• RNSP management goals include the protection of natural resource values including anadromous salmonids and their habitat;
• The Prairie Creek subbasin supports self sustaining populations of Chinook, coho, steelhead, and coastal cutthroat trout;
• The Prairie Creek Subbasin likely supports the largest coho salmon population of the Redwood Creek basin;
• The RNSP is a World Heritage Site and is part of the California Coast Range Biosphere Reserve, designations that reflect worldwide recognition of the parks’ natural resources as irreplaceable;
• The RNSP has done a significant amount of work to survey road systems, identify problems, and implement road removals and upgrades that should result in reducing erosion and sediment inputs into stream channels;
• Much of the upper watershed of Prairie Creek and Little Lost Man Creek watersheds are relatively undisturbed areas. These areas retain old growth forest characteristics and provide some of the highest quality fisheries habitat within the Redwood Creek basin.

Before RNSP was expanded to include 98% of the Prairie Creek Subbasin, approximately half of the subbasin was logged using timber harvest practices that resulted in disturbance to salmonid habitat;

• Impacts from past timber harvest still effect some riparian and stream habitat;
• Debris accumulations on Lost Man Creek may impede anadromous fish passage to upstream spawning grounds;
• Lost Man Creek watershed still has a relatively high density road network;
• It appears that land use has exacerbated landsliding in the Lost Man Creek Planning Watershed and the landscape has not fully recovered from past disturbances.

Impacts from Prairie Creek Hatchery operations;

• Steelhead/rainbow trout were introduced from other basins.

Sediment impacts from the Highway 101 bypass are a concern:

• Surface and drainage alterations associated with the construction of the Highway 101 bypass resulted in the generation and delivery of large quantities of fine sediments into headwaters of tributary streams. Salmonid spawning and rearing habitat of Prairie, Brown, Boyes, and May Creeks were affected by the event.