It takes a village to raise a child, even if that child has fins. For CalTrout’s nearly completed restoration project on the South Fork Scott River, that village includes engineers, equipment operators, strategists, landowners, agency partners, Tribal communities, and funders—sharing a wide breadth of expertise between them. With the onset of fall rains, this Klamath River tributary will be reconnected to its historic floodplain, increasing much-needed spawning and rearing habitat for threatened coho salmon, Chinook salmon, and steelhead trout.  

Legacy gold-mining damage disconnected the Scott River from its floodplain, shunting the flow into a “bowling lane” where “flow came crashing down at high velocities,” said Preston Harris, Executive Director of the Scott River Water Trust. Coho salmon have historically spawned and reared here alongside steelhead and Chinook salmon, but fast, confined flows sharply decreased aquatic habitat diversity, making the river corridor almost unlivable for these fish. With just one channel, CalTrout project manager Dustin Revel pointed out that “there’s not a lot of space for fish to move into at higher flows” that result from spring snowmelt or heavy rain.  

The fish are not the only community impacted by the degraded habitat. For Tribes such as the Shasta, Quartz Valley, Karuk, and Yurok, the health of the Scott River is deeply intertwined with cultural identity, food sovereignty, and spiritual practices that rely on salmon—“the tribal communities depend on salmon, and a lot of our salmon runs have been lost,” said Toz Soto, Fisheries Program Manager for the Karuk Tribe. Local agricultural communities also rely on the Scott River for irrigation purposes and to sustain their livelihoods, making it a shared resource that connects ecological, cultural, and economic needs. Protecting and restoring the Scott River is key to sustaining fisheries, honoring tribal rights and traditions, as well as ensuring a resilient future for the entire watershed.  

Together, the diverse project team—landowners, engineers, Tribal communities, as well as state and federal government entities—determined that the most effective nature-based solution would be roughening the stream channel. “What that means is instead of having a channel that is fairly narrow, confined, and has a lot of energy, we added roughness to it…so we spread that energy out,” said Principal Engineer Joey Howard of Cascade Stream Solutions. To create that roughness, CalTrout and our partners worked with the natural environment—placing locally sourced trees and boulders perpendicular to the stream’s path to slow the flow and trap sediment. Targeted excavation also helped widen the channel, raising the streambed and reconnecting it with the surrounding floodplain. “There’s no natural recovery for mining impacts,” reminded Soto. “Mining impacts aren’t like a forest fire or a flood, where there’s a disturbance and then a natural recovery. Mining impacts were created by heavy equipment, and we’re going to need heavy equipment to fix it.”