They Help Keep Young Salmon on Move, in Pink : Fish: Biologist and his small crew attempt to even the mounting odds against the species in the Shasta and Scott rivers and their tributaries.

Ron Dotson has a lot of respect for the salmon that call the rivers of this region home. To hear the biologist explain, it’s easy to understand why.

“From the time they come out of the gravel to the time they come back to spawn, they have no slack time,” Dotson said, while on a recent inspection of the Shasta and Scott rivers and their tributaries.

“As soon as they come out of the gravel they’ve got a predator on their back. If they do get up out of the gravel and come down the [river] system, they’ve got to get through the agricultural diversion or whatever it is.

“If they get past that obstacle and they get out to the ocean they’re still dealing with a predator all the way out. They hit the estuary, get through all the water quality and [other] problems. He goes to the ocean and there’s bigger fish after his butt.

“He still has to survive that, mature, come back, get through the [commercial and sport] fisheries in the ocean, and when he gets to the ocean he has the [Native Americans and their limited fishery] to deal with. He also has the [river] sport fishery. He’s still coming back and now he’s going to hit some more water quality problems: either warm water or not enough water, to come back in and spawn in, and if he’s lucky enough to get in where he can spawn, he’s got some poacher trying to chase his butt around. And hopefully he’ll live long enough to spawn and die.”

Some life.

“Well, I wouldn’t want to be reincarnated as one, I’ll tell you that,” Dotson said, shaking his head.

Perhaps not, but he and a crew of four rarely have any slack time themselves, these days. They have quite a responsibility on their hands: to keep the salmon and steelhead that run up the Klamath River and into the Shasta and Scott rivers from dwindling to the point where they must join other runs--notably those of the Central Valley river systems--on Threatened or Endangered Species lists.

“For most of the rivers down here [in the Central Valley] that’s too late; it’s already happened and we’re just trying to keep up, but Ron’s operation is working in a preventive mode, to keep that from happening up there,” said Dan Odenweller, director of the California Department of Fish and Game’s Water Diversion and Fishway Project. “Water diversions are the major contributors to the decline of salmon populations. We don’t even know how many we have down here, but we’ve counted more than 2,000. At least Ron has a handle on how many diversions there are up there, and can do something about them before it’s too late.”

That something is building, installing and maintaining metal contraptions called fish screens, designed to keep salmon and steelhead on the right track; and rescuing juvenile fish from the many small tributaries slowly drying under a hot, summer sun.

It’s not a high-profile job, or a glamorous one, but the fish can use the help.

Chinook salmon and steelhead runs on the Klamath-Trinity River system are not yet threatened or endangered, but they are being watched closely as “species of concern.”

There are enough diversions on the Scott and Shasta rivers that thousands of young salmon and steelhead trying to find their way back to Klamath--and eventually, the ocean--would become lost and stranded in a maze of irrigation ditches used to water hay fields and thirsty cattle were it not for the DFG and its fish screen program.

Fish screens are nothing new; they’ve been guiding salmon and steelhead down the proper path throughout Northern California for years. One of the originals, a 1934 outdated paddle-wheeled model constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps, is displayed outside Dotson’s office.

Nor are they terribly complicated: the water drives the wheel, which drives the gears that move perforated steel panels back and forth in a motion that allows water to pass into irrigation ditches without letting sizable fish pass through. The movement of the screens, which scrape against one another, keeps them free of moss and other debris that would block the flow.

Without them, there would be no salmon or steelhead runs to speak of. “Without them, there wouldn’t be a fishery at all,” Dotson said.

Over the years, he and his crew have built and placed 63 of the cumbersome devices at various locations on the Shasta and Scott rivers. But with the department faced with a shrinking budget and layoffs, construction of the contraptions doesn’t seem to be keeping pace with the farmers’ diversions.

“Even I get the feeling sometimes that I’m just chasing my tail up here,” Dotson said. “In 1977 or ’78 we only had 34 screens, and since then we’ve been trying to build two a year. We still have 25-30 that I consider critical that I still need to get built.

“But we’re also getting to the point where we’re saturated with work. I have less people now than I had even back when I first got here with 34 screens because of cutbacks--they’re killing me.”

They’re not doing much for salmon and steelhead, either.

In the early 1980s biologists rescued upward of 300,000 young-of-the-year salmon and steelhead from local creeks before the creeks dried up, leaving them stranded. Three years ago, in the height of the drought, they could find only 9,000 fish. This number of rescued salmon and steelhead is indicative of the state of the fisheries.

“That’s how severe things got, basically because of drought and oceanic conditions,” Dotson said. “The last two years the number was between 25,000-27,000 and this year we’re hoping to get into the 30,000s and 40,000s, we’ve had so much water this year.”

The heavy rains this winter and spring indeed were a blessing. The Shasta and Scott, as well as the Klamath into which they flow, are running swiftly. Water has been flowing in some of the local creeks for the first time in five years. Steelhead and, to a lesser extent, salmon made their way upstream into these creeks and spawned there for the first time in five years.

This is good news to Dotson and crew, but it is also cause for concern: The creeks are nothing more than mere trickles these days, drying a little more every day. Yet there are still one- and two-month-old steelhead trying to make their way out of these creeks and into the rivers.

They wouldn’t have a chance were it not for the DFG and its fish traps, funnel-like, metal devices that act as slides that wash the fish into a cool, dark underwater trap until the biologists can get to the traps and release the fish directly into the river.

Between maintaining the fish screens--they require regular cleaning and lubrication--and rescuing juvenile salmon or even performing such laborious tasks as constructing rock weirs, or small dams, to catch spawning gravel for migrating salmon and steelhead, Dotson and crew have their work cut out this summer.

On one such rescue mission recently, fisheries technician Mark Elfgen got an early start, heading to Williams Creek, a Klamath tributary alongside Interstate 5. The air was crisp. A snow-covered Mt. Shasta loomed majestically in the distance.

Elfgen had placed a series of traps along the creek, which was only about three feet wide and a few inches deep. Not far downstream, it lacked enough water for the fish to pass.

“These fish wouldn’t make it if we didn’t do this,” he said, wading into the water to check one of the traps.

He lifted the lid and began to scoop with his small net dozens of tiny, wriggling steelhead, which were placed into a white bucket and eventually into a small tank in the back of Elfgen’s pickup.

“Out of this system we’ve rescued 2,600 fish since May,” he said. “It’s OK but it’s not like we would want it. We ought to be pulling an average of 6,000-7,000 a year.”

At another trap on the same creek another dozen or so steelhead were rescued, and as Elfgen was about to leave another, lone swimmer washed onto the slide portion and wriggled too hard, getting stranded briefly on the a dry portion of the slide.

Rather than help the struggling fish, which was glistening in the sun, he chose to watch for a moment or so.

“He’ll shake himself back into the current [leading to the trap] when he’s ready,” Elfgen said. “They’re pretty good about that.”

Sure enough, the two-inch steelhead shook its brownish, spotted body and flopped into the current, which washed it into the trap.

Elfgen plucked the small fish from the trap and put it with the others in his truck, which he drove to a swift-flowing section of the Klamath River, where he turned the fish loose.

They were on their way, at least, but they were anything but home free.