The Lower Columbia Estuary Partnership and Lower Columbia Fish Recovery Board worked with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, NOAA Fisheries, counties, conservation districts, and other stakeholders to create a central resource of prioritized fish passage barriers across southwest Washington to support recovery of ESA-listed salmon and steelhead populations.
The meeting will focus on the expanding use of drones for capturing site condition data in the lower Columbia. We’ll present an overview of the new drone and its sensors, showcasing its capabilities with LiDAR, thermal, and multi-spectral cameras for assessing site topography, water temperature, and vegetation communities. We’ll discuss opportunities to leverage this with existing partner resources and technology for assessing restoration and conservation sites.
The focus of the Science Work Group will be improving our knowledge of lamprey and including lamprey habitat needs into designs of restoration projects. You will recall we discussed this back in June 2020 and biologists working on lamprey recovery will provide an update on what we can do with restoration activities to help protect/recover them.