New Zealand Fish Passage Guidelines

Recommended standards for the design and restoration of instream infrastructure to provide for fish passage

Fish Passage GuidelinesDownload PDF [17.8 MB]

These guidelines have been developed to assist infrastructure designers and managers, waterway managers, environmental officers, iwi and local communities with understanding and promoting better management of fish passage requirements in New Zealand. The guidelines set out best-practice approaches and design standards for providing fish passage at instream structures based on current best available evidence. The general principles of good fish passage design set out in these guidelines should provide a basis for developing suitable infrastructure designs in the majority of situations most regularly encountered in New Zealand. 

The guidelines are based on the principle that good fish passage design achieves the following general objectives: 

• Efficient and safe upstream and downstream passage of all aquatic organisms and life stages resident in a waterway with minimal delay or injury. 

• A diversity of physical and hydraulic conditions are provided leading to a high diversity of passage opportunities. 

• The structure provides no greater impediment to fish movements than adjacent stream reaches. 

• Continuity of geomorphic processes such as the movement of sediment and debris. 

• Structures have minimal maintenance requirements and are durable.