Sacramento Valley String of Pearls Floodplain Restoration Program

The String of Pearls is a comprehensive program to increase both the pace and scale of floodplain restoration in the Sacramento Valley. We propose to identify, prioritize, restore and enhance floodplain and off-channel rearing habitat for Winter-run Chinook Salmon along the entire 300 miles of their freshwater migratory corridor in the Sacramento River between Redding and Rio Vista. This project stitches many small, disconnected restoration opportunities together into a landscape-scale string of floodplain “pearls” which will improve the success of juvenile Winter-run Chinook salmon and other salmonids out-migrating through what is currently hundreds of river miles of hostile, channelized, and food-starved river channel.

From Shasta to the salt and through the long, channelized, and leveed river reaches in between, the implementation of The String of Pearls improves access to a mosaic of high-quality, off-channel rearing habitats for all runs of Sacramento River salmon.