Sacramento River Basin Report Card
Feather River Watershed
April 2010
As the largest watershed in California, the Sacramento River is vital to the state’s economy, provides drinking water for residents from Modoc County to San Diego, and is a vital organ for hundreds of wildlife species.
It is also the home of over two million Northern Californians. From the mountains, to the valley, to the small towns and cities, it is the place where we live, work, and recreate. Fittingly, the health of the watershed directly equates to our quality of life. As the state’s population continues to burgeon over the next decade, it is important to track watershed conditions and trends, The Sacramento River Watershed Program (SRWP) began in 1996, with the basic principle that we must take care of the watershed and its resources for today’s needs as well as future generations. As a result, SRWP prompted the Sacramento River Watershed Management Plan: A Roadmap for the Future (Roadmap) and Watershed Health Indicators Program (WHIP). Roadmap provides an overview of the basin’s six subregions and a picture of watershed health within the Sacramento River Basin. WHIP uses the Watershed Assessment Framework (WAF) to better understand some of the relationships between social, economic, and environmental conditions, and watershed management actions. SRWP launched the WHIP Report Card effort in 2008, focusing on the Feather River Watershed for the first evaluation. A similar evaluation of the basin’s other subregions will be beneficial to track current watershed conditions and trends.
The WHIP Report Card, is available for download as an 8-page Executive Summary, or as a detailed 205-page report.
