Two years ago, Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled a strategy to save declining salmon — spotlighting a historic partnership with the Winnemem Wintu Tribe to reintroduce endangered winter-run Chinook to the vital, cold waters upstream of Lake Shasta in far northern California.

Now, tribe officials say the state is ending its support, potentially causing salmon restoration efforts on the McCloud River to die mid-stream. The tribe is now grappling with the sudden loss of jobs, along with the dimming of hope that the culturally sacred fish will be restored to their ancestral waters.

“It makes me feel betrayed. It makes the tribe feel betrayed,” said Gary Mulcahy, government liaison for the tribe. “It’s like they just gave up.”

State officials say the one-time funds were tied to the state’s drought response and have now been used up.

“The pilot was designed to take urgent action during severe drought conditions while testing key tools and approaches needed for potential long-term reintroduction,” California Department of Fish and Wildlife spokesperson Stephen Gonzalez said in an email.

Federal scientists call the Sacramento River’s winter-run Chinook salmon “one of the most at-risk endangered species.”

Cut off from historic higher elevation cold-water spawning grounds by the Shasta and Keswick dams, the fish have been stranded for decades in the Sacramento River — where warm water routinely cooks their eggs. Keeping that water cold enough for salmon puts limits on how much water federal managers can deliver from Lake Shasta — a vital irrigation supply for Central Valley farmers.

“We are forcing the fish to be in places where they never were historically,” said Carson Jeffres, a senior researcher at the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences. “When we have all those eggs in one basket, you are one really warm event from losing that cohort of fish.”

The drought years of the early 2020s decimated the eggs, which prompted emergency action even before Newsom announced his salmon plan. “It was our wake-up call,” Jeffres said.

In 2022, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife joined with the Winnemem Wintu Tribe and federal fisheries agencies to relocate endangered salmon eggs from the hatchery below Lake Shasta to the cold, spring-fed McCloud River upstream.

For the first time in more than 80 years, the fish swam in their ancestral river, where they had once been abundant.

State and federal agencies finalized the partnership the next year, naming the Winnemem Wintu Tribe as a “co-equal decision-maker” in agreements to work on restoring salmon to the McCloud River.

“The goal is ecological and cultural restoration, which will one day renew fishing opportunities for the tribe that depended on the once-plentiful salmon for food and much more,” the California Department of Fish and Wildlife said in the press release three years ago.

Newsom touted the effort in his 2024 salmon strategy, which featured a smiling photograph of Winnemem Wintu Chief and spiritual leader Caleen Sisk next to Chuck Bonham, then-director of the Department of Fish and Wildlife. They stood in front of the McCloud River.

“Partnerships with Tribal Nations,” the strategy said, “can propel our mission forward.”

The McCloud’s salmon, trucked around Lake Shasta to complete their ocean migration, have started to come back. Last year, a couple of two-year-old males returned to swim up the Sacramento River.

The eggs they fertilized hatched in incubation tanks on the banks of the McCloud, according to Rebekah Olstad, project manager for the Winnemem Wintu’s salmon restoration efforts.

But this year, the state, tribal and federal scientists involved have no plans to transport fertilized eggs above the dams, Olstad said. The tribe expects its state funding will be gone by the end of June, and is already laying off personnel from work tribal leaders hoped would help employ tribal members long term.

Olstad, who is not a tribal member, is also losing her job. She says that the tribe has received a little over $6 million for the McCloud projects since 2023, with the grant set to end this year.

“The tribe was aware that the current grant contract would end,” Olstad said. “However, under the co-management framework, the tribe has been expecting that there would be partnership to secure the next round of funding … so that there would be capacity to actually continue the work.”