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A 2024 report prepared for the resource conservation district highlighted other possible interventions, including moving the fish around barriers and using what’s known as streamside incubators, a form of captive breeding where gametes from wild fish are fertilized and incubated at the release site.

These grassy streamside areas absorb nutrients and sediment runoff that would otherwise pollute the local waterways and the Chesapeake Bay.

It supposedly even changed the course of rivers as streamside vegetation returned.

Fish benefit most when they have access to a mosaic of interconnecting habitat from streamside vegetation to open floodplains, the research found.

The state invests millions each year in salmon recovery — from tearing out obsolete dams and culverts to give fish access to their historic habitat, to massive hatchery operations — but hasn’t been able to replant streamside habitats, leaving miles more vulnerable to extreme heat.