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valleysentinel.com SeVenTy-FiVe CenTS
December 2012
SPOTLIGHT
Colonel Erich Novak with family and guests
St. Isidore School honors veterans By Staff Writer
In an honored tradition at St. Isidore School, students, faculty and parents welcomed veterans to the annual Veterans Day Celebration. On Friday, November 8th, Principal Maria Ward welcomed over 40 invited guests who spoke of their military duty, years of service and emotional journey to return home. Each one shared their story to give students an understanding of what it means to be a veteran and to serve our country. Veterans gave the 640 St. Isidore School students a vivid picture of their
ECRWSS
PRESORTED STANDARD US POSTAGE PAID DANVILLE, CA PERMIT NO. 70
See VETERANS page 8
Young people enjoy an afternoon of skating at the seasonal rink, Walnut Creek on Ice. The 8th annual tradition will be open until January16th at Civic Park. Presented by The Walnut Creek Chamber of Commerce, the Downtown Business Association and Raymond James, you can get more information at www.IceSkateWalnutCreek.com or by calling (925) 935-7669.
Salmon population expected to rebound after of a banner year. upon proper management of fishing closure predictions Biologists suggest approximately the resources. Locally at CA-
Postmaster: Dated Material
By James Hale
Sentinel Newspapers, Inc. 390 Diablo Road, Ste. 145 Danville, CA 94526 925-820-6047
In California, the chinook or king salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) is the most abundant salmon species, followed by the coho or silver salmon (Oncorynchus kisutch). The other three species, the sockeye, the chum, and the pink do not have a significant presence in California’s waterways except for planted stocks of small, land-locked sockeye or kokanees in a few of the large lakes. The declining health and numbers of wild chinook and coho in California has been a sad story of habitat loss and degradation, overfishing, water diversions, “straying” and other factors. But four years of commercial fishing bans and shortened seasons along with efforts to improve habitat conditions and ensure water flows leads to
820,000 king salmon will return to the Sacramento - San Joaquin River system and its tributaries to spawn this season, the most in at least seven years. The importance and ritual management of salmonid resources by Native Americans in California is well documented in the ethnographic literature. As a seasonally concentrated and annually available food resource, salmon were an important part of aboriginal subsistence economies. Fishing shamans would intensely manage the spawning runs through ritualistic “first salmon” ceremonies to allow for successful harvests and healthy, stable populations. In California, for more than 13,000 years Native American’s lives and well-being depended
CCO-235, a large Saclan indian village site at the confluence of Las Trampas and Reliez Creeks, substantial deposits of steelhead, rainbow trout, chinook and coho salmon were identified. Devices and techniques which allowed for efficient harvest of fish runs included fish weirs, basketry traps, dip, thrust, arc, and A-frame nets, toggle harpoons, and application of botanical fish poisons. Indians were actively engaged in fishing for king salmon when Juan Batiste de Anza first sighted the Carquinez Srait in 1776. There are accounts in several early journals suggesting the salmon runs were so abundant that one could walk on their backs across the rivers. In 1850 during the gold rush and railroad building era, Italian immigrants began to
This month’s Special Sections:
Holidays pages 7-9
Naturalist James Hale with male Chinook Salmon, dead after spawning in Walnut Creek. For comparison, James is 6’1”, 200 lbs. (photo taken in 2003)
fish for salmon in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers and San Pablo Bay. There were three
Senior Living pages 10-11
See SALMON page 4