TV show misses many real Klamath River issues

Real troubles include historically poor water quality, big boy toys in tributary  

   Jack Elbert

Jack Elbert writes about the outdoors for the Herald and News.  

April 4, 2007

   We were watching television the other night when the narrator said, “the Klamath River .” It was one of the Planet Earth series and, suddenly, it had my attention. 

   What were they going to say about the Klamath River ? 

   Well, it wasn’t much. The main subject was the declining ocean fisheries and global warming. The salmon of the Klamath River were included. 

   When it was done, the show leaned heavily on the salmon die off due to low water. There was not a single mention that the governing agencies shut off the water to hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland to save the fish. 

   The show did say it was a drought, but the die off was the upstream users’ fault, not Mother Nature’s lack of rain and snow. 

      The water from the Klamath probably was never completely transparent.

Explorers find poor water 

   Even reports from the first explorers said that water quality in late summer on the Link River was poor, at best. I’ve heard it said that it was so bad the horses wouldn’t drink it. 

   That may or may not be true, but such a very large body of water that is as shallow as Upper Klamath and Agency lakes could never be crystal clear. 

   If that isn’t enough to cloud the issue, there were 15 million waterfowl feeding and defecating in the water. Today, the number of birds is less, but still a significant contributor to algae growth. 

   Trout-spawning steams 

   When one examines the entire length of the Klamath River , you discover that there are only two, yes two, trout-spawning streams on its entire length, one in Oregon and one in California . 

   And, they aren’t that big. 

    Spencer Creek is the sole spawning habitat on the Oregon section of the river. This natural spawning area is critical to maintain a world class fishery. 

   Redband trout are not an endangered species. They are present from the crest of the Cascade Mountains to the isolated stream of our eastern deserts. They are all redbands. 

   Having said that, however, there are significant differences in many of the watersheds, lakes and streams that the beautiful and hardy fish inhabit. 

   That is just one of many reasons maintaining local wild stocks is so important. Therein lies the critical importance of Spencer Creek . 

   Much of the land that Spencer Creek flows across belongs to private timberland companies. The ownership has passed from Weyerhaeuser to US Timberlands, then to Timber Resource Services, until it finally rests today in the hands of JWTR, a subsidiary of Jeld-Wen. 

   Until now, the land has remained open to the public with the only restrictions being some riparian fencing and posting of the many meadows banning vehicle travel on the fragile soils. 

   Sources have said, over the years, the various owners have spent in excess of $100,000 rehabilitating the stream and meadows and redesigning the roads to prevent sedimentation. 

   There is nothing more destructive to trout fry than muddy sediments. 

   Vandals use 4X4 trucks 

   Just to show how thankful they were, some recent vandals took their high-lift, fat tire, 4x4 pickup trucks and tore up the stream banks and meadows. 

   They were caught. Unfortunately, the penalties will not come close to the amount of damage they did. 

   For years, people have continued to take their big boy toys and desecrated the beautiful, and critical, meadows along Spencer Creek in the name of fun. 

   Why? 

   What is the fascination of turning a nice, green meadow into a mud hole? 

   The new owners of the stream and adjacent forests are within their rights to close the roads entering their lands. This would not only take their forests out of circulation, but potentially block access to thousands of acres of Bureau of Land Management and national forest lands. 

   Who will ultimately pay the price? You and me, the average work-a-day hunter and angler, that’s who. 

   If you happen enjoy the scenery and witness someone desecrating the land, at least get a license number and report it to the Oregon State Police. 

   Only public vigilance will protect hunting and angling privileges — and they are privileges, not rights.

Photo by Jack Elbert
This fish trap in Spencer Creek was used by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife to help track spawning redband rainbow trout by radio in the Klamath River system. Fingerling trout were radio tagged and then followed to learn their migration patterns.

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