Salmon
Journeys
February 4,
2013
Millions
have been spent on the Delta with little progress on helping salmon survive.
But salmon do have a bright spot … located in the Auburn Ravine here in Placer
County. As a result of much collaboration with agencies and water companies,
local groups have enabled salmon to make a dramatic return to our Ravine. Now that all dams below Lincoln are open for
salmon and steel head passage during the Chinook Fall Run (October 15 to April
15) each year, CA Fish and Wildlife is in the process of counting fish and
measuring redds (salmon nests) in the Auburn Ravine. Nevada
Irrigation District installed a fish ladder on its Lincoln Gauging Station,
December 2011 so as a result of these two aids, salmon are home again.
In the one mile reach of marginal spawning
gravels above Lincoln, 273 salmon and 43 redds have been counted and measured
below Nevada Irrigation District’s Hemphill Dam, the current barrier to
upstream fish passage.
Because the
heavy rainfall during December, miraculously thirty salmon were able to get
over Hemphill Dam to reach good spawning gravels and 4 redds were counted and
measured.
Salmon are
coming home and will be able to reach prime spawning gravels when NID’s
Hemphill Dam is retrofitted for fish passage.
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