5th Annual Spring-run Chinook Symposium

Chico, CA
July 22-23, 2010

Deer Creek habitat restoration projects include floodplain restoration and flow enhancement. (Photo courtesy of Deer Creek Watershed Conservancy archives)

The Salmonid Restoration Federation is hosting the 5th Annual Spring-run Chinook symposium July 22-23 in Chico, California. This is a truly collaborative educational event with diverse symposium partners including Friends of Butte Creek, Pacific Gas & Electric, Department of Water Resources, and Big Chico Creek Watershed Alliance.

SRF is pleased to offer this opportunity for local landowners, restorationists, fisheries biologists and agency staff to participate in the Chinook Symposium which includes field tours and presentations on problems and solutions specific to Spring-run Chinook. The Spring-run Chinook Symposium offers restoration practitioners training and networking opportunities on issues affecting California’s threatened Spring-run Chinook populations. Thursday tours will include a tour of Upper Butte Creek salmonid habitat; hydroelectric influences and the Butte Creek Ecological Preserve; a tour of the Lower Feather River including Oroville Dam Visitor’s Center and Department of Water Resources Projects; and a Big Chico Creek tour of salmonid restoration projects. Thursday evening SRF will host a dinner social with symposium keynote speaker Lisa Thompson from UC Davis and UC Cooperative Extension who will give a presentation, “Wilderness First Aid: Stabilizing Spring-run Chinook Populations While We Work Toward Recovery.”

Friday Tours will include a Lower Butte Creek tour of the Western Canal, and some of the weirs that are being retrofitted by the Department of Water Resources. Chris Mosser, a graduate student from UC Davis, will give a presentation regarding Monitoring of Rescued Salmon in Lower Butte Creek. There will also be a tour of Deer Creek and Mill Creek Restoration Projects with Holly Savage of the Deer Creek Watershed Conservancy and a representative of The Nature Conservancy. The tour will begin at the Abbey of New Clairvaux and will include a brief overview of the Deer Creek Watershed Conservancy’s goals for salmonids in Deer Creek. During the tour we will visit sites proposed for improvements in the Deer Creek Flood Corridor Protection Project.

Butte Creek contains prime habitat for Spring-run Chinook salmon populations. (Photo by Allen Harthorn)

This project will increase floodway width through setback levees and conservation easements to improve flood protection and ecosystem function. Increasing the floodway width in this reach would provide a number of ecological benefits, including increased area for channel migration, ability for natural sediment transport and deposition that improves channel complexity without damaging infrastructure, and increased area for riparian vegetation growth while maintaining flood conveyance; greater channel complexity and gravel size diversity via reduced water velocities and shear stress in the reach; and more confined low-flow channel to improve adult salmonid fish passage and juvenile rearing habitat.

We will also visit areas in the creek where fish passage has been an issue and discuss the Deer Creek Flow Enhancement Program (DCFEP) where local irrigators provide bypass flows for fish during low flow conditions. The DCFEP is designed to fulfill the water needs of local agriculture and domestic water users while achieving the fisheries flow objectives in Deer Creek and the groundwater protection requirements set forth by the Tehama County AB 3030 Groundwater Management Plan.