Scientist are hoping to save California’s chinook salmon from heat-death by trucking them to a cooler river

The Great Western Heat Wave had a bear family cooling off in Lake Tahoe (ignoring humans also on the beach) and brought predictions of heat-dome die-offs, where sensitive species perish in high numbers. Without quick action, that’s probably going to be the fate of the chinook salmon. The fish’s Sacramento River freshwater spawning grounds are drought-stricken and, when there is water, it’s so hot that it’s inhospitable to both the reproducing fish and the eggs they’ve laid. Unprecedented temperatures have scientists scrambling to prevent mass death (a Canadian marine biologist recently estimated that more than a billion seashore creatures literally cooked to death along the Salish Sea in just one hot week. He walked the coast, smelling the putrid odor of shellfish decaying on the rocks). So some California scientists are hoping that they can truck the chinook salmon to a cooler river. Salmon are often transported this way to the Pacific Ocean, where they live and grow, if water levels are too low to let them make their way unaided. But time is a-wasting, reports The San Francisco Chronicle. A proposed program of this type got the kibosh from the Trump administration.