By Chris Bone ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) 

Herman Garcia and his loyal band of volunteers rely on elbow grease, prayer and homeless people to save endangered fish.

Workers with Coastal Habitat Education & Environmental Restoration regularly visit the stretch of Uvas Creek west of Santa Teresa Boulevard, where a dozen or so homeless people camp outside the gates of Eagle Ridge. Volunteers routinely pick up crack pipes, syringes, batteries, broken bottles, sodden clothes and other junk littering the creek bank. They filled two truck beds this past month - the most important time to clean because recent showers not only facilitate the endangered steelhead trout CHEER is trying to save, they also wash rubbish into the creek that flows into the Pajaro River and ultimately the Monterey Bay.

Rather than just pick up after folks, CHEER has teamed up with homeless people such as Nicole Boscacci, 19, and Oscar Martinez, 26. They bag their refuse for Garcia in exchange for the canned food he brings them from St. Joseph's Family Center.

"They definitely help, like this here," Garcia said, pointing to a pile of bags as Boscacci smiled behind him.

"We clean up every day," she said. "It's important to think about the fish, and right now it's not that bad, but there are more people who come down here and just leave their trash everywhere."

It's not just an environmental or aesthetic issue either. In fact, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - with which CHEER works closely along with the California Department of Fish and Game, the Santa Clara Valley Water District, the Gilroy Unified School District and the city - is under part of the U.S. Department of Commerce, something Garcia likes to remind people of.

"Everything that happens here eventually affects the local, state and national economies," he said. "Who wants to live near a polluted river? Who wants to fish in this?"

As children, Garcia, his brother Benny and retired Gilroy Police Officer and long-time CHEER volunteer Bob Brem said they would sometimes catch 10 fish an afternoon. Breakneck development buried those days and if any kids still fish, creek conditions and stricter laws limit them to catch-and-release, Garcia said. A 1991 American Fisheries Society report, which relied on data from some drought years, estimated that between 100 to 200 steelhead trout ran up the Pajaro River each winter. That's a 96-percent drop from a 1965 report that counted 4,600.

For this reason, Garcia has declared Uvas Creek CHEER's principle "battle line," and in the fight against extinction, the group seems to be winning lately.

"It was an awesome year," Garcia said of 2008, during which he and volunteers transported more than 23,000 steelhead - ranging from babies, known as "young of the year," to adults - from evaporating enclaves to more stable environments.

"I absolutely believe CHEER has saved that many fish," said Jonathan Ambrose, a biologist with NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service. "I've been out there to these sites and helped, and while 23,000 seems like a lot, you have to remember 31 out of 62 adults are females carrying anywhere from 500 to 5,000 eggs."

The water district has a long-standing agreement with fish and game to release about 3,000 acre-feet, or $825,000 worth, of water from the Uvas Reservoir in addition to the 7,500 acre-feet it pours out for humans, according to water district Spokesperson Susan Siravo. An acre-foot is enough water to supply two families of five for one year.

For those fish that are stranded, CHEER volunteers load as many as they can into a specially designed tank and then make a 50-mile round trip to the mouth of the Pajaro for every 1.5 adults and a 10-mile round trip for the bunches of babies they take upstream toward the Uvas Reservoir. All this driving caused Garcia's Jeep Cherokee with more than 200,000 miles to catch fire recently. Such dedication from a program specialist with FIRST 5 Santa Clara County - a publicly funded program that provides health insurance for children up to 5 years old - was part of the reason Redway-based nonprofit Salmonid Restoration Foundation recently named him restorationist of the year.

In Uvas Creek, a baby steelhead spends anywhere from one to three years maturing into a smolt, but only about 10 percent make it to the ocean, where they spend another couple of years before 10 to 30 percent return upstream in the late winter and spring to spawn, Ambrose said.

With a lack of funding for fish-tracking cameras or infrared that also require professional review and a shortage of volunteers, Ambrose described CHEER and other Bay Area volunteers as invaluable resources for NOAA.

"Herman is the only person that I work with that I've given my home number to," Ambrose said. "We need partners like CHEER. They're absolutely essential."

So is prayer.

After the first week of regular rain last month, Rev. Edward Fitz-Henry joined CHEER volunteers atop a trestle that crosses the creek near Bolsa Road south of Gilroy. There, he "blessed" unseen fish in the muddy flow with holy water after weeks of his San Juan Bautista parish praying for rain, among other things, he said.

"I can't seem to find any steelhead prayers," Fitz-Henry joked before reading from Psalm 8, which acknowledges "all that swim the paths of the seas."

For the humans on land, though, Ambrose encouraged people to follow Garcia's example.

"I can't emphasize enough that it's not too late," Ambrose said. "If you get the ecosystem fixed, the animal should take care of it itself."

STEELHEAD RECOVERY BY THE NUMBERS

2006

Young: 120

Smolt: 0

Adults: 0

2007

Young: 972

Smolt: 500+

Adults: 10

2008

Young: 23,291

Smolt: 159

Adults: 62

Original Article: http://www.gilroydispatch.com/printer/article.asp?c=254211

		Volunteers for Coastal Habitat Eduation and Enviromental Restoration from left, Benny Garcia, Josh Garcia, Bob Brem and Raul Rivas, work together to lift a load of trash onto a truck as they pick up after an abandoned homeless encampment along Uvas Creek behind the Village Green Retirement Home Wednesday morning.
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		Surrounded by CHEER volunteers Father Edward Fitz-Henry, from San Juan Bautistia, blesses the fish after recent rains filled the creeks allowing them to spawn off Bolsa Road at Carnadero Creek where the volunteers recently installed a fish ladder to aide in their spawning Tuesday morning.
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		Volunteer Bob Brem shovels trash onto a truck at the work site Wednesday.
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		Dick Beltran looks for trash closer to the creek as he and other volunteers pick up after an abandoned homeless encampment. When the creek water rises all the trash will run into the creek and harm the fish.
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		Herman Garcia, right, and his nephew, Josh Garcia, work together to carry a rusted container to their truck, which was packed with trash Wednesday morning.
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		Volunteers, from left, Benny Garcia, Bob Brem and Raul Rivas, work to carry bags of garbage left packed by a homeless couple.
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