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The Greatest Job in the World: River Restoration

April 26, 2020 By JD 14 Comments

Guess I’m still playing with Tonka Trucks these days…just on a little bigger scale!
It’s not every day you get to custom build salmon spawning habitat!

Back in 2007, I was blessed with having the world’s greatest job…I was hired as a consultant to a spawning bed restoration project on the Stanislaus River in California.

My responsibilities: Direct two front loaders on where to dump gravel and boulders. Not only was the pay outstanding, but taking a thrashed river and making it pristine for Chinook and trout was awfully good for the soul! And, let’s be honest here, driving those big tractors around was pretty fun too!

We started the project carefully sifting and washing 200 tons of perfect spawning cobble and then added a couple hundred boulders in 1- to 7-ton range…

Then we went to work…


Here’s a look at what a lot of the river looked like before we started…

And, from a slightly different angle, when we were done…

Check out how dismal this side channel looked before…

Here’s how she looked after the work…

Before…

After…

Again, much of this stretch of river was sluggish and silted in before the work began…not exactly pristine habitat…

What a world of difference, eh?

When it was all said & done, we added 33 new riffles to a short 2-mile stretch of river…

On the last day, Dennis Hood of KDH Environmental and I toured the site & admired our handiwork…

Apparently, the salmon like their new home…

Filed Under: River Restoration Projects Tagged With: gravel restoration, restoration, salmon spawning, spawning gravel, stanislaus river

Putting the finishing touches on the Stanislaus River salmon spawning riffle Restoration Project

November 24, 2007 By JD 6 Comments

Well, after weeks of grueling (but exciting!) work, we’ve pretty much got everything done on the Stanislaus River salmon spawning riffle restoration project I’ve been working with KDH Environmental on. The Cliff’s Notes version is this: we took a 1.5-mile stretch of virtually fishless water and transformed it, with lots of gravel, boulders, grunt labor and heavy machinery, into a fishy nirvana.

Here are some photos I took during the project. To see more, check out my essay in the the February issue of Salmon Trout Steelheader. Okay, on with the show…this is just some of the 18,000 tons of pristine spawning gravel we excavated, sifted, washed and placed into the river:

Click here to read more…

Filed Under: Best of FishwithJD, River Restoration Projects Tagged With: gravel restoration, habitat restoration, stanislaus river

Stanislaus River restoration project nearing completion

September 27, 2007 By JD Leave a Comment

It’s a funny thing…it took 4 years of permits, meetings and politics to get the Stanislaus River gravel restoration project off the ground and only 4 weeks to complete the actual work. We’re just about done renovating the 2-mile stretch of river we’ve been working on this month and it looks fantastic. With a gazillion tons of gravel and over 100 boulders in the 2- to 7-ton size range, this year’s fall run of Chinook salmon will have some stellar new habitat to call home.

Here’s a before photo of one of the spots we’ve rehabed:

Before shot

And then the after picture…lots of good spawning gravel, some nice holding water and perfect flow!

New Riffle

Read on to see some other cool photos…

Click here to read more…

Filed Under: River Restoration Projects Tagged With: gravel restoration, habitat restoration, spawning gravel, stanislaus river

River Restoration Update

September 18, 2007 By JD Leave a Comment

As you know, I’ve been working with KDH Environmental over the past several weeks to help restore gravel spawning beds for chinook salmon on the Stanislaus River. Things have been going exceptionally well and the 2-mile stretch of river we’ve been on has undergone an amazing transformation. We’re getting close to being finished…here’s a little sneak peak at some of the stuff we’ve been up to.

Here’s a picture of a side channel on the backside of an island before we started cleaning it up:

Upper Side Channel -- Before
And here’s what it’s looking like now:

Upper Side Channel -- after

Click here to read more…

Filed Under: River Restoration Projects Tagged With: gravel restoration, habitat restoration, spawning gravel, stanislaus river

Stanislaus River Restoration Update

September 6, 2007 By JD Leave a Comment

As I noted earlier, I’m currently working as a consultant with KDH Environmental on a salmon spawning riffle restoration project.

Stanislaus River restoration project sign

You can go back and read earlier posts, but in a nutshell here’s the deal: The Stanislaus, because of New Melones, Goodwin and Tulloch dams, doesn’t receive new gravel every winter to replace the stuff that washes out in high water. Because of that, the river’s turned into a gravel-free ditch with little suitable spawning habitat for the river’s wild chinook salmon population, which dwindled down to just a couple hundred fish in the 1990’s.

Click here to read more…

Filed Under: River Restoration Projects Tagged With: gravel restoration, habitat restoration, spawning gravel, stanislaus river

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