The Brief

California’s fifth largest wildfire is encroaching on some of the last strongholds for imperiled salmon, with potentially devastating consequences for a species already on the brink.

The explosive Park Fire has spread into the Mill and Deer Creek watersheds in Tehama County, which are two of the three remaining creeks where wild, independent populations of spring-run Chinook, a threatened species, still spawn in the Central Valley.

If the Park Fire climbs to higher altitudes, federal and state officials said it could strike the final deathblow to the region’s spring-run salmon, which are already at risk of extinction.

“It’s really concerning. It’s really sad. Spring-run Chinook populations have taken such a hit over the past few years, and they’re just at a critically low point,” said Howard Brown, senior policy advisor with the Central Valley office of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s West Coast fisheries region. “The emotional toll of seeing a fire like this hit such an important place, with (critically at-risk) populations that are suffering so bad, it just feels like the cards are stacked up deeply.”

Experts are anxiously awaiting the wildfire’s next move, hoping that it doesn’t spread farther into higher elevations. That’s where adult salmon are waiting in cool pools for water temperatures to drop and flows to rise so they can spawn, and where year-old juveniles are gaining strength before migrating to the ocean.

“We’re kind of at the mercy of the weather and wind to see if these fires creep along doing beneficial to less-severe things, or if we see a big run that really cooks the watershed,” said Matt Johnson, a senior environmental scientist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife Northern Region Anadromous Fisheries Program.

“The species is at real risk of extirpation or blinking out. We hope that doesn’t happen,” he said.

Flames are not the primary, immediate threat. The spring-fed streams are moving so fast that ash in the water will quickly wash away, according to wildlife officials. Instead, firefighting efforts could pose a direct threat to the waterways, including the use of fire retardant, which is toxic to fish, though experts say it’s a necessary tradeoff.

“The important thing right now is to just try to stop it on the head, so it doesn’t burn up these really precious watersheds,” Brown said. “The next few days will be pretty telling.”

The most severe damage could come later this year — if heavy rains wash ash, chemicals and sediment from the burn scar into the creeks. Too much sediment can smother the eggs and baby fish, or spark a microbial bloom that sucks oxygen from the water. Larger debris flows also could scour the waterways and fill in holding pools.

“It’s like liquid cement coming down the river channel,” said Steve Lindley, director of fisheries ecology at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center lab. “It just scours the river down to the bedrock, and everything in it is crushed and ground up.”

Two years ago, flash floods sent debris from Siskiyou County’s McKinney Fire into the Klamath River, where the Karuk Tribe reported a devastating fish kill.

Protected by the nation’s Endangered Species Act since 1999, Central Valley spring-run Chinook have already experienced catastrophic declines, reaching record lows last year with only 16 adults returning to spawn in Deer Creek and 34 to Mill Creek. These populations, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife warned earlier this year, “are now at high risk of extinction.”

“To see really big, hot fires like this move into what used to be their strongholds — it’s really a tough thing to witness,” Brown said. “Right now, it feels like the frontlines of climate change.”

Salmon 'are really struggling'

Spring-run Chinook salmon were once the cornerstone of California’s commercial fishery, with more than half a million fish caught in 1883 alone.

But California’s big dam era in the 20th century also sparked a massive decline of spring-run Chinook, one of the four runs of salmon named for the season when they return to freshwater to spawn. The dams cut off critical upstream spawning habitat, shifted the timing of flows and degraded downstream waterways.

Now nearly all of the Central Valley’s spring-run populations are gone. The remaining ones are largely confined to the northern Sacramento Valley, where Mill and Deer Creeks provide some of the last, high quality, high-elevation habitat for the species, as well as for threatened Central Valley steelhead.

Both are tributaries to the Sacramento River. Born in Lassen Volcanic National Park, Mill Creek flows through forests and meadows before dropping through a steep rock canyon into the Sacramento Valley, where it meets the Sacramento River. Deer Creek emerges near the summit of Butt Mountain, flowing 60 miles before it reaches the valley floor and stretches another 11 miles to join the Sacramento River near Vina.

“Deer and Mill Creeks have always represented this exceptional habitat piece for salmon,” said Johnson. “Unfortunately, despite that great habitat, the fish populations are really struggling.”

Last year, counts of returning adults were so low, scientists described it as a cohort collapse — meaning there were too few to successfully produce a new generation. The catastrophic declines prompted state and federal wildlife agencies to begin a conservation hatchery program at UC Davis.

The program was in response to the “threat that this species could blink out because nothing would return in subsequent years. So the captive brood population is like a little insurance plan or bank account of genetic material,” Johnson said.

