Doubling Down on Efforts
To realize this potential, however, CalTrout and our partners must double down on efforts to restore hundreds of miles of tributary streams and critical salmon habitat in the mid and upper basins. Dam removal, water quality improvements, and disease reduction in the mainstem Klamath River present a new normal for potential fisheries recovery but the real population driver remains historical spawning and rearing habitat in key tributaries such as the Williamson and Sprague Rivers in Oregon and the Shasta and Scott Rivers in Siskiyou County.
For this reason, CalTrout is already fully invested and at work in the Shasta-Scott watersheds. Over the last year, CalTrout restored 1.5 miles of rearing habitat in the South Fork Scott River by activating floodplains and installing four large wood structures. We completed the first phase of a multi-million-dollar water infrastructure and efficiency project on the Hart Ranch in the Little Shasta River Watershed. Furthermore, in December of 2018, we partnered with Ecotrust Forest Management (EFM)—a forward looking B-Corporation timber investment company—to restore fish passage to critical spawning habitat in the Scott River watershed by installing a 60-foot prefabricated steel bridge as an alternative for timber trucks to avoid driving through the stream, which can cause large influxes of sediment and impaired aquatic habitat. Caltrout partners with the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences to engineer projects that are grounded in sound science and to measure the quantifiable impacts over time.
Successful implementation of these ambitious projects demands large investments in science, engineering, and public-private partnerships. Moreover, this work demonstrates Caltrout’s capacity as a highly efficient, agile, and streamlined organization, to carry out complex construction projects on-the-ground. Each year we grind forward in the battle to save salmon and steelhead in California, but with the dam removal clock now ticking in the Klamath Basin, we can and must do more.
Photo by Mike Wier