The excitement started with a flash of silver followed by a hefty dose of disbelief.

A team of conservationists and biologists from The Wildlands Conservancy, the nonprofit that manages the 5,600-acre Jenner Headlands Preserve on the Sonoma Coast, couldn’t believe what they were seeing: the telltale color and shape of juvenile coho salmon, darting back and forth in the clear current of the East Branch Russian Gulch.

It had been decades since the endangered fish had made its way to that arm of the watershed.

And yet there they were, as Ryan Berger, Corby Hines and Luke Farmer of The Wildlands Conservancy looked on.

“I had never heard of coho being in the Russian Gulch in recent memory,” said Hines, a ranger with the group.

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