The Importance of Today’s White House Announcement on Transformational Fish Barrier Removal Projects

Today the White House announced a slate of transformational projects for restoring aquatic ecosystems, through opening up rivers and streams. These projects aim to not only restore habitat connectivity and fish passage to rivers and streams that historically sustained abundant fish populations, but to also bolster the people, tribes, communities, and economy that rely upon these resources. This announcement follows historic investments by the Biden-Harris Administration to bolster our country's natural resources.

The announcement included 10 “Transformational Projects” that are intended to lead the way in our nation’s barrier removal efforts. These projects are important for several reasons:

1. They will leverage funding from multiple agencies and programs funded through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA).

2. Geographically, they include projects in every coastal state from Alaska to California; the interior states of Arizona, Montana, Ohio; and North Carolina and Maine along the Eastern Seaboard. 

3. A majority of these projects address barrier removal at the watershed, basin, or regional scale. This is critical because projects are collectively addressing habitat connectivity at the landscape level, versus previous projects focusing on a single crossing or limited number of barriers.

4. Benefits from these projects extend to developing resilience to climate change. These projects, when complete, will provide increased water quality, floodplain stability, and drought resiliency. 

5. As habitat fragmentation and loss of biodiversity accelerates globally, these efforts are collectively turning the tide from infrastructure that results in a loss of nature, to one that is Nature Positive. By leveraging the power of nature and integrating Nature-based Solutions, we can support global efforts including the UN Climate Conference initiative to become ‘Nature Positive’ by 2030.

source: Naturepositive.org

6. These projects can serve as models for future barrier removal and habitat connectivity efforts nationally, and internationally. Lessons learned within these efforts will translate to best practices that can be carried over to facilitate more effective restoration in future barrier removal projects.

7. These projects will highlight the need for continued federal support. As programs receive record levels of funding requests, this will ideally lead to reauthorized and continued funding. For example, the National Fish Passage Program administered by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service received over $1.3B in proposals for $143 million in available funding.

As the need for barrier removal continues to outweigh the resources made available, we hope these projects will not only highlight the effectiveness of this funding, but also lead to program funding reauthorizations that are vital toward restoring and sustaining our nation's natural resources for future generations.