From mavensnotebook.com – Hallwood’s goals are simple: make a reach of the Yuba River “a more natural and fishier place for a thriving self-sustaining river ecosystem,” said Chris Hammersmark, ecohydrologist and director at cbec eco engineering, which helped orchestrate the complex and comprehensive restoration project. “We needed to help the river by removing the unnatural constraints on its natural dynamism to allow it to inundate its floodplain during wet periods, provide rearing habitat for juvenile salmon and adjust the location of its channels, providing an ever-evolving mosaic of aquatic and terrestrial habitat types,” he said. For decades, the Yuba River has flowed in a disjointed and disconnected manner, the legacy of the exhaustive, ecosystem-altering dredge mining for gold that occurred during the end 19th century. The wholesale displacement of the river’s banks and channel washed downstream a pile of debris dozens of feet high. The river’s natural floodplain was disrupted as “training walls” were constructed to channel water quickly through the area. (more)