Hillside Creek in Fortuna winds its plant-denuded way past a development. Photo courtesy the California Department of Fish and Game

Hillside Creek, cleared of its native vegetation, looks like a tame, neighborly ditch now. Photo courtesy the California Department of Fish and Game

Rohner Creek nudging up against a building in Fortuna. Photo courtesy the California Department of Fish and Game

Gordon Leppig, DFG scientist, says the bottom of a slough is no place to put a house. Photo by Heidi Walters

DFG's Gordon Leppig next to a Martin Slough tributary on the Eureka golf course. The stream flows to an irrigation pond where biologists have found hundreds of juvenile coho salmon. Photo by Heidi Walters

Biologists, surveying for fish, pulling a seine net at Martin Slough. Photo courtesy the California Department of Fish and Game

A Humboldt Hill subdivision near a tributary to Humboldt Bay. Photo courtesy the California Department of Fish and Game

A wetland connected to Second Slough that's been stripped of its riparian vegetation by a would-be developer. Photo courtesy the California Department of Fish and Game