California experienced its hottest year on record in 2024. That’s having a huge impact on California’s agriculture, its water system, wildfires, and so much more.

“It’s pretty clear that climate change is hitting every corner of the state in a whole lot of dangerous ways,” said PPIC-CalTrout Ecosystem Fellow Ted Sommer in an event last week. And while the impacts are evident in increasingly extreme weather, Sommer said one affected area typically gets less attention: the state’s freshwater ecosystems.

California, he said, is a biodiversity hotspot: “We have over 1,700 aquatic species.” These species and the ecosystems that nurture them provide innumerable benefits to the state, including clean water, recreation, and economic growth. But Sommer says we risk losing a lot of that biodiversity because of long-term environmental issues and now climate change.

His presentation was not all doom and gloom. “I’m bringing you a message of alarm, but also of hope,” he said. Sommer’s recent report details a comprehensive list of management tools that can be employed to conserve freshwater ecosystems in the face of climate change.

This portfolio of tools is important because things are changing so fast, and focusing on a single issue is simply not enough. Improving habitat, for instance, may not move fast enough for some at-risk species, which may need more focused actions to survive. Sommer says that creating a decision-support process can help managers decide on which climate actions are needed and where.

He also stressed the urgency of this moment: “We can’t wait for a lot of this stuff. Planning processes are going to take a while, and we need to take action now.”

But taking action raises legal questions, said McGeorge School of Law Professor Jennifer Harder. “The question raised for our second report was, are these tools and is this planning process legal, and if it is, what regulatory structure should we follow to make this happen?”

As the authors researched those questions and talked to experts in the field, Harder said, one theme kept emerging: the need to address state and federal endangered species acts. “There was a perception that when people tried to do innovative things, these acts would create a barrier and not allow a climate-smart approach.”

After taking a close look at this issue, the authors concluded that the endangered species acts do not, in fact, present a barrier to climate-smart conservation. They allow and in some cases require a climate-smart approach and provide many opportunities for climate-smart conservation. The problem lies, she said, in implementation.

Harder was quick to explain that the report does not criticize any particular actor in this space. “There are many great things happening in conservation,” she said. Agencies and stakeholders are working very hard with limited resources, but “limited resources are the point—there aren’t enough resources to do everything.”

The key, she said, is focusing on the most important things: taking an ecosystem perspective and emphasizing recovery. NOAA defines recovery as “the process of restoring endangered and threatened species to the point where they no longer require the safeguards of the Endangered Species Act.”

To make this work, Harder says, the state needs dedicated funding and staff, and to shift the regulatory agenda from protecting a single species to emphasizing recovery. To accomplish this, Harder argues that everyone who works with and depends upon California’s rivers, lakes, and streams will need to embrace a higher degree of innovation and accept the risk that comes with trying new things.

“Why would we do something that’s risky?” she asks. “The thing is, we already are doing something risky. We are rapidly losing key native species and that’s proof that we are on a risky path. So if we stay on that path, as scientists like Ted tell us, we’re going to lose some of those species.”

She says big-picture gains in ecosystem function will support a host of different species, both those that are listed and those not listed as threatened or endangered. And, she says, we need to think more about how conditions will be different in the future and tailor management actions to recognize that reality.

“We need to find ways to support each other in taking bold action,” said Harder. That includes ways to “embrace risk, be nimble, and reward innovation. If we can find a way to do that, I would underscore the hope that Ted has. We can do great things in freshwater ecosystems, and I see the potential for us to come together to tackle this in a new way.”

We invite you to watch the event video.