Tuolumne salmon get help in La Grange, California spawning stretch
In a few weeks, Chinook salmon once again will swim up the Tuolumne River looking for places to spawn. They will encounter a dam that has blocked migration past La Grange since 1893. They also will find that mining many decades ago ruined some of the gravel beds where salmon lay their eggs. And the water can be too low during droughts such as that of 2020 to 2022. The salmon are getting help from a pair of projects at La Grange that launched over the summer. One is by the Tuolumne River Trust, an environmental group. The other is just upstream and sponsored by the river’s main diverters, the Modesto and Turlock irrigation districts and San Francisco. Both projects put bulldozers and other heavy equipment to work in reshaping the Tuolumne channel back toward its natural condition.
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