Forging dozens of new partnerships with myriad public and private organizations at every level, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will spend $2.3 million this year to help reopen 837 miles of fish habitat and spawning grounds in 29 states.
The popular Fish Passage Program, which engages willing partners to remove dams and other obstructions and improves or replaces culverts under roads or railroad tracks, approved 62 projects this year alone -- twice as many projects as in previous years, thanks to Congress appropriating additional funds.
"This is a program with home runs all around," said Steve Williams, Director of the Fish and Wildlife Service. "Because our partners all contribute to the cost of individual projects, our
budget goes a long, long way. We have other Federal agencies, State agencies and dozens of private conservation and civic organizations who are on board in this effort. We welcome and value all of them."
Williams pointed to the Manistee River culvert replacement project in Michigan and the Good Hope dam removal in Pennsylvania, each of which had a total of 13 private and public
supporting partners, as examples of the kind of wide acceptance that the Fish Passage Program has throughout the country.
Many of the small dams set for removal date as far back as the American and the Industrial Revolutions. Most were built either to accommodate early barge traffic or to provide power or irrigation for a fledgling economy, in a time when ecological or wildlife concerns were non-existent.
Over time, however, it became apparent that obstructions in hundreds of waterways were cutting fish off from their spawning or rearing groundings, contributing to a long, slow decline in many species
