The Yuba Salmon Partnership Initiative was announced today at the California Capitol. The Initiative is a collaboration between the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), National Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA Fisheries), Yuba County Water Agency (YCWA), American Rivers, Trout Unlimited and California Sportfishing Protection Alliance to return spring-run Chinook salmon and possibly steelhead to more than 30 miles of the North Yuba River. Deep, cool pools on this stretch of the river provide ideal habitat for a species that summers in mountain streams before spawning in the fall.
The salmon reintroduction program would return salmon to spawning habitat in the North Yuba River using specially designed collection facilities and trucks. This would allow adult fish to bypass two dams northeast of Marysville: the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Englebright Dam, built in 1941 to trap debris generated by hydraulic mining, and YCWA’s New Bullards Bar Dam, built further upstream in 1970 to provide flood protection, water supply and power generation. The program would move juvenile salmon downstream in the winter and spring by gathering them in collection facilities above New Bullards Bar Dam and trucking them downstream past the dams to resume their journey to the Pacific Ocean. The reintroduction effort would focus first on spring-run Chinook salmon. If successful, a steelhead reintroduction could follow.
More information, including a summary of the project is available at: California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
