Southern Range: Salmon in the Santa Cruz Mountains

At the southern edge of their range, salmon on the central coast of California are feeling the effects of climate change more drastically than more northern populations. As they struggle to recover from floods, fires, and drought, salmon in places like Santa Cruz, California, become a bellwether for their northern cousins.

Southern Range explores the deep and entangled relationships between salmon, fire, human beings, and our shared environment.

This film is, at its core, a community project which hopes to illuminate the work that local environmental stewards have put in for decades on behalf of salmon in Santa Cruz. By featuring ecological, historical, and emotional relationships with salmon in a web of community stories, the film urges the importance of multi-species care in dangerous times.