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

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.

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We began work today on Northern California’s Stanislaus River to build several Chinook salmon spawning riffles and juvenile holding areas.

The gravel restoration work is being done by Dennis Hood of KDH Environmental, for whom I’m working as a consultant, and should give the river, which is a tributary to California’s San Joaquin River, a huge shot in the arm from a fishery enhancement standpoint.

Several riffles were built in the river’s upper reaches some years back and they helped bring the wild Chinook population back from near extinction (the run was down to something 200 fish) to a run that now numbers anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 fish annually.

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