Scott River Lands a $2.9 Million State Grant for Salmon Restoration

A stretch of the Scott River in Siskiyou County has secured $2.9 million in new state funding for salmon restoration work, continuing an ongoing effort to rebuild Chinook salmon habitat in one of the most important tributaries feeding the Klamath River system.

The grant, supported through The Wildlands Conservancy’s acquisition of property along the river, will fund restoration work aimed at improving spawning conditions for salmon that use the Scott River corridor. The Mt. Shasta/Klamath regional director noted that the groundwork laid by conservation partners has been essential in positioning the project to receive state funding.

The Scott River has long been a focus of salmon recovery efforts in Northern California. Like many tributaries in the Klamath watershed, it has faced significant pressure from water diversions, habitat degradation, and drought, all of which have contributed to declines in salmon populations over the decades. Restoration work in these streams is painstaking and takes years to show results, but it’s among the most important conservation work happening in the region.

The broader Klamath River system is itself in the middle of a historic transformation following the removal of major dams in recent years — widely considered the largest dam removal effort in American history. With the dams gone and fish passage restored to hundreds of miles of river, investments in tributary habitat like the Scott River become even more valuable.