Habitat Restoration Page 1  2  3  4  5      Although rearing salmon has been the major emphasis of the Salmon Stamp Program, habitat restoration has always been an important element. In the early years, Stamp monies directly funded many projects in the field. Then, as other sources of funding for habitat improvement (such as the Bosco-Keene Renewable Resources Investment Fund and Proposition 70) became available, the emphasis of Stamp funding shifted to purchase of heavy construction equipment and facilities for DFG fish habitat improvement projects. This funding improves the ability of the DFG Fish Habitat Improvement shops to restore habitat and to screen small agricultural water diversions, protecting juvenile salmon from the dangers of irrigation networks.      Mill, Deer, and Butte Creek Habitat Restoration, Sacramento River, Central Valley Mill, Deer, and Butte Creeks are the primary tributaries supporting most of the remaining naturally spawning Sacramento spring-run chinook populations. Though populations of spring-run chinook are regularly observed on several other Sacramento River tributaries, human land and water use have reduced these runs in some years to very few fish. The remnant populations of spring-run chinook in Mill, Deer, and Butte Creeks have been recognized as a genetically distinct run. The Salmon Stamp Program was the founding entity that developed the Spring-Run Chinook Workgroup to engage landowners and other members of the general public to undertake restoration of the spring run. Since 1991 the group has met monthly to determine the best means for improving habitat conditions for spring-run salmon, once the most abundant of the four runs in the Sacramento River. Over $40,000 in Salmon Stamp funds were contributed to improve water flow capacities, rebuild fish ladders, improve adult passage ways, and increase habitat spawning areas along a 2-mile stretch of Mill Creek. Proposition 70, enacted in 1988, provided $10 million in salmon stream restoration funding, and was an initial source of funding to remove four small irrigation dams on Butte Creek that impeded salmon migration, and to screen water intakes at Parrott-Phelan Dam. These intakes now serve as a single, screened point of diversion that supplies irrigators with water that previously had been supplied through the four dams that were removed. We include this example of a Proposition 70 project because, while the money came from bond funds, Commercial Salmon Trollers Advisory Committee members made up one-half of the membership of the committee that made recommendations to DFG regarding how the funds were to be spent. In 1998, nearly 20,000 wild spring-run Chinook returned to Butte Creek. Additionally, significant numbers of springrun salmon spawned in Mill and Deer creeks. Spring-run spawners have been seen in other streams where they hadnft been for ages, and the population appears to be recovering. The Salmon Stamp Program is justifiably proud of its contribution to initiation of recovery efforts for Sacramento spring-run salmon, and continues to fund and support those efforts, which must continue at least until the extent of recovery leads to delisting the spring run. Page 1  2  3  4  5