of the annual discharge of the Carmel River, but occupies 23% of the entire watershed.

From: Carmel River Steelhead Association

Tuesday, February 15, 2022

no stream is more important

On the California coast between Santa Cruz and the famous Hearst Castle at San Simeon, no stream is more important for native steelhead than the Carmel River.

From TU

Sunday, January 2, 2022

Tuesday, May 25, 2021

Franciscan missionaries were like “Nazis operating concentration camps.”

 

Through 1821, the Spanish built 21 Catholic missions in California to claim Native lands and convert Native souls. Journalist Carey McWilliams once compared this system to “Nazis operating concentration camps.” 

By 1833, Franciscan missionaries had baptized 81,586 California Indians and buried some 62,600, who perished from disease, displacement, and starvation. 

From: FIX

Image from: Wikipedia

Wednesday, January 27, 2021

Oaks in Fog

Oaks in fog, Santa Lucia Preserve, Carmel Valley

Photo by William Guion, © williamguion.com

Friday, November 20, 2020

126 Steelhead Made it up to Los Padres Dam

 


"The Carmel River is small and picturesque, nestled in the hills of the Carmel Valley. The river itself is fairly small, only flowing about 30 miles from the peaks of the Santa Lucia and Sierra de Salinas to the lagoon at Carmel Bay. It is also a naturally intermittent system, with historic estimates suggesting the lower portions of the river may only have had year-round flow in about six of every ten years. Although these characteristics represent challenges for anadromous fish, it is believed that an average of 8,000 adult steelhead would historically spawn in the Carmel watershed every year.

As of 2015, for the first time in nearly a century, steelhead were able to move upstream unimpeded past the former site of the San Clemente Dam, which was removed due to both public safety and ecological concerns. Fish still face a barrier to movement at Los Padres Dam, but between January and May of this year, a total of 126 adults made their way to the dam."


From: FishBio

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

Saturday, August 29, 2020

Carmel Fire 2020

 


From: Carmel Valley Locals

The area in which the River Fire first gained traction hadn't had a fire in recorded history. This helped feed the flames that destroyed 43 structures and put about 20,000 people under evacuation warning.

Cal Fire previously attempted to carry out controlled burns but was stopped several times between 2013 and 2017 by members of the public who were leery of the controlled burn coming too close to their homes. 

From: The Californian

Tuesday, June 30, 2020

Archbishop says Satan is Behind Defaced Statues of Saint Serra



The archbishop of San Francisco claimed Father Junipero Serra, the man famed for bringing Catholicism to California in the 1700s, is a "great hero" and "great defender" of Indigenous peoples and partly blamed the removal of Serra's monument in Golden Gate Park on the Devil.

Serra is considered by some to be a de facto slave owner who used the labor of Native individuals against their will to build the missions.

From SFGate

Wednesday, June 10, 2020

Punta de los Lobos Marinos



After the establishment of San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo the mission's cowboys, or vaqueros, tended herds of cattle on the nearby grasslands and became the first non-native people to use what is now Point Lobos State Reserve property. It was also during the era of Spanish occupation that Point Lobos was first named, when the barking of sea lions inspired the name Punta de los Lobos Marinos, Point of the Sea Wolves.

From: Point Lobos

Friday, May 1, 2020

Case Studies in Demographic Collapse


"The Franciscan missionaries stationed at San Carlos Mission (established in 1770) recruited converts from the Carmel River basin and nearby areas from the 1770's through the first decade of the nineteenth century. 

The Indian  population increased in size until the last phase of active recruitment occurred in the 1803-7 quinquennium, during which period the missionaries baptized 108 converts, 71 in the year 1806 alone. After 1807 only 24 more converts came to the mission, and the population of the mission began a steady decline. 

The numbers reached a recorded maximum of 876 in 1795, to a mere 165 in 1834, on the eve of the secularization of the mission.

The mission population experienced a net decline of 62 percent per generation and mean life expectancy was low, averaging 7.6 years at birth.  "

From: Indians, Franciscans, and Spanish Colonization by Jackson and Castillo, 1995


Tuesday, April 28, 2020

Scott Barn 1863


Monterey County Register of Historic Resources: Scott Barn 1863

From Hastings Natural History Reserve

Friday, April 24, 2020

Finch Creek spawning habitat

Hastings Natural History Reservation secured a $100,000 grant from MPWMD to do the design/engineering/permitting work to replace this stream crossing! 
MPWMD found that the concrete ford at Hastings on Finch Creek was the 6th worst barrier on Carmel River tributaries. 
Finch Creek is high in the watershed and contains critical spawning habitat for Steelhead

Thursday, April 9, 2020

Big Sur Land Trust Acquires Patriarch Ridge


The Big Sur Land Trust has acquired 83.5 acres of property atop Patriarch Ridge in Carmel Valley.

The land is a mix of old growth mixed evergreen woodland, chaparral and grassland habitat. A dense canopy of stately trees creates an open, park-like understory with adjacent woodlands, grassy slopes and chaparral-covered hillslopes that drop steeply into shaded redwood canyons.

Patriarch Ridge is a very important part of the Esselen Tribe’s sacred lands and includes the upper watershed divide between Williams Canyon and the Garzas Creek drainage. The Esselen name for Patriarch Ridge is “Tebitylat” — meaning “resting spot.”

