In Washington state, thousands of barrier culverts block salmon from accessing critical upstream habitat, violating tribal treaty rights and hindering efforts to rebuild populations of this iconic species. These barrier culverts are owned by a large number of entities including federal agencies, the state, counties, cities, and private landowners.

Each of these entities is independently ramping up efforts to correct barrier culverts and, in the next decade, billions of dollars will be devoted to fish passage restoration projects in the state. Planned investments in fish passage, however, are not nearly enough to correct all known barriers, and more barriers are regularly identified as inventory efforts progress. Thus, maximizing returns on investments in fish passage, i.e. benefits to salmon per dollar spent, is critical to salmon conservation across the region.

A key challenge to crafting sound salmon investment plans is that many barrier owners lack the capacity to access, summarize, and visualize existing data related to the cost and benefits of alternative barrier correction projects. Federal and state dollars have targeted the design and construction of restoration projects, rather than investing in tools needed to determine which projects generate the greatest return on investment.

To address this gap in capacity, Dr. Jardine has spent her sabbatical leading a team to develop an online app, called Upstream, that will allow users to explore data related to the costs and benefits of alternative culvert restoration projects, obtain suggested culvert restoration plans, and estimate the costs and benefits of custom plans. The target release date for the WSG-funded Upstream app is February of 2024.