Upper Long Bar Restoration Project
Funders: Wildlife Conservation Board
Partners: Cramer Fish Sciences, cbec eco engineering, Silica Resources Inc., Yuba Water Agency
In late 2021, SYRCL was awarded a grant from the Wildlife Conservation Board to begin planning, permitting, and collecting base-line data for a salmonid rearing habitat restoration project at Upper Long Bar. The project team is made up of the same partners who worked together to implement the Lower Long Bar project and Rose Bar project. On this project, Yuba Water Agency is also contributing project design.
The primary goal of SYRCL’s habitat enhancement along the lower Yuba River is to improve juvenile salmonid rearing habitat productivity, complexity, and diversity to support diverse life history strategies.
Enhancement efforts will aim to increase the carrying capacity of the system by improving quantity and quality of available habitat. In particular, enhancements which support the “stream-type” life history strategy where spring-run Chinook juveniles rear over summer and outmigrate during the next fall and winter may improve population resiliency and support outmigration at a larger size.
Anticipated biological outcomes of rearing habitat enhancement include increased juvenile growth, survival, and subsequent contribution to spawning adults.
The Upper Long Bar project will support juvenile salmonid rearing across a broad temporal and spatial range by providing:
- sustainable and seasonally functional habitat structure (i.e., complexity, sinuosity, diversity, instream structures and over-hanging cover)
- high food availability and quality
- predator refugia
- high flow refugia
Provided habitat structure will be tailored towards the requirements of rearing salmonids and exclude habitat preferences of non-native predators and competitors, thereby reducing the risks they present.
As of January 2024, project designs have reached the 65% design phase and permit applications are anticipated to be submitted Spring 2024.
Project construction is anticipated to begin Summer 2025.
Project Landmarks
Pre-project monitoring kicks off
October 1, 2021
Public outreach meeting
November 2, 2023
