The Yukon River Drainage Fisheries Association, working in partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Alaska Department of Fish and Game, and contractor Sandstrom and Sons, Inc. of Anchorage, has removed an inoperable dam on the Chatanika River. This project restores fish passage fish passage
Fish passage is the ability of fish or other aquatic species to move freely throughout their life to find food, reproduce, and complete their natural migration cycles. Millions of barriers to fish passage across the country are fragmenting habitat and leading to species declines. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's National Fish Passage Program is working to reconnect watersheds to benefit both wildlife and people.
Learn more about fish passage to more than 65 miles of upstream habitat for chinook and chum salmon, as well as whitefish, sheefish, Arctic grayling, and northern pike, and creates new opportunities for recreation on the waterway.
The Davidson Ditch Diversion Dam, located on the Chatanika River east of Fairbanks, was used to support industrial activity from the mid-1920s until the 1950s. The dam was rendered inoperable by a 1967 flood and, twelve years later, the federal license was surrendered to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
Using $109,000 of Congressionally-appropriated funds from the Service, $35,000 from the BLM and support from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Alaska Department of Fish & Game, the Yukon River Drainage Fisheries Association oversaw the contracted removal of 75 feet of double-wall sheet pile located in the active river channel. The project was completed on Monday, January 21.
