Is Redwood Creek sick, or misdiagnosed?

Timber man Bob Barnum has never been one to go with the grain.

And he hasn't been one to go with the flow either, at least when it comes to Redwood Creek. Considered impaired -- too much sediment and too hot for fish -- by the state and federal governments, Barnum has sued the State Water Resources Control Board to get the creek taken off a list of troubled North Coast Rivers.

Barnum has been in the timber business for about 60 years, and claims that additional regulations and costs for logging in Redwood Creek are unnecessarily penalizing him and other landowners, whose timber harvesting is radically reformed from decades past. More, he believes recent years' information on young fish trapped in the upper watershed show that things aren't nearly so bad as they are made out.

The suit filed in 2003 is expected to be heard soon in Sacramento County Superior Court. Represented by the Pacific Legal Foundation, Barnum claims that the evidence used to back up the Redwood Creek listing was limited, anecdotal and unsubstantiated opinion.

In part, he's right. That is, there is no clear record of fisheries on Redwood Creek, which sets it apart from many other watersheds on the North Coast. A report by Susie Van Kirk done for Redwood National Park in 1994 relies on newspaper reports and interviews with longtime residents of the watershed.

Many of the stories are of the “used to be able to walk across the stream on the backs of salmon” variety. But others are more specific. In the early 1900s, the Arcata Union reported that two men took 25 pounds of cutthroat trout every day for three days on the creek. Today, cutthroat are rarely found on the creek.

In 2000, funded by Barnum Timber Co., a fish trap was set up in upper Redwood Creek. Nearly 124,000 little chinook salmon were caught, as were 68,000 steelhead. The next year, the numbers for chinook were similar, and in 2002, they leaped to 223,000 fish.

Then it gets complicated. In 2003, juvenile chinook numbered only 649. The next year they shot up to 206,000 fish, then plunged to less than 10,000 the next year. There were no coho salmon trapped in any of the years, despite anecdotal evidence that silver salmon once ran, at least sporadically, into the upper watershed.

At a downstream trap from 2004-2006, the numbers fluctuate, though far fewer fish and very few coho were trapped. This was in a creek that Fish and Game biologists netting fish for a survey in 1951 called an “an excellent silver salmon stream.”

In July 2006, steelhead began turning up dead in the upper trap. The temperature in the creek reached 85 degrees, too high even for heat-tolerant -- relatively speaking -- steelhead.

”These high temps are higher and at a longer duration than past study years,” wrote Fish and Game biologist Mike Sparkman in an e-mail at the time. “Fish kills due to high temps in upper Redwood Creek are not that new. Bill Chezum (now deceased) told me that he would occasionally see juvenile fish kills at his property in the upper portion of Redwood Valley.”

Creek recuperation

Before Redwood Creek was put on the impaired list for temperature, it was considered impaired because it gets too muddy during winter rains and because huge loads of silt and gravel -- probably from both natural sources and heavy handed land management of the mid-20th century -- are still moving through the system following the big floods of 1964 and 1972. After those floods, lower Redwood Creek was devoid of pools where young fish can find cool water and shelter. Muddy water can also prevent fish from finding food, hindering growth critical to survival.

But by all accounts, Redwood Creek has been on a recovery course for decades.

At a spot near the Redwood Creek Ranch -- on the old pack route from Arcata to Hoopa -- a huge boulder sits anchored in the streambed.

”When I was little that rock didn't even show,” said Cathleen Christensen, Barnum's daughter.

It had been covered with sediment from the big floods. Photos of the stretch of creek from the 1930s show a stream nearly identical to how it looks today, with the rock equally exposed.

Bob Barnum is an astute student of local history, who can remember in detail more stories and information about the area than many locals ever learn. He's also a keen observer of the environment.

”Conditions to me look much the same to me as they did in the 1930s,” Bob Barnum said, “when supposedly we had all the fish.”

Scientists with Redwood National and State Parks, which owns the lower third of the geologically unstable watershed, have watched as the pool-less creek of the 1970s redug its channel, cutting into the gravel, forming pools and improving fish habitat. That consistent improvement kept up until the winter of 1997-1998, when storms flooded the creek, and geologists measured a setback to the changes of the past 20 years.

