Fish Passage Restoration on Rivers and Streams

Physical barriers to fish migration are ubiquitous in freshwater and estuarine systems.  They range from dams, road crossings, water diversions, levees, flood control channels, and tide gates to name but a few.  As an effort to reduce declining populations, removing fish passage barriers is a popular habitat restoration activity.  Investments to restore fish passage in the United States alone is tremendous – in the hundreds of millions of dollars each year.  However, our efforts pale in comparison to the identified need.  Therefore, we are challenged to deploy strategic approaches targeting our investments where they will yield the greatest fish conservation benefits.  This challenge is magnified by predicted climate change impacts and increasingly high risk of aquatic invasive species.  Fish passage projects also can provide additional benefits such as restoring natural flow to a system, increasing recreational opportunities, and improving water quality.  In large urban settings, fish passage is also being reconsidered in key reaches of watersheds that have long been impassable due to channel modifications for flood routing (e.g., trapezoidal concrete channels).  In these highly modified channels, full or even moderate fish passage restoration is impractical due to the large urban areas requiring flood routing.  Several approaches are now being explored in these systems to provide transit corridors for targeted fish species while not reducing the hydraulic capacities of flood channels.  This symposium investigates the myriad of fish passage restoration challenges that fishery resource managers and scientists face.  It brings together leading scientists and practitioners to present the latest, innovative approaches to addressing fish passage restoration in a holistic manner.  The symposium is partitioned into four components:  1) Strategic approaches and considerations for prioritizing fish barrier restoration, 2) New techniques and innovative applications for fish passage restoration treatments, 3) Monitoring the effectiveness of fish passage projects, and 4) Fish passage in flood control channels.  This symposium will identify ways to prioritize, implement, and evaluate fish passage projects from start to finish for newcomers as well as existing practitioners.