With so few returning adults, a hit to the next generation from the Park Fire could be catastrophic. Johnson said after the Dixie Fire in 2021, he saw the first rains of the season turn Mill Creek black with runoff.

“The adults returning this year are from that Dixie Fire cohort and we’re looking at preliminary very low returns,” Johnson said. Though he doesn’t have the evidence yet to back it up, the fire “could be a contributing factor.”

State wildlife officials in February warned water regulators that the fish have been in steep decline since 2015 — in part because agricultural water diversions from the lower rivers frequently drain the creeks. They urged the State Water Resources Control Board to set minimum levels of water that must flow through the creeks to protect fish.

“Historical water diversion and water use practices have long been out of balance with ecological needs on these critical watersheds,” Tina Bartlett, regional manager of the northern region, wrote to the water board. In recent years, the problem has been amplified by climate change and frequent droughts.

Water board staff are reviewing the recommendations, according to spokesperson Ailene Voisin.

Eggs and young fish could be smothered

Because of the fire, state wildlife officials cannot survey the number of adult salmon that returned this year, Johnson said. But preliminary estimates for this year remain very low — prompting alarm from scientists.

“We had a really bad year last year. We had a really bad year this year,” said Andrew Rypel, director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at UC Davis. “Say we wipe out this cohort. Salmon are on a three-year lifecycle. That’s starting to look like the anatomy of an extinction.”

The wildfire is not an imminent threat to adults that are in the creeks right now, Johnson said. The creeks have abundant cool water, and as of Monday the fire was not affecting flow or temperatures.

“What this fire represents, if it were to consume the habitat in the upper watersheds, is a degradation of that habitat. It’s just another hit to the species that’s already struggling,” Johnson said.

In these fire prone landscapes, low-intensity fires can be beneficial. Some sediment in the water can help hide juveniles from predators. Downed trees in the stream can create fish habitat.

But Johnson and others are concerned about the heat and intensity of the fire. If the first rain events send mud and ash flooding into the creeks, the eggs or juveniles could be smothered by the sediment, or suffocate if oxygen levels plummet. Chemicals could degrade the water quality.

Brown said that these hot fires could reshape this wild, remote landscape. Recent studies show that the one-two punch of climate change and severe fires can change which plants return to a fire-scoured region. Denuded slopes are primed for erosion, and the loss of tree cover could allow these vital, cool stretches of river to warm in the summer.

“At this point, my greatest concern is the fire moving any further up Mill and Deer Creek. A hot fire blowup could have devastating ecological consequences for the watershed health of these streams,” he said. “The watersheds and the salmon are irreplaceable resources in the state of California and they are almost gone. This hurts.”

A Cal State University lecturer charged with assaulting federal officers with tear gas was acquitted on Thursday.

Jonathan Caravello, a philosophy lecturer at Cal State Channel Islands, was arrested while protesting a raid at a licensed cannabis farm in Ventura County last summer.

For three days, Caravello’s colleagues, friends, family and students packed the courtroom at the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

The jury returned a verdict within about two hours, according to Caravello’s attorney, Knut Johnson.

“He was never trying to hurt anyone and didn't hurt anyone,” Johnson told LAist Thursday after the verdict was rendered. “He knows that trying to hurt people or hurting them does nothing to help the cause he supports.”

What was the case about?

The federal government said agents were executing a search warrant at the farm, in search of evidence of unlawful employment. In his opening statement Wednesday, assistant U.S. attorney Roger Hsieh said agents deployed the tear gas because protesters obstructed traffic on a two-lane road. Hsieh said Caravello picked up the canister agents deployed and threw it back at them.

Caravello's legal team, led by Johnson, underscored that the lecturer did not hurt anyone and shared a video showing federal vehicles making their way across the road. The defense also said Caravaello picked up and threw the canister as far as he could—past the agents—to keep protesters safe from harm.

The California Faculty Association, which represents CSU faculty, said in a statement Thursday that they welcomed the jury's decision.

"After a thorough investigation by the court, John was cleared of any wrongdoing," the statement said. "The jury’s decision underscores John’s right to peacefully protest and speak out against the cruelty and inhumanity this administration has shown toward immigrants and other marginalized communities across the country."

Senior editor for education Ross Brenneman contributed to this story.

On Thursday morning, L.A. Councilmember Eunisse Hernandez stood at Lacy Street Neighborhood Park in the shadow of the 5 and 110 freeway interchange. Just last year, she said, the Lincoln Heights park and the areas near the freeway were filled with unhoused people. But now, thanks to a $6 million state grant awarded last fall, the park is clear and dozens of people are in temporary and permanent housing.

