Field Tour Coordinators:
Mike Love, Michael Love & Associates
Bob Pagliuco, NOAA Restoration Center

The tour will visit recently completed estuary restoration projects around Humboldt Bay, exploring a variety of project types. The tour will include discussion of the project planning process, construction challenges, and results from post-implementation physical and biological monitoring for both newly constructed projects and those implemented several years prior. The tour includes stops at the following sites:

1. The White Slough tidal marsh restoration project on the Humboldt Bay National Wildlife Refuge restores subsided salt marsh using spoils from other restoration sites and enhances shoreline protection along Highway 101.

2. The City of Eureka's Elk River estuary enhancement project, completed in 2022, creates tidal channels with a public access component.

3. The Martin Slough enhancement project, completed in 2021, uses modern tide gates to provide fish passage and enlarge estuarine habitat in constructed off-channel ponds and slough channels, while also reducing flooding on agricultural lands and the City of Eureka municipal golf course.

4. The Wood Creek tidal restoration project Phase 1 and 2 on the Northcoast Regional Land Trust’s (NRLT) Freshwater Farms Reserve restores tidal influence and creates a diversity of estuarine habitats while providing public access and a setting for environmental education.

5. The South Jacoby Creek Floodplain Restoration Project, completed in 2019, captures out of bank floodwaters and routes them into a constructed freshwater wetland at the head of tide to reduce floodplain stranding while providing slow-water habitat for non-natal fish on a cattle ranch owned by the City of Arcata.

The tour will also include discussion of restoration projects in the planning phases connected to these sites.  Project proponents participating in the tour include staff from the US Fish and Wildlife Service, City of Eureka, City of Arcata, Redwood Community Action Agency, NRLT, Michael Love & Associates, GHD, Northern Hydrology and Ross Taylor & Associates.