During the summer and fall of 2011, the Scott River Water Trust performed its 4th year of forbearance transactions with adjudicated water users in Scott Valley. The purpose of the Water Trust Program is to help improve instream conditions for salmon and steelhead in priority stream reaches by getting landowners to forbear all or part of their decreed water right in exchange for fair financial compensation. Priority reaches were originally identified for the Water Trust in 2007 (Quigley 2007a), with additional reaches added based upon known presence of coho salmon, a priority species due to its threatened status. Forbearance agreements (water leases) were completed in 2011 on Patterson Creek and French Creek during the summer juvenile fish rearing period and on the mainstem Scott River for the fall adult salmon migration period.