The Eel River Recovery Project is a non-profit 501c3 organization operating in the 3600 square mile Eel River watershed in northwestern California. Our mission is “To empower communities to collaborate in monitoring the ecological conditions of the Eel River, to share information about the health of the watershed, and to work together to formulate and implement a restoration strategy.” Since 2018, ERRP has been focused on the ecological restoration of the 65 square mile Tenmile Creek watershed in northern Mendocino County, which is a major branch of the South Fork Eel River. According the National Marine Fisheries Service Southern Oregon/Northern California Coho Recovery Plan, the upper South Fork Eel River has one of the last viable meta-populations of coho in the region. While NMFS models suggest that Tenmile Creek had higher intrinsic potential than the upper SF Eel, coho were at low levels or absent in Tenmile Creek because of limited flow and excess sediment. Monitoring has included water temperature, fish community structure, sediment in pools, flow, and riparian air temperatures in key tributary Cahto Creek. Data allowed definition of limiting factors and targeted restoration projects. These include bioengineering and large wood structure installation to stop bank erosion and enhance riparian and fish habitat, increasing water storage to allow forbearance from water withdrawal during the dry season in Streeter Creek that serves as a steelhead refugia, road related erosion control to stop sediment in a Tenmile Creek reach with high Chinook salmon spawning, healing gullies in meadow and restoring native grasses there, and carrying out widespread forest health thinning to help reduce tree evapotranspiration in order to improve stream base-flow and prevent catastrophic wildfire. Coho are experiencing a resurgence regionally and juveniles have been present and even abundant in most recent years since 2022. Chinook salmon and steelhead are also rebounding as wet years, good ocean conditions and almost no ocean fishing align. New committees are forming aimed at invasive species removal targeting bullfrogs and feral pigs, and native grass restoration at the Tenmile Creek watershed scale. “Like it or not, we are in charge of evolution” – Julian Huxley.