New program aims to boost salmon in Northern California river

For the first time in more 80 years, Chinook salmon are swimming in the North Yuba River in Northern California thanks to an innovative wildlife program.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife, along with federal and local agencies, launched a pilot program to reintroduce Chinook salmon into their historic spawning grounds in the North Yuba River in Plumas County. This stretch of cool water, according to the state, is considered some of the highest quality and most climate-resilient in California.

But Chinook salmon disappeared from the waterway after the construction of the Englebright Dam prevented fish from swimming upstream.

In October, the state Department of Fish and Wildlife constructed a series of nests along the 12-mile stretch of gravel riverbed and then filled them with fertilized Chinook salmon eggs from a nearby hatchery. Four months later, these salmon eggs have begun to hatch and the first young salmon were observed Feb. 11, according to the state Department of Fish and Wildlife.

“The North Yuba represents a really unique location for us. Between the main stem and its tributaries there is somewhere around 40 to 50 miles of habitat that is ideal for spring-run Chinook salmon for holding, spawning and rearing,” said Colin Purdy, a fisheries environmental program manager for the state. “If we can develop this pilot effort into a full reintroduction program, we would be able to more than double the amount of available salmon habitat in the Yuba River watershed. And that’s a huge win for spring-run Chinook salmon.”

The state project is one of many initiatives that aim to reintroduce salmon to California’s cold-water habitats upstream of dams and other fish barriers. This includes several dam removal projects, including along the Klamath River, the largest dam removal in U.S. history.

However, unlike the Klamath River, there are no plans to remove dams in the Yuba River, which the state says are critical to maintaining water supply and flood protection. Because dams will remain in place, the state is collecting the newly hatched Chinook salmon in the North Yuba River, and they will be trucked downstream and released in the lower Yuba River, where they can continue their migration to the Pacific Ocean.

“This is a habitat that salmon haven’t been into for a long time so we have very little data to understand how salmon will respond,” Purdy said. “... So there are a number of different things that we’re going to be able to learn from this.”