Fish Passage Restoration Stream Habitat Restoration Guidelines: Final Draft
Summary
This technique focuses on restoring safe upstream and downstream fish passage to streams and stream reaches that have become isolated by culverts, dams, and other artificial obstructions. It also addresses ways to prevent or minimize harm to fish at stream diversions and water intakes. For migratory species of fish and aquatic wildlife, successful completion of their life cycle hinges on having access to and safe effective passage between reproduction, feeding, and refuge habitats. For fish, such habitats may lie longitudinally (upstream/downstream) within the stream system, estuary, and ocean or laterally within floodplain habitats such as side channels, ponds, wetlands, and periodically flooded grasslands and forests. Man-made in-stream structures (e.g., culverts, dams, levees, or tide gates) can become physical barriers that impede fish passage and reduce connectivity through habitat fragmentation. Passage may also be impeded by stream diversions, water intakes, or other structures that injure fish or cause stranding. Even un-maintained fishways can impede or prevent fish access to critical habitat. Where fish passage is obstructed longitudinally within the stream, the downstream transport of habitat elements (sediment, water, wood and other material) is often obstructed as well, along with the upstream and downstream passage of many species of amphibians, reptiles, and mammals that use stream corridors for migration and as daily movement corridors. This technique focuses on restoring fish passage longitudinally within the stream. For a list of techniques to consider when restoring fish passage to floodplains, refer to Chapter 4.3.2 Restoring Habitat Connectivity.
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