Why America Can’t Save California’s Greatest Reservoir: Shasta Lake

Why America Can’t Save California’s Greatest Reservoir: Shasta Lake Every autumn, on the far side of the Pacific Ocean, big silver Chinook salmon push up the braided channels of the Rakaia River in New Zealand. Anglers line the gravel banks waiting for them. New Zealanders have been catching these fish for more than a hundred years, and most of them have no idea where the fish actually came from. Their ancestors were born in a cold mountain river in Northern California called the McCloud. That river still exists, but the stretch where those salmon were raised does not. It sits hundreds of feet under Shasta Lake, the largest reservoir in California.