Northern California’s Shasta River is a ‘keystone’ watershed in the Klamath Basin; its rich waters help grow large juvenile coho salmon, and it’s the last major watershed open to salmon on the troubled Klamath river prior to the Iron Gate dam.
CalTrout has been partnering with UC Davis to collect data on the factors which have been limiting coho salmon survival in the Shasta River, and as the video below suggests, the coho do pretty well when water temperatures, flows and food supplies align.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fD-Gdy-ZkyI[/youtube]
(You can find more information about the video — shot in Big Springs Creek, a spring-fed tributary to the Shasta River recently restored after the Nature Conservancy purchased the property — at the California Water blog.)
Between now and 2020 — the year the Klamath Basin dams may finally be removed — CalTrout is focused on gathering the best available scientific data and implementing priority restoration projects in tributaries below the dams, including the Shasta River.
