adults are collected and trucked above the dam and released into the reservoir. For outgoing juveniles/smolts, there is a chute/pipe they are herded into to get them out of the reservoir and into the river downstream of the dam that is operated by NOAA Fisheries. About upstream of Los Padres Dam there is a 75 foot waterfall in the river mainstem that is an impassable barrier to anadromous fish. A recent 2022 study has also shown that there is poor downstream passage at the Los Padres Dam which creates an ecological trap for migrating steelhead trout. The steelhead can ascend the fish ladder and spawn above the Los Padres Reservoir but a truncated hydroperiod and low flows limit successfully outmigration back to the ocean. Another federally threatened species, the California red-legged frog (Rana draytonii) is native to the river. The Hastings Natural History Reserve lies where Big Creek and Robertson Creek merge to form the Finch Creek tributary to Cachagua Creek, which is, in turn, tributary to the Carmel River mainstem. It is located off Carmel Valley Road just above Jamesburg, California and is a 2,500-acre Biological Field Station of the University of California, Berkeley Museum of Vertebrate Zoology and Natural Reserve System. Dams and reservoirs The Carmel River had three dams, with their reservoirs used for drinking water and having severe sediment buildup. The San Clemente Dam, built in 1921, was located upstream from the ocean, and once provided drinking water throughout the Monterey Peninsula. It was the second of three dams built on the Carmel River, preceded by the Old Carmel River Dam built in the 1880s and followed by the Los Padres Dam in 1949. The San Clemente Dam had an original capacity of , but as of 2002, the capacity had fallen to less than because it was 90 percent silted up. State regulators declared in 1991 that it was in danger of collapsing in an earthquake and spilling the of water trapped behind its crumbling walls. In January 2010 an agreement was reached with the California American Water Company to dig a new half-mile channel to bypass and strand the sediment behind the dam at a cost of $84 million, beginning in 2013. The Carmel River Reroute and San Clemente Dam Removal Project (CRRDR) was completed at the end of 2015, rerouting the Carmel River channel through a bedrock divide to join San Clemente Creek