“Today we’re here to celebrate that 59 of our neighbors, human beings, finally have a roof over their heads,” she said.

The funds were secured by Hernandez from California’s Encampment Resolution Funds, which targeted a 4-mile stretch of the 110 Freeway.

A long to-do list before housing is secured

The grant helped pay health and social workers from public and private agencies and nonprofits, including employees with USC’s California Street Collaborative.

These workers helped people straighten things out before they moved into housing, like finding IDs, matching housing with disability needs and space for pets.

That kind of help requires building trust between the worker and the unhoused person, said Caitlin Schwan, director of the California Street Collaborative.

“And it takes an investment of resources and a lot of coalitions, a lot of partnerships across street medicine, housing providers, service providers,” she said.

Los Angeles Global Care has been as the primary interim housing provider. It also provides daily meals to those transitioning to housing, help with pets and case management.

Rigo Vega was unhoused and lived near the 110 Freeway for four years.

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Adolfo Guzman-Lopez

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LAist

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“I used to live right here under the bridge for like, four years,” said Rigo Vega, who attended the announcement at the park.

Outreach workers, he said, helped him get food and clothes, and the paperwork needed to get into housing last November. Now that’s settled him enough for him to set a goal for himself, “to work, to get a job,” he said.

Hernandez’s office said the goal is to house 11 more people with the grant funds.

Topline:

What's on offer: The temple's Thai food court is a must-visit for many during regular weekends, when a large collection of food vendors set up stalls around the temple, similar to what you'd see in Bangkok. Expect this and more at the festival. We're told you should try the Thai gelato. The temple itself is also beautiful.

When and where: The temple is at 8225 Coldwater Canyon Ave., North Hollywood. There's additional parking at the Kaiser Permanente in Panorama City with a free shuttle to the festival. The temple is open from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. each day. The opening ceremony starts at 1 p.m. Saturday.

A union-backed proposal to tax California’s billionaires to fund health care has put some progressive lawmakers — and their labor allies — in a quandary.

Taxing the rich to backfill Trump-induced federal funding cuts might sound like a no-brainer policy for the party’s left flank, which counts wealth inequality among its top issues.

But despite a strong show of support from prominent national figures, including Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and liberal economist Robert Reich, the “2026 California Billionaire Tax Act” has become a hot potato for labor leaders.

The proposed initiative would levy a one-time tax of 5% on any resident of California whose net worth exceeds $1 billion, which applies to around 200 people, according to Forbes. That money would plug an estimated $100 billion hole left by federal cuts to Medi-Cal and other social service programs.

Publicly, prominent labor and progressive players have largely kept quiet, unlike Gov. Gavin Newsom who has aired his disdain loud and clear. Yet in private, some union leaders and their allies in the Legislature rail against the measure. Of the critics who spoke with CalMatters for this story — three union leaders and five members of the Legislative Progressive Caucus — only one lawmaker would criticize the measure openly.

Critics question its feasibility and whether the state even knows how to accurately appraise a billionaire’s total wealth, a crucial step to evaluating how much tax they would owe. They fear long-term revenue loss by driving wealthy people out of California. And some resent that the union sponsoring the initiative, SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West, designed the measure to predominantly benefit its members rather than boost the state’s general fund, where it could go to all budget needs.

“It's not that taxing billionaires in itself is wrong,” said Keely Martin Bosler, formerly the top state budget officer to Newsom and former Gov. Jerry Brown. She is now a Democratic consultant who has advised several of California’s most powerful labor groups, including the Service Employees International Union of California, the parent union of SEIU-UHW. “The way in which this tax specifically is constructed is problematic.”

Many progressive state lawmakers and Capitol heavyweights, such as Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco and the powerful California Labor Federation, have sidestepped the question of whether they’d support it, declining for now to take a position on an initiative that has yet to officially qualify for the ballot.

“The Labor Federation won’t take it up for an endorsement until July,” said Lorena Gonzalez, the organization’s president, in a text message.

Yet if the tax lands on the November ballot, as it appears on track to do, progressive critics will be saddled with the tricky optics of opposing — or at least not supporting — a measure that embodies one of their base’s core tenets: taxing the rich.

Even the mere threat the measure could qualify for the ballot has already spurred a torrent of opposition spending — more than $50 million in total so far — from billionaires such as Google co-founder Sergey Brin and cryptocurrency mogul Chris Larsen. Brin’s group, known as “Building a Better California,” has also spawned three new competing ballot measures designed to undermine the billionaires’ tax.

