A Race to Save Baby Salmon in Klamath

As more Klamath River water is diverted to farms upstream and water levels drop, California state biologists have begun rescuing baby salmon stranded in puddles along river banks.

In recent days, the biologists have rescued about 300 fish from two spots along the river northwest of Mt. Shasta, near the Oregon border. They are expanding their search to 13 more sites where lower river levels may leave salmon with too little water to survive.

In late March, U.S. Interior Secretary Gale Norton and Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman personally opened head gates that diverted water from the Klamath River’s source into farm fields along the California-Oregon border.

The officials were responding to pleas and protests from farmers deprived of irrigation water last year by a record drought and a federal decision to channel water to rare fish and away from farm fields.

Now, biologists fear that by giving farmers more water, federal agencies are endangering the fish.

Biologists for the Yurok tribe and U.S. Forest Service employees last week rescued about 130 stranded young salmon, some just 1 or 2 inches long, and another 150 fish of various other species near the town of Happy Camp.

The fish included about 100 rare coho salmon, which are protected under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Most fish near Happy Camp were rescued alive, but a few coho and Chinook salmon were found dead, and others may have been eaten by birds, said Bill Bemis, watershed recreation officer at the local ranger district of the Klamath National Forest.

The killing or harassment of a protected species is forbidden under federal law. But officials said Wednesday it was too soon to determine whether the stranding amounted to harassment under the Endangered Species Act.

“We are investigating what’s happening, and we are documenting what’s happening, in terms of change in river flow,” said Gary Stacey, regional fisheries program manager with the state Department of Fish and Game.

The coho salmon is also a candidate for protection under the California Endangered Species Act, which means the state Department of Fish and Game must treat it as if it were already listed. The department’s recommendation on whether to officially list the fish is due out within days.

Department Director Bob Hight said he heard about the stranded fish Tuesday.

“We have people on the ground working to resolve issues,” said Hight, adding that he did not have enough facts to know whether state law had been violated. He said the department plans to contact the Bureau of Reclamation about the stranding. “We just wanted to get all our facts together before we did anything,” he said.

A federal district judge Wednesday scheduled a hearing for Friday to consider a request by fishermen and environmentalists who are seeking a court order providing more water for salmon.

Heeding farmers’ concerns, the Bush administration has assured farmers that they will not see a repeat of last year’s water cutoff, and has proposed river flows that some fish biologists consider too low for the salmon. The National Marine Fisheries Service, which oversees rare fish such as the coho salmon, is still working on a required scientific study of how those flows will affect the fish.

Although thousands of salmon died last year in dried-up rivers that feed the Klamath, biologists consider this spring’s smaller toll significant because it came relatively early in the season, when only limited amounts of river water are being channeled to farm fields. It also occurred in the Klamath itself, rather than in tributaries more prone to drying up.

Many of the stranded fish were found close to Iron Gate Dam, which separates the free-flowing lower river from the upstream diversions that are part of a 95-year-old U.S. Bureau of Reclamation project that channels water to 1,400 farmers in the Upper Klamath Basin.

In recent weeks, reclamation officials have lowered the river flow below Iron Gate from 1,742 cubic feet per second to 1,347 cubic feet, and they have permission to drop the flow to 1,043 cubic feet as of Wednesday.

Bureau spokesman Jeff McCracken said that the flows stood at 1,350 cubic feet per second as of Wednesday and that his agency wanted to make sure an upstream lake was filled with water for irrigation.

“We adjust our releases in order to fill the lake,” he said. “We are maintaining the releases that have been approved by the National Marine Fisheries Service.”

McCracken said he had not heard about the stranded fish, but added, “If [the fisheries service] calls us up and says we have to talk about flows, we will talk to them.”

The fisheries service is studying how quickly the river’s water levels dropped, and how that may be tied to the stranded salmon, said Jim Lecky, the agency’s assistant regional administrator for protected resources.

“We need to get all the facts and figure out what happened,” he said.