Husch Vineyards Scores Landmark Win for Endangered Salmon

In a landmark water agreement, Husch Vineyards now legally protects 20 million gallons of water each year for the benefit of endangered salmon in the Navarro River.

This innovative win-win solution is the culmination of a 15-year collaboration between Husch, The Nature Conservancy (TNC), Trout Unlimited, and the Mendocino County Resource Conservation District. Originally research partners, these four groups brainstormed this water conservation idea in 2015, and spent 10 years working on the science, engineering, and legal framework necessary to bring the vision to completion.

The goal was straightforward: preserve the summer flows in the Navarro River for the benefit of the fish. Zac Robinson, whose family has owned Husch Vineyards for three generations, shared his analysis of the flow decline in the Navarro at an industry conference in 2009. The Nature Conservancy started their own analysis, concluding that the watershed had ample winter water, we just needed to shift human water demand from the summer to winter. But this simple concept clashed head-on with the immutable rules of California water rights.

In 2015, Monte Schmitt from The Nature Conservancy saw a pathway forward. If one farm like Husch can’t overcome the legal barriers on its own, perhaps a broader conservation alliance could. Working together as a team, the project had a chance of success. Perhaps this project could be a template for future conservation/farmer partnerships statewide, the team wondered.

“This may take three or four years,” Schmitt cautioned at the outset. In reality, it took 10 years.

The engineering happened fast. By 2018 Husch had upgraded its ponds to store more. This new storage, when coupled with a water conservation program devised by vineyard manager Al White, allowed Husch to quietly stop using its summer water rights. Secrecy was key, because the team needed to re-purpose the old water right without it being considered abandoned.

The legal experts from Trout Unlimited and environmental scientists from TNC needed to re-imagine the concept of a water right. Instead of a legal right to take water from a river, could it be a legal right to protect the existing water in the river? The team worked tirelessly on over a dozen reports, findings, orders, plans, and drafts to bolster the vision. Part of Husch’s water right would shift to the winter, when water is ample in the Navarro River, while the summer water right would be used to create a legal shield protecting 20,000,000 gallons of river flow.

The California Water Board approved the plan in late 2025.

The project is already producing ripple effects across California. Matt Clifford, the California Director from Trout Unlimited, is optimistic that California law can be updated to make Husch-type conservation projects simpler and faster to permit. Meanwhile, The Nature Conservancy has developed a new online water-analysis tool to help other landowners explore environmentally beneficial water-management ideas.

The Husch project is now the anchor tenant in a portfolio of water savings projects in the Navarro River watershed. “‘Store and forbear’ is a critical step toward recovering salmon populations in the Navarro watershed,” explains Linda MacElwee of the Mendocino County Resource Conservation District. “Conservation partners like Husch are leading the way.”

Of course, the vineyard still needs water for irrigation and occasionally frost protection. But Husch can now fill its ponds in the winter, top-off that storage in Spring, and then leave all the summer water for the fish. In 2025, Husch used 5 million gallons in the vineyard, and legally protected an additional 22 million gallons for some very happy fish.