Arcata Fish and Wildlife Office
Pacific Southwest Region
   
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Fish and Wildlife Office Support of Trinity River Restoration Program (TRRP)
Arcata Fish & Wildlife Office Fisheries Program

Why We Are Involved:

  • Arcata Fish & Wildlife Office (AFWO) staff provides technical and administrative support to the Trinity River Restoration Program (TRRP), with the goal of restoring anadromous fish production to the Trinity River.
  • AFWO staff assists in restoration planning and works collaboratively with program partners to conduct monitoring and assessments to guide and measure success of restoration actions.
  • AFWO staff provides administrative support for the Trinity Adaptive Management Workgroup, a Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) chartered group that advises the Trinity Management Council on issues concerning restoration of the Trinity River and its fishery resources. AFWO is the Designated Federal Official for this workgroup.
Trinity River
Fisheries biologist electrofishing
Technical Assistance:
  • AFWO staff participates in the development of the Trinity River Integrated Assessment Plan, which will be used to guide habitat restoration and flow management actions to meet the goal of restoring anadromous fish production to the Trinity River.
  • AFWO staff participates in a variety of Restoration Program subcommittees including the fisheries, channel rehabilitation, riparian and wildlife, flow schedule (spring and fall) development, channel rehabilitation, and budget development subcommittees.
  • AFWO has functioned as the interagency project coordinator for several of the cooperative projects including the annual redd surveys, juvenile salmonid outmigration monitoring, juvenile salmonid habitat assessments, and spring Chinook salmon mortality monitoring projects.
  • AFWO staff participates in planning and design of channel rehabilitation projects and physical and biological monitoring of project success.
  • Database and GIS support is provided to the Program and participants by AFWO staff. Products supplied have included maps and fish distribution databases to support channel rehabilitation projects and infrastructure modifications. AFWO also developed and provided integrated databases for juvenile salmonid outmigration monitoring and redd survey projects. These two databases have been used as examples of integrated databases for the Integrated Assessment Plan.
Field Projects:

Rotary Screw Trap
  • The juvenile salmonid outmigration monitoring project is an integral component of the Restoration Program’s assessment of juvenile fish production. Data collected are being used to describe the influence on flow management on juvenile salmonid outmigration. AFWO initiated this project in 1989, which is currently being conducted cooperatively with the Hoopa Valley and Yurok Tribes, with the Service providing project coordination.
  • Annual redd surveys are used to assess the spatial and temporal distribution of spring and fall Chinook and coho salmon spawning and are conducted by AFWO staff in cooperation with the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, California Department of Fish and Game, and the Yurok Tribal Fisheries Program.
  • AFWO staff conducts salmonid habitat availability surveys and fish habitat utilization monitoring to provide baseline information needed to assess changes in habitat resulting from mechanical channel rehabilitation and increased flows. These projects are conducted cooperatively with the Hoopa Valley and Yurok Tribes.
Surveying habitat availability
  • AFWO staff conducts annual water temperature monitoring that is essential for describing the relationship between dam flow releases and downstream water temperatures critical in addressing salmonid smolt water temperature objectives. Additionally, AFWO staff provides the Restoration Program with water temperature model runs to evaluate proposed flow schedules during the annual hydrograph development process.
  • AFWO staff participates in western pond turtle and foothill yellow-legged frog investigations in cooperation with USFS Redwood Sciences Lab, to assess habitat use and effects of flow management and channel rehabilitation projects on these riverinedependent herpetofauna.
  • The age-structure of fall Chinook salmon in the Klamath-Trinity Basin is determined through the age composition project and is used in conjunction with in-river harvest and escapement estimates, to estimate the ocean stock size of Klamath-Trinity fall Chinook, to assess the contribution of a cohort to harvest and escapement, and to evaluate the success of fishery management regulations in achieving harvest and escapement goals. This is a cooperative effort, with the Yurok and Hoopa Valley Tribes coordinating the project and AFWO providing technical support.

 

Habitat utilization monitoring
 

For more information contact Joe Polos, Supervisory Fish Biologist, Arcata Fish and Wildlife Office, 707.822.7201
Last updated: February 17, 2009