Critics fear that if billionaires like Brin become even bigger perennial spenders in California politics, they could neuter the progressive agenda by bankrolling more business-friendly candidates and ousting left-leaning, labor-aligned legislators.

But the measure’s proponents say they are undeterred by the secretive detractors and challenge their critics to put their names behind their words.

Dave Regan speaks to the SEIU-UHW Leadership Assembly in 2013.

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Steve Yeater

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Courtesy of SEIU-UHW

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“What we have is a group of so-called leaders who are not reflecting the attitudes of their own constituents,” said Dave Regan, president of SEIU-UHW and the de facto leader of the billionaire tax measure. “That’s why they want to be anonymous.”

Regan said he’s confident the initiative will amass enough signatures to qualify for the ballot before the end of April. Then, he said, “We believe a lot of those people are going to come around and change because this makes sense, because the public is supportive, because their own members are supportive.”

The case for, and against, the billionaires’ tax

So far, polling has shown the billionaire tax is relatively popular with voters. Recent surveys show just over half of Californians surveyed said they’re inclined to vote for it.

Critics point out that California’s existing state tax structure is entirely based on income, rather than net worth. The state would have to appraise each person’s assets, including real estate, art, automobiles and private and public businesses. The billionaires could pay in installments, handing over 1% of their wealth annually for five years.

Bosler said that with income tax filings, the Franchise Tax Board can use data from federal tax returns to verify its own analysis. Since there’s no federal wealth tax, California would be forging uncharted territory with no tax compliance support from any other source or agency — a risky move that could invite legal challenges.

“The state is not a miracle worker, like, they're not going to suddenly be able to do all of this like perfectly,” said Bosler. “I mean they will do their best, but I just think this is expertise that they have built up over 50-plus years. Like, none of this is in their wheelhouse at this point.”

But champions of the tax argue it is the only real solution on the table so far to save hospitals, health care jobs and, ultimately, patient lives they say are at risk due to federal funding cuts to Medi-Cal and food assistance programs.

Supporters note that the tax is not intended to solve California’s structural budget problems.

“It’s one-time funding to fill what we hope is a one-time hole,” said Brian Galle, a tax law professor at UC Berkeley who helped craft the measure. Galle said only around 200 people would be subjected to the tax, so the extra burden on the Franchise Tax Board wouldn’t be too great.

“It's not like FTB is going to get a blizzard of tens of thousands of new returns that they're going to have to figure out a whole new data system for cracking,” said Galle.

Why some progressives aren’t on board

Those who have qualms with the initiative have largely kept their criticisms private.

One liberal state legislator, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the infighting among the unions puts progressive lawmakers in a difficult position. While he empathizes with the urgency that health care workers feel, he and other Democrats are not convinced the policy could withstand legal challenges and worry about the wealthy employing savvy accounting maneuvers to skirt the tax altogether.

Some organizations that are synonymous with progressive politics in California, such as the Working Families Party, also haven’t taken a position, even as other unions such as the Teamsters and AFSCME California support it.

Even the powerhouse labor union SEIU California is choosing not to take a position on the measure, which is spearheaded by one of its local affiliates, SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West.

Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, right, speaks with Assemblymember Chris Ward at the state Capitol in Sacramento on Sept. 12, 2025.

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Fred Greaves

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CalMatters

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Assemblymember Chris Ward, a member of the progressive caucus, called the measure a “well-meaning effort by UHW,” but criticized the proposal for being just a one-time tax primarily benefiting the health care sector rather than boosting the state’s overall revenues. Regan said SEIU-UHW made the tax one-time to nullify the argument that it would push billionaires out of the state.

Ward noted that he and his colleagues are considering “superior” bills, such as one that would close a corporate tax loop to generate $3 billion per year, and another that would create a new tax on corporations that pay workers so little that they qualify for Medi-Cal and nutrition assistance.

Regan argued these measures would only make California more unaffordable, since businesses would pass their increased costs along to consumers.

Ward, the sole state lawmaker who would candidly share his concerns about the initiative with CalMatters, said he and his colleagues have heard pushback from “a number of other labor organizations that don't support that initiative,” primarily because its members would not directly benefit from any of the revenue. Uniting labor, he said, is the key to any successful revenue solution.

“There's a need to look at a wealth tax for a more broad range, including health care workers but other purposes that are state priorities,” Ward said, “and that will be left off of the table if this is the only question we're seeing.”

CalMatters' Nadia Lathan contributed to this story.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.