The premise of the juvenile transport program is to collect juvenile salmon and steelhead approaching a dam, place them into barges or trucks, and ferry them past downstream dams to avoid the mortality they would incur by passing through multiple dams.
The effectiveness of the transport program is constantly evaluated to determine whether it is achieving its objective of providing a higher rate of adult returns relative to fish that have passed in-river.
The percentage of fish transported has decreased by over 50% since 2006.