River Rebirth Signifies West’s Shifting Sensibility

Under the law of the Old West, the lower Wood River was little more than a broad drainage ditch carrying off water from marshland diked to become pasture for cattle.

Unable to resolve the local water demands of agriculture as well as endangered fish and wildlife, the law of the Old West is dying in the Klamath Basin. And as it dies the Wood River is finding new life as a fitting home to the biggest wild rainbow trout in the Lower 48.

“It is a river reborn,” said Rich MacIntyre, a fly-fishing guide and lodge owner who ramrodded the $1.8-million project that represents the biggest river restoration in the Northwest. The project is the only one in the country to try to restore a river delta.

It is one of a series of projects backed by the federal government, corporations and conservation groups to restore the natural functions of rivers and wetlands in the Upper Klamath Basin, where 350,000 acres of marsh have been reduced to less than 75,000 acres over the last 90 years.

Backers hope to clean up the water flowing into Upper Klamath Lake and ease tensions between farmers, ranchers, Indian tribes, environmentalists and government agencies. They have clashed over how much water goes to crops and livestock, and how much goes to endangered sucker fish in Upper Klamath Lake and threatened salmon in the Klamath River.

The projects represent a new way of viewing the land in the Klamath Basin, where the Old West attitude of building your fortune by conquering nature prevailed for the last century, said Steve Lewis, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s point man on restoring the ecosystems in the Klamath Basin.

“There has been almost a paradigm shift as we go into the next century,” he said.

MacIntyre, whose Crystalwood Lodge in Rocky Point attracts fly-fishermen from around the world, had been seeing a decline in the numbers of trout in the Wood over the last 10 years.

The fish, which can reach 22 pounds, are native redbands, a cousin of rainbow trout. “These fish have to be saved,” he said. “They are an incredible legacy.”

He took his idea to the Hatfield Upper Klamath Basin Working Group, created by former Sen. Mark Hatfield (R-Ore.) in 1995 to find solutions for restoring the ecosystem while maintaining economic stability. The group represents farmers, ranchers, timber, tribes, business, governments and environmentalists.

“We jokingly say we all hold hands and sing the Barney song,” said Klamath County Commissioner Steve West, a conservative Republican who serves on the group.

A drought in 1992 helped build support for creative solutions. There wasn’t enough water in Upper Klamath Lake to serve both irrigation and the endangered Lost River sucker and short-nosed sucker, which were once a food staple for the Klamath Tribes.

Under the Endangered Species Act, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation cut off water to farms, causing an estimated $75 million in losses, so the suckers would have enough. But fish still died from water that was too warm and lacked oxygen.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management bought the Wood River Ranch in 1994 and began restoring 3,500 acres of wetlands. In partnership with BLM, Oregon Trout hired consultants to restore the river. The Nature Conservancy is pushing a similar project on the Williamson River at Tulana Farms. And the Bureau of Reclamation bought Agency Lake Ranch.

They add up to 15,000 acres, a small fraction of the 275,000 acres drained over the years.

At Wood River, ranchers had dredged out the lower two miles of the 17-mile-long river to build dikes to control flooding and drain the adjacent marsh for pasture.

Instead of a meandering, deep and narrow channel that provided feeding and hiding places for fish and delivered clean, cold water to Agency Lake, the river became a straight, wide and shallow ditch.

There was less habitat for fish. Floods no longer overflowed into the wetlands, where sediments and pollution from cattle manure filtered out. Warm temperatures and chemicals fed algae blooms that took oxygen out of the water.

The Wood wasn’t steep enough to create its own channel, so crews from the Klamath Tribes built a wooden framework for the new bank, then drove in plastic piling. Logs, root wads and huge rocks went into the ditch behind the pilings. Dirt went on top of that, capped by fiber mats and willows. On the flood plain, they planted cattails and other wetland species.

“It’s awesome,” said Klamath Tribes member Juaquin Lotches as he supervised a crew planting cattails. “It brought back . . . osprey, eagles, coyotes.”

Water flowing into Agency Lake is 3 to 6 degrees cooler than it has been in the past, MacIntyre said. Cleaner and cooler water coming out of the Wood has benefits all the way through the basin.

“The Old West was sort of wide open. The New West is finding some boundaries,” said Alice Kilham, a rancher who serves as co-chairman of the working group. “The benefit is that the watershed will be restored to the point where it will serve the interests of everyone . . . for a long, long time.”