Capital Press: Farmers go on defense with pending Klamath salmon closure

April 7, 2006

Faced with a rash of news reports that link the Klamath Reclamation Project with three bad years for natural chinook salmon returns to the Klamath River, both the Klamath Water Users Association and U.S. Bureau of Reclamation are on the defensive.

The stories are triggered by the Pacific Fishery Management Council, which by April 7 is to complete ocean fish regulations for 2006, and by last week’s U.S. District Court decision ordering full implementation of a controversial 2002 biological opinion.

“What’s really difficult,” said Greg Additon, the Water Users executive director, “is that we are in settlement talks with the (American Indian) tribes and really think progress is being made. It’s hard to be objective when you are being attacked.”

The fish council is concerned because the returning Klamath wild fish runs are expected to be around 26,000 adults or fewer, the third year in a row below the “safety” limit for sustained reproduction of 35,000 adults. The court is concerned with protection of wild coho salmon, under Endangered Species Act protection for nearly a decade.

NOAA Fisheries, the U.S. Department of Commerce agency charged with managing offshore fisheries, has clocked the Klamath chinook returns at below the sustainability threshold in 15 of the past 27 years. Actual returns have been all over the map, from 11,649 in 1991 to 161,793 in 1995.

Reclamation, which diverts main-stem Klamath water for the Klamath Project near Klamath Falls, Ore., and the Klamath’s largest tributary, the Trinity River, for Central Valley Project lands west of Fresno, is linked in news reports with Klamath fishery troubles.

Those who ask at Reclamation are pointed toward scientific articles that suggest availability of tiny krill moved about by Pacific Ocean currents may have something to do with rise and fall of salmon numbers. NOAA, in a background paper, simply concludes that overfishing doesn’t seem to be part of the current Klamath salmon declines, letting river watchers do their own speculation.

The Water Users, in a background paper for member farmers, charges that journalists “have accepted stereotypes and simplistic views of the environment, promoting division and driving attention away from collaborative and real solutions.”

The association charges that there’s another problem, since NOAA fisheries sets its Klamath index on wild fish, not the combination of wild and hatchery fish. California Department of Fish and Game runs major hatchery programs on both the Trinity and main-stem Klamath.

– Tam Moore

SHARPENING KLAMATH NUMBERS

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Total acreage in basin	10 million
Acreage in California	6 million
... Acreage of Trinity River Basin (all California)	1.9 million
Acreage in Oregon	3.6 million
Irrigated land in upper basin (above Keno)	500,000 acres
2005 Klamath Project deliveries:
• 157,540 acres irrigated land
• 32,175 acres wetlands, including national wildlife refuges
(37.9 percent of upper basin irrigated land is in project)
50-year average seasonal flow
Main river at mouth	12.98 million acre feet
Trinity at Hoopa	3.9 million acre feet
Total Klamath Project seasonal water use
including wildlife refuges	350,000-550,000 acre feet
Klamath Project use of total flow	2.7 to 4.3 percent
Central Valley Project
Seasonal diversion from Trinity	340,000 to 369,000 acre feet
CVP use of total flow	2.6 to 2.8 percent
	Sources: California Department of Water Resources, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation