Restoration of Longitudinal Connectivity of the Price River for the Benefit of Native Fish Species and People
Eric McCulley1
1 RiverRestoration
Helper City has been working on the enhancement of the Price River through the city in a multi-phase program called the Helper River Revitalization Project since 2013. One of the key objectives of the project has been to improve the longitudinal aquatic habitat connectivity of the Price River through this reach by removing obsolete irrigation infrastructure and replacement of grade control structures with more fish passage friendly instream structures. Five out of six phases of the project have been completed, connecting approximately two miles of river, which had significant connectivity issues due to historical alteration. The results of fish sampling of the river through Helper City in 2016 and 2019 indicate that naturally recruiting Bluehead sucker and stocked Colorado River cutthroat trout are thriving in the newly connected reaches. Further study on the fish movement patterns is planned for the future, but preliminary results of sampling have shown that fish can move up and downstream through the system, where baseline results indicated the absence of these important Utah species in previously isolated reaches.