November 12, 2008 Mt Shasta and the Shasta River, Big Springs ranch, CA Carson Jeffres Staff Research Associate for UC Davis Center for watershed Sciences, conducting research in the Shasta River where it runs through Big Springs Ranch about 20 miles north of the town of Mt Shasta. The Shasta River and its tributaries create one of the most important spawning nurseries for Chinook salmon in the entire Klamath Basin. The ranch is contributing to degraded habitat conditions, which actually warm water temps by upwards of 10 degrees as the river passes through the ranch and then spills into the Klameth River.This stretch of river is a very fertile juvenile salmon rearing area and that there are a surprising number of returning salmon in spite of habitat degraded by grazing cattle and bad irrigation practices, United States of America