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Oregon dike breaching helps restore
endangered fish
By JEFF BARNARD
AP Environmental Writer
By JEFF BARNARD
AP Environmental Writer
November 18, 2008
GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) - A year ago explosives sent clouds of dirt sky high to breach dikes that half a century ago turned marshes on the northern end of Upper Klamath Lake into farmland to help feed a growing nation.
On Tuesday, a huge backhoe less dramatically finished the job of allowing water once again to cover the Williamson River Delta as part of a major project by the Nature Conservancy to restore habitat for the shortnosed sucker and Lost River sucker.
The two endangered fish species have twice forced shutoffs of irrigation water to nearby farms during drought.
"It looks like by the end of today there will be about 400 acres flooded up," Nature Conservancy project manager Mark Stern said from the shores of Upper Klamath Lake with the waters flowing through the dike and into the fields around him. "This will be about 2,200 acres of wetland come next spring," when lake waters are higher.
It is a piece of a complex and extensive effort to restore the Klamath Basin to a naturally functioning ecosystem after a century of engineering that included dikes, dams and irrigation canals. Another piece is the future removal of four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River to help struggling salmon runs.
"It's been a long time coming," said Jeff Mitchell, a council member for the Klamath Tribes, who call them chwam and kupto and hold them sacred as a gift of food from the Creator.
"The delta provided a huge habitat for juvenile chwam," he said. "It really played a big role in their survival and growth as they went through most of their life stages. Restoring the delta, in my opinion, is probably one of the top restoration projects we have."
Explosives were used last year to breach the lake dikes because the land was so soft, but the area being restored this year can support heavy machinery, said Stern.
A backhoe with a 6-cubic-yard bucket cut breaks in six miles of dikes. Cutting out plugs of earth in them allowed river and lake water to flow across the southern side of the delta, which was drained in the 1950s to grow potatoes, alfalfa and other crops.
Combined with the part on the northern side flooded last year, a total of 5,800 acres of delta is being restored.
It will take time for vegetation to come back in the former marsh, but the area is being already being used as a safe haven by some of the hundreds of thousands of sucker larvae coming down the Williamson River from spawning grounds, Stern said. It will be longer before improvements in water quality are seen from the natural filtering action of the marsh.
Before the restoration, the larvae were easy pickings for predators in the open waters of the lake. But in the marsh they are able to hide and grow.
Nature Conservancy bought the northern side of the delta, formerly Tulana Farms, in 1996 and the southern side, formerly Goose Bay Farm, in 1999. Restoration work has run about $9 million. The excavation work on Goose Bay Farm was $1.9 million.
Other restoration projects on lands controlled by the federal government will eventually create 20,000 acres of marsh that once was farmed on the northern end of the lake.
The delta restoration was identified by the National Academy of Sciences and local people on a panel created by former Sen. Mark Hatfield as one of the top priorities for restoring natural systems to the Upper Klamath Basin.
Over the past century, 350,000 acres of marsh in the Upper Klamath Basin was reduced to less than 75,000 by farmers and federal agencies building dikes to create rich farmland.
In 1992, biologists realized that few suckers were growing to be adults, and declared them both endangered species due to loss of habitat, poor water quality, and overfishing.
"It's going to be exciting in the next few years to see how the system responds," said Mitchell. "I think now we can start moving our focus up further in the watershed."
GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) - A year ago explosives sent clouds of dirt sky high to breach dikes that half a century ago turned marshes on the northern end of Upper Klamath Lake into farmland to help feed a growing nation.
On Tuesday, a huge backhoe less dramatically finished the job of allowing water once again to cover the Williamson River Delta as part of a major project by the Nature Conservancy to restore habitat for the shortnosed sucker and Lost River sucker.
The two endangered fish species have twice forced shutoffs of irrigation water to nearby farms during drought.
"It looks like by the end of today there will be about 400 acres flooded up," Nature Conservancy project manager Mark Stern said from the shores of Upper Klamath Lake with the waters flowing through the dike and into the fields around him. "This will be about 2,200 acres of wetland come next spring," when lake waters are higher.
It is a piece of a complex and extensive effort to restore the Klamath Basin to a naturally functioning ecosystem after a century of engineering that included dikes, dams and irrigation canals. Another piece is the future removal of four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River to help struggling salmon runs.
"It's been a long time coming," said Jeff Mitchell, a council member for the Klamath Tribes, who call them chwam and kupto and hold them sacred as a gift of food from the Creator.
"The delta provided a huge habitat for juvenile chwam," he said. "It really played a big role in their survival and growth as they went through most of their life stages. Restoring the delta, in my opinion, is probably one of the top restoration projects we have."
Explosives were used last year to breach the lake dikes because the land was so soft, but the area being restored this year can support heavy machinery, said Stern.
A backhoe with a 6-cubic-yard bucket cut breaks in six miles of dikes. Cutting out plugs of earth in them allowed river and lake water to flow across the southern side of the delta, which was drained in the 1950s to grow potatoes, alfalfa and other crops.
Combined with the part on the northern side flooded last year, a total of 5,800 acres of delta is being restored.
It will take time for vegetation to come back in the former marsh, but the area is being already being used as a safe haven by some of the hundreds of thousands of sucker larvae coming down the Williamson River from spawning grounds, Stern said. It will be longer before improvements in water quality are seen from the natural filtering action of the marsh.
Before the restoration, the larvae were easy pickings for predators in the open waters of the lake. But in the marsh they are able to hide and grow.
Nature Conservancy bought the northern side of the delta, formerly Tulana Farms, in 1996 and the southern side, formerly Goose Bay Farm, in 1999. Restoration work has run about $9 million. The excavation work on Goose Bay Farm was $1.9 million.
Other restoration projects on lands controlled by the federal government will eventually create 20,000 acres of marsh that once was farmed on the northern end of the lake.
The delta restoration was identified by the National Academy of Sciences and local people on a panel created by former Sen. Mark Hatfield as one of the top priorities for restoring natural systems to the Upper Klamath Basin.
Over the past century, 350,000 acres of marsh in the Upper Klamath Basin was reduced to less than 75,000 by farmers and federal agencies building dikes to create rich farmland.
In 1992, biologists realized that few suckers were growing to be adults, and declared them both endangered species due to loss of habitat, poor water quality, and overfishing.
"It's going to be exciting in the next few years to see how the system responds," said Mitchell. "I think now we can start moving our focus up further in the watershed."
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