Friday June 14, 2024
US Bureau of Reclamation via Maven’s Notebook —
The fish travelling the Sacramento River between the upper Sacramento Valley and the Pacific Ocean contend with a variety of perils as they make the journey.
The river’s path has been highly modified and separated from its historical floodplain for more than a century, enabling homes and farms to exist at the very edges of the levee system.
Altered flows, fluctuating water temperatures, diminished food and habitat and losses from predation mean the threatened and endangered Chinook salmon runs face tremendous odds in surviving their life cycle journey.
Scattered along the river are intakes, large and small, that divert water for agricultural use and valley communities. Unscreened, these structures can take their toll by sending fish on a one-way trip out of the river. It’s a problem Reclamation and its local, state and federal partners have been working to solve for 30 years.