Wild salmon, historically, are born in rivers, swim to sea to live out their adulthoods, and find their way back to their freshwater spawning grounds to reproduce before dying.

But dams and other barriers to spawning grounds have disconnected that natural cycle, requiring fisheries managers to get creative to support salmon populations. It is now fairly common to transport salmon to and from spawning grounds by truck, boat, and even helicopter.

A report by the University of California, Davis, Center for Watershed Sciences and nonprofit California Trout assesses one such method of assisted movement over dams—two-way trap and haul—being proposed by federal agencies as a high-priority recovery strategy for chinook salmon populations in California.

The report's findings indicate that such programs should proceed with extreme caution, though they may be appropriate in cases where few other options remain to recover dwindling populations of salmon.

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