The Salmon Conservation and Research Facility (SCARF) is owned and operated by the California Department of Fish & Wildlife (CDFW) and is located about 1-mile downstream of Friant Dam. The facility was funded by over $40M in voter-approved state bonds from Proposition 84, Proposition 1, and Proposition 13 from the Department of Water Resources’ Riverine Stewardship Program. The SCARF currently produces about 250,000 juvenile spring-run Chinook salmon annually and will eventually produce approximately 1 million spring-run Chinook salmon juveniles for the SJRRP. The SCARF is part of a broad suite of actions needed to meet the Program’s Restoration Goal.
In addition to collecting eggs from adult broodstock raised at the hatchery, eggs or juveniles are transferred to the SCARF each year from northern California streams where spring-run Chinook exist. By drawing from other spring-run genetic pools around the state, CDFW works to rear salmon that are genetically diverse in order to develop a San Joaquin River-specific population of spring-run Chinook.