1st Annual Spring-Run Chinook Confab
Butte Creek, July 27-29, 2006

Registration Form and Schedule

Butte Creek Spring-run Chinook Watershed Symposium Poster

The Salmonid Restoration Federation, in partnership with Pacific, Gas, and Electric and Friends of Butte Creek, will host the 1st Annual Spring-Run Chinook Symposium, July 27-29, 2006, in beautiful Butte Creek. SRF is pleased to offer a three-day opportunity for local landowners, restorationists, fisheries biologists and agency staff to participate in workshops on fish monitoring and identification techniques, to tour and understand restoration projects, and, through positive dialogue, to increase their capacity to positively impact the recovery of Spring-run in California.

The goals of the Chinook Symposium are two-fold. This new symposium will provide affordable technical and hands-on trainings for the fisheries restoration and water conservation communities to benefit Spring-run Chinook populations in California. Additionally, this event will provide cooperative opportunities for landowners, agency biologists, and community restorationists to discuss issues and perspectives in Spring-run Chinook restoration and recovery in California. Located in the Northern Sacramento Valley, Butte Creek contains one of the last self-sustaining populations of Spring-run Chinook in California. The recovery of the Butte Creek Spring-run Chinook provides a unique opportunity to reinforce the importance of collaborative watershed planning efforts in the recovery of other Spring-run populations in California.

The event will begin on Thursday morning with two concurrent full-day tours of the upper and lower watersheds. PG & E will lead a tour of their hydroelectric facilities in the upper watershed. Rob Capriola, California Waterfowl, and Olen Zirkle, Ducks Unlimited will lead the Lower Watershed tour to view and discuss recent and upcoming dam, diversions, and fish barrier modifications. SRF will host a BBQ and presentations on Thursday evening at the Butte County/CDF Firehouse near Butte Meadows. Zeke Grader from Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen Associations and Tracy McReynolds of DFG will discuss Spring-run Chinook salmon followed by a presentation from the Spring Run Technical Review Team.

On Friday and Saturday participants will break into two groups so they have an opportunity to explore both the upper and lower watersheds and attend all workshops. The Upper watershed tour will highlight roads and meadows. This workshop will be led by Kent Reeves of the California Native Grasslands Association, Roger Cole of Streaminders, and Eric Ginney with The Louis Berger Group. Mike Kossow, founder of the SRF field schools will assist. Visits will be made to a restored meadow and one in recovery as well as roads that have been removed and ones that need repair.

The Lower Watershed Workshop will start at the Centerville schoolhouse to provide an overview of fish identification and counting techniques, weirs, snorkel surveys, and carcass counts. Doug Demko of SP Cramer will discuss the fish counting weir on the Stanislaus and the Spring Run population model that they are developing. In the afternoon Mark Gard from USFWS will teach participants about spawning gravel survey methods to assess the habitat relationships between water flow and gravel quality. Special Friday late afternoon tours will include a visit to Big Chico Creek Ecological Preserve and a hike to Deer Creek Falls.

SRF hopes to reestablish the spirit of the Spring Run Salmon workgroup founded by Nat Bingham to engage restorationists in watersheds containing Spring-run Chinook salmon by highlighting past and ongoing restoration and recovery efforts.

For more information or to register for the Spring Run Symposium, please call SRF at (707) 923-7501. The cost is $150 that includes workshops, field tours, food, and camping. If you are attending two days only or you will not be camping the cost is $100. A limited number of scholarships will be available.