The Scott River Watershed Council

The Scott River Watershed Council, a tax-exempt nonprofit organization based in Etna, California, acts as a prime recipient of federal grants focused on salmonid habitat restoration and watershed coordination in the Scott River drainage of the Klamath Basin, Northern California. The Council does not hold federal contracts; it operates exclusively under grant programs from the Department of the Interior Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Resources Conservation Service, and related federal agencies, with 90% of recent awards as prime recipient (46 of 51 total awards) and 10% as sub-recipient under private foundations.

The Council's capability portfolio centers on instream and riparian habitat restoration for threatened and endangered coho and Chinook salmon populations. Representative work includes a $172,101 Cooperative Agreement under the Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program (CFDA 15.631) awarded October 1, 2025, to construct three wood structures and six beaver dam analogs in Wildcat Creek and restore spawning and rearing habitat through floodplain grading and roughness elements. A second example is a $187,945 Cooperative Agreement under the same program, also awarded October 1, 2025, to construct ten engineered log structures along a 500-foot section of the Scott River tailings reach and plant native willow and cottonwood vegetation. A third is a $212,346 Cooperative Agreement under Partners for Fish and Wildlife awarded October 1, 2024, to restore up to two miles of coho salmon habitat across three priority subwatersheds through beaver dam analogs, wood structures, native tree planting, and non-native weed removal—all completing by September 30, 2029. The Council also received a $9,999 purchase order from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on April 20, 2026, for pit tagging services supporting fish monitoring and data collection.

Customer concentration is acute and single-source. The Department of the Interior Fish and Wildlife Service Region 8 accounts for 34 awards (67% of the total active portfolio) and dominates all recent grant activity; the broader USFWS organization contributes an additional 7 awards. The Department of the Interior Bureau of Reclamation holds 4 awards, and Fish and Wildlife Service Region 1 holds 2. These five entities account for 94% of awards. The combined potential value across all recent federal funding is $10 thousand reported in the source data, though actual obligated dollars stand at $4.8 million—a discrepancy reflecting reporting anomalies in smaller-value grant listings and the Council's receipt of multi-year cooperative agreements with substantial total project costs extending to 2029. No federal contract vehicles or IDIQs are relevant; all awards are direct grants or cooperative agreements from Interior and USDA agencies.

The Council also serves as a sub-recipient under the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation on habitat restoration projects in Wildcat Creek, Patterson Creek, Sugar Creek, and French Creek, with sub-awards dated January 2023 through January 2025. An additional sub-award under the National Forest Foundation dated October 15, 2024, supports the "Connecting Community to Meadow Restoration" project. The Council functions as a technical and implementation partner in a collaborative ecosystem restoration model characteristic of the Partners for Fish and Wildlife and Klamath Basin recovery programs, frequently working alongside tribal entities, CDFW, and private landowners.

Recent activity is stable but modest in award volume—one award in 2026, four in 2025, four in 2024, eight in 2023, and six in 2022—with three awards (combined potential value $10 thousand) reaching completion inside the next twenty-four months. The Council's federal footprint is narrowly concentrated in Department of Interior salmonid recovery and watershed coordination work in Northern California and does not extend to broader civilian or defense agency procurement.