Since 2016, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) has been working to include methods to incorporate future climate change into engineering designs of fish passage facilities and stream crossings. The results of these efforts are detailed in this document titled NOAA Fisheries West Coast Region Guidance to Improve the Resilience of Fish Passage Facilities to Climate Change subsequently referred to as Improving Resilience. The intended users of Improving Resilience are NMFS engineers and biologists, along with applicants and their consultants. One of the goals of the document is to assist parties in satisfying NMFS regulatory authorities and NMFS’ policy on the treatment of climate change in Endangered Species Act (ESA) decisions. Improving Resilience provides the processes and tools needed to incorporate climate resiliency into the design of fish passage facilities and represents the first in a series of documents applicants should use when designing a fish passage project in the West Coast Region (WCR), which encompasses California, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho.
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