August 19, 2009
The section of the Klamath River watershed from the confluence with the Trinity River up to Iron Gate Dam ranges from wild, rugged, and pristine to settled, roaded, and burned to a crisp. Land jurisdictions are split in the middle with mostly national forest lands and small private and tribal inholdings to the west and checkerboard grading to private agricultural lands in the east. In the past few years, nearly a quarter of this landscape has burned in a series of large wildfires predominantly on the national forest, having both positive and negative effects on the fishery depending on fire intensity and soil type. Anadromous1 runs of salmon and steelhead have continued to struggle with low flows and poor water quality in the Klamath River mainstem and major tributaries, including the Scott and Shasta Rivers. Limiting factors to salmonid production in the Klamath River include lack of instream flow (and subsequent elevated temperatures), access to spawning areas and both summer and winter refugia, elevated rates of fish diseases associated with mainstem dams, and nutrient loading (to name a few).
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Current and upcoming projects that address critical resource issues in our area include the OSB FSC's prescribed burning program, the Orleans Community Fuels Reduction and Forest Health Multiparty Monitoring Project, the Seiad Creek Channel Restoration and Habitat Enhancement Project, and the Klamath Tributary Fish Passage Improvement Project. All of these projects necessitate collaboration with a large constellation of local, state and federal stakeholders.
Orleans/Somes Bar Prescribed Burning Program
Since 2003, the OSB FSC has been conducting prescribed (controlled) burns on private properties in the Orleans/Somes Bar area to maintain existing fuelbreaks and protect homes from wildfires that are increasing in frequency and intensity. To date, we have burned approximately 300 acres through grants from the California Department of Fire and Forestry (CalFIRE), the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, the USFS, and incredible community volunteerism. Being far from biomass power plants, biomass options are limