🚀 go-pugleaf

There is no hard evidence that conditions have improved for Klamath
River salmon, but many of the people fighting over sharing scarce water
between fish and farms said Monday they are tired of the battle and are
moving closer toward the compromises necessary to find long-term
solutions.

About 120 people filled the Eureka City Council chambers for a forum
sponsored by U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Calif., to assess the status of
salmon in the Klamath River two years after a die-off blamed on low
water killed an estimated 35,000 to 70,000 fish, mostly adult chinook

"This was a pretty significant first step," Thompson said. "We heard
from both sides. Everybody was singing from the same sheet of music.
Some of the obstructionists weren't here, but I think the people here
have their ear."

Progress has been made, with $16 million spent on habitat restoration,
more water released down the Trinity and Klamath rivers to prevent a
repeat of the 2002 die-off that killed more than 35,000 adult fall
chinook salmon, and increased monitoring and research, said Mike Long,
Arcata field supervisor of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Biologists, however, still don't know why untold numbers of juvenile
salmon succumbed to parasites last spring, and most of the habitat work
has been done in tributaries, not the mainstem where chinook spawn, he
added in an interview.

"Whether improvement means you've flattened out the rate of decline or
whether things are improving, I don't think anybody can say that," Long
said.

The Klamath Basin has been locked in a bitter battle over water since
2001, when the Bush administration was forced by the federal Endangered
Species Act to shut off water to thousands of farmers on the Klamath
Reclamation Project to assure enough water for endangered suckers in
Upper Klamath Lake and threatened coho salmon in the Klamath River.

After irrigation was restored in 2002, an estimated 35,000 to 70,000
adult salmon – mostly fall chinook but including some coho – died in
the lower Klamath River. State and federal biologists blamed the deaths
on gill rot diseases that spread quickly due to low water that crowded
fish together in warm pools.

Dan Keppen, executive director of the Klamath Water Users Association,
the dominant farmers group in the upper basin, and Mike Orcutt of the
Hoopa Valley Tribe, which has been battling for water for salmon, joined
several representatives of county governments and government agencies
who said interest groups were tired of fighting and want a long-term
solution.

"I realize we are going to have to sit down with the tribes and
reasonable conservation groups, the stakeholders who are really
impacted, and come up with a package," Keppen said. "It will take
somebody with stature, a governor or somebody with a major portfolio to
bring us together. Right now, there is too much litigation, too many
press releases. I'm guilty. So are others."

But Troy Fletcher, executive director of the Yurok Tribe, whose
reservation straddles the Klamath River where most of the fish died in
2002, said they expect to win their lawsuit going to trial next month.
It alleges the federal decision to restore water to farmers rather than
devoting it to fish violated their tribal trust obligations.

"We are not willing to compromise anymore when you are killing our
fish," Fletcher said.

Eureka commercial salmon fisherman Dave Bitts warned that the 2002 fish
kill could result in so few adults returning to the Klamath in 2005 that
fishing seasons would have to be shut down off most of California and
Oregon.