Thanks to an innovative wildlife program, Chinook Salmon is swimming in California’s North Yuba River for the first time in 80 more years.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife, together with federal and local agencies, has launched a pilot program to reintroduce Chinook salmon to the historic spawning grounds on the North Yuba River in Plumas County. The state says the cold water is considered to be California’s highest quality and most climate resistant.
However, Chinook salmon disappeared from the waterway after the construction of the Englebright Dam prevented the fish from swimming upstream.
In October, the Fish and Wildlife State built a series of nests along a 12-mile gravel river bed, filling them with fertilized Chinook salmon eggs from a nearby hatching site. Four months later, these salmon eggs began to hatch, and the first young salmon were observed on February 11th, according to the state of fish and wildlife.
“Northern Yuba is a truly unique place for us. Colin Purdy, the state’s Fisheries Environment Program Manager, said: “If we can develop this pilot’s efforts into a complete reintroduction program, we can now do so. It can more than double the amount of salmon habitat available in the river basin. And it’s a big win for Chinook salmon running in the spring.”
The state project is one of many initiatives aimed at reintroducing salmon into California’s cold-water habitat upstream of California’s dams and other fish barriers. This includes several dam removal projects, including along the Klamath River, the largest dam removal in US history.
However, unlike the Klamath River, there are no plans to remove the dam on the Yuba River. The state says it is important to maintain water supply and flood protection. As the dam remains in place, the state collects newly hatched Chinook salmon from the North Yuba River, which was photographed downstream on tracks, released at the lower part of the Yuba River, where it is allowed to continue moving to the Pacific Ocean. can.
“This is a habitat that salmon has not been interested in for a long time, so there is little data to understand how salmon reacts,” Purdy said. “…So there’s so much we can learn from now.”
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