It has been used for countless generations of Esselen and Rumsen people for ceremonies and as a travel route and corridor for bringing in important food sources from the coast on the northern end of Big Sur at the villages of Sarhentaruc and Ixchenta.

From Monterey Herald

Thursday, September 26, 2019

The First Spanish Grant of Land


The first Spanish grant of land to an individual in California was to Manuel Butron (1727-1793), a soldier from the Monterey presidio who had married a baptized Indian woman. Father Serra approved of Spaniards marrying converted Indian women and supported Butron's petition for a grant of land. 
In 1775, Butron was granted a small concession in the Carmel Valley
Interestingly, although he seems eventually to have lost his land grant, a number of Mutsun today can trace ancestry back to the Butron family.
Manuel Butron was buried in the floor of the chapel of Mission San Carlos Borromeo del Carmelo.

From: Protect Juristac
Map from: Amah Mutsun

Wednesday, September 4, 2019

The Indians resisted the yoke, and many died in resistance


The Spanish missions were established in California late in the 18th century. They were the work of father Serra who'd walked on his martyrs bare feet from Mexico to Monterey. A garrulous fanatic, Serra committed himself to "slipping the gentle yoke of Christ” over the heads of "neophytes," as unyoked Indians were called by the Franciscans, all of whom had been born in Spain. 
The Indians resisted the yoke, and many died in a resistance so fierce and unyielding that they killed the babies born of rapes by the Spanish soldiers who accompanied the missionaries up and down Spanish California from San Diego to San Rafael and Sonoma.

Thursday, July 25, 2019

California Condor Comeback


The California condor, North America's largest bird, once ruled California's coastal mountains. The vulture-like bird was revered by Native Americans and was believed to contain spiritual powers.

Now, condor reintroduction celebrates a milestone: Chick Number 1,000 has hatched.

From KCRW
Image from: TripSavvy

Thursday, July 11, 2019

The Ole Swimming Hole On The Carmel River


The Ole Swimming Hole On The Carmel River Just Below The Bucket Inn, 1957

Consuming More Water From the Carmel River is no Longer Feasible





Consuming more water drawn from the Carmel River is no longer feasible, neither ecologically nor legally. 

The California Public Utilities Commission ruled in September that the best way forward was for California American Water to construct a $329 million desalination plant on the Peninsula.

From: Monterey County Now
Picture From: Passion4Place

Wednesday, June 19, 2019

It’s Called a Genocide


Joining with tribal leaders beneath an Oak tree along the Sacramento River, Governer Gavin Newsom formally apologized Tuesday for California’s role in the “systemic slaughter” of Native Americans.

“It’s called a genocide. That’s what it was: a genocide. No other way to describe it. And that’s the way it needs to be described in the history books,” Newsom said. “So I am here to say the following: I’m sorry on behalf of the state of California.

 California’s first governor, Peter Burnett, told the Legislature that “a war of extermination will continue to be waged between the two races until the Indian race becomes extinct.” The state spent $1.3 million subsidizing dozens of militia campaigns against Native Americans over the next decade.

From SF Chronicle

Removal of the El Camino Real bell marker

On Friday June 21, representatives of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band and the UC Santa Cruz administration will assemble on campus with interested community members to witness the removal of the El Camino Real bell marker.

“The true history of the California mission system has never been told. It is shameful that these places where our ancestors were enslaved, whipped, raped, tortured and exposed to fatal diseases have been whitewashed and converted into tourist attractions.”

For the Indians who toiled in California’s mission compounds the ringing of the bell regimented an iron-clad schedule of forced prayer and compulsory labor. The bell was a potent symbol of the domination of the Catholic Church and the Spanish state over all aspects of the lives of the indigenous people who were forced to live “under the bell.”

From IndyBay

Thursday, May 23, 2019

Cathedral of San Carlos Borromeo


The Cathedral of San Carlos Borromeo in Monterey Presidio was founded by Franciscan Father Saint Junipero Serra as the chapel of Mission San Carlos Borromeo on June 3rd, 1770 near the native village of Tamo.

From: Santa Cruz and the Monterey Bay Areas

Beautiful Carmel River, mid-May 2019


From: Carmel River Watershed Conservancy

Wednesday, May 8, 2019

Four Years After California’s Largest Dam Removal

The destruction of the San Clemente Dam, which had blocked the river since 1921, remains the largest dam removal project in California history.  The river is becoming wilder, and struggling fish populations are rebounding. So far this year, 123 Steelhead Trout have traveled upriver.

At the Carmel River other species, such as lampreys, an eel-like fish, are coming back, and tributaries are showing more wildlife.

Photo by Vern Fisher

Wednesday, April 24, 2019

The Papal Bull Inter Caetera Started the European Colonization of the New World


In 1493, Pope Alexander VI issued the papal bull Inter Caetera, which started the European colonization of the New World. 

"Among other works well pleasing to the Divine Majesty and cherished of our heart, this assuredly ranks highest, that in our times especially the Catholic faith and the Christian religion be exalted and be everywhere increased and spread, that the health of souls be cared for and that barbarous nations be overthrown and brought to the faith itself...We...assign to you and your heirs and successors, Kings of Castile and Leon...all islands and mainlands found and to be found, discovered and to be discovered towards the west and south, by drawing and establishing a line from...the north...to...the south...the said line to be distant one hundred leagues towards the west and south from any of the islands commonly known as the Azores and Cape Verde…"

From: Church Militant