Tuesday December 12, 2023
The Revelator —
In late September 2023, a one-mile stretch of the Trinity River in northern California looks and sounds like a construction site. Large yellow machines crawl across bare ground, the steady growl punctuated with warning beeps. Behind pyramids of stockpiled materials — mulch, gravel, logs — the river flows serenely.
Aldaron McCovey manipulates his excavator, using the back of the bucket to deftly smooth out fine material on a bare new bank.
“It was a little overcut, so we’re filling it in so that there’s no standing water,” he explains.
A fisheries restoration technician for the Yurok Tribe, McCovey is working on an ambitious restoration project called Oregon Gulch, just east of Junction City, Calif. Here, crews from the Yurok Tribe Construction Company are rerouting a straightened stretch of the Trinity River into a newly sculpted meander to help restore the river’s form and function.