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68K views · 1.4K reactions | The first Central Valley spring-run Chinook salmon raised by the dedicated team at CDFW’s new Salmon Conservation and Research Facility (SCARF) were released into the San Joaquin River this spring. Since 2012, an interim hatchery facility has been raising about 220,000 juvenile Chinook each year, but the new SCARF is bigger and more efficient, producing 380,000 in its first year and expected to ramp up to one million in coming years. These fish are being raised as part of the San Joaquin River Restoration Program to help this threatened species recover after construction of the Friant Dam in the 1940s wiped out populations as it cut off their access to the upper reaches of the San Joaquin River — California’s second-longest river — where they historically would spawn. Today, Central Valley spring-run Chinook — the southernmost population of Chinook — continue to face impediments to their natural migration as well as warming water, low river flows and other impacts of drought and climate disruption. The team at SCARF is putting into action California’s Salmon Strategy for a Hotter, Drier Future and bringing Chinook back to the San Joaquin. CDFW fisheries biologists estimate more than 3,000 Chinook returned to the San Joaquin last year and that number is expected to grow with the increased production capabilities of the new SCARF. | California Department of Fish and Wildlife
The first Central Valley spring-run Chinook salmon raised by the dedicated team at CDFW’s new Salmon Conservation and Research Facility (SCARF) were released into the San Joaquin River this spring....