”While we're in recovery,” said park geologist Vicki Ozaki, “you do set back recovery with even small events.”

The improvement during the '80s may in part be due to logging regulations that changed land management practices, and to the improvement of roads and removal of old roads in the watershed. With it, stream temperatures on average have also improved. Ozaki said that where Redwood Creek passes under State Route 299, the water in the 1970s would spike above 86 degrees frequently.

Fish and Game took a look at the watershed as part of its North Coast Watershed Assessment Program, pointing to a lack of shade along the creek as among the contributors to high temperatures. It also said that logging has led to a dearth of large woody debris -- stumps and logs that fall into a stream -- which helps form pools that shelter fish.

The increased size of streamside buffers required under today's forest practice laws may begin to change that. But Barnum doesn't believe it's going to do much to help the creek and its fish. In many places, the upper creek is too open to be affected by the shade of trees, he said. Air temperature is the driving factor behind water temperature, and Barnum said that just as important are cold seeps and springs that create havens for young fish.

”There are complicating factors that never seem to make it into the discussion,” said Barnum Timber forester Steve Horner.

Complicating factors

To be sure, the situation is complicated. One of the factors that may be most important to fish is the condition of the estuary, the very lowest portion of the stream. Once a rich, changing environment, today's mouth of Redwood Creek is corralled by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers levees, built after the 1964 flood tore through Orick.

That stretch has been the slowest to recover from the big floods. Since the flood plain doesn't function like it used to, depositing sediment over a wide area, many believe that broadening the estuary will be critical to allowing it to recover. The area on either side of the levees, however, is farmland, and landowners have been reluctant to give up land to give the creek some room.

Barnum sees the estuary as impaired, but he doesn't believe there's anything he can do upstream to change that.

The regulations that come along with logging in an impaired watershed -- one particularly good for growing trees -- discourage investment by landowners, Barnum said. That could eventually prompt landowners to sell property for other uses, he said, and he points to the Tooby Ranch in Southern Humboldt County and the divestiture of logging lands by Eel River Sawmills as examples.

It's a concern registered by others, like ranch landowners in the Buckeye Conservancy. A study it recently did found the costs of logging plans and regulations can make it uneconomical to log some properties and allow a landowner to make a living off the land.

The development of forest land also figures in the climate debate. With California trying to cut carbon emissions and increase carbon storage in forests, the state sees conversion of timberland as contrary to that goal.

Back at the Redwood Creek level, Barnum Timber is challenging the state's targets for temperature and sediment in the stream. In its complaint, Barnum argues that the goals for both are set too low, and can't realistically be achieved.

It wants the court to toss out the listing, even protesting the state's authority to list a steam as impaired by anything other than pollutants flowing through a pipe, like in an industrial setting.

(That matter may be settled, as two federal appeals courts found that states do have the authority to list streams as impaired by so-called nonpoint sources of pollution, like that which may come from logged lands.)

The state attorney general argues that the listings were made by the best information available at the time. At best, the state says, there is more than one way to interpret the evidence.

”At worst, Barnum mischaracterizes or, perhaps, simply misunderstands, that evidence,” the state's Deputy Attorney General Bruce Reeves writes in one filing.

Whether or not Redwood Creek can legally be considered impaired, is it physically in bad shape? How bad? Without the robust decades-long monitoring that some other North Coast rivers have enjoyed, it's difficult to know. How wide were fluctuations in fish populations before the first tree was cut for lumber in Redwood Creek? Floods, ocean conditions, droughts, massive natural landslides and other occurrences undoubtedly had effects on salmon.

What is the goal? Is it to return the creek to the condition it was in 150 years ago? Is that even possible? Can management of the land for timber persist without thwarting recovery of the creek?

The record is still very much growing on Redwood Creek. There is an increasing focus on the creek, and even a collaborative effort between landowners, the parks, agencies, conservationists and others to work on solving some of the shared difficulties between the creek and the neighboring town of Orick.

”This watershed is one where I think we have as good a chance to find answers to some of those questions as anywhere,” said park Natural Resource Program Manager Chris Heppe. “I think we're on the trajectory to have a healthy watershed. In my opinion we're still a long ways away.”