Mill-Shackleford, Scott River Bridge Fish Passage Project

On Mill-Shackleford Creek in Siskiyou County, a Scott River tributary in the Klamath Basin, an unimproved crossing made of two or three 24-inch corrugated metal pipes buried under gravel and fill had long served double duty as both a passage barrier for fish and a hazard for the timber trucks that needed to drive straight through the stream to cross it.

CalTrout partnered with Ecotrust Forest Management, Cascade Stream Solutions, the Siskiyou Resource Conservation District, Alpineworks Consulting, Mason, Bruce and Girard, Waterways Consulting, and UC Davis's Center for Watershed Sciences to solve both problems at once, installing a 60-foot prefabricated steel bridge that lets timber trucks cross without ever touching the streambed, while fully reopening fish passage beneath it. Funded through CDFW's Proposition 1 Watershed Restoration Grant Program and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Partners Program, with CDFW grant support, the project was completed in December 2018. The result gives Southern Oregon/Northern California Coast Coho Salmon renewed access to the critical over-summering habitat that Mill-Shackleford Creek provides, in a watershed where the Scott River already produces the largest wild coho returns anywhere in California.