Fellows Creek

Fellows Creek is an educational video game that tackles root causes of habitat degradation: fragmented decisions, short-term thinking, and tragedy of the commons. Based in behavioral science, players learn how their choices affect salmonids and see the benefits of restoration. The goal of the project is to improve salmonid habitat outcomes by increasing technical knowledge and collaborative decision-making among landowners, land managers, agricultural operators, educators, and community members. The project will develop and launch a fully functional, web- and mobile-accessible educational game within 2 years, simulating watershed dynamics inspired by the Pescadero watershed. Players take on real-life roles-like farmer, land manager, road manager, or ecologist-and make decisions about things like water diversion, sediment control, flood response, and in-stream wood.

Fellows Creek helps prepare communities to be watershed stewards by building the mindset and technical knowledge to navigate complexity and share responsibility for responsible watershed management. By learning through experimentation and failure, players shift their mindset toward shared responsibility. While the game is grounded in the dynamics of the Pescadero watershed, the ecological challenges it models-like sedimentation, overdrafting of water, large wood removal, fragmented land management, and flooding-are common across many salmonid-bearing watersheds in California. Fellows Creek offers a scalable tool to support stewardship, collaboration, and habitat recovery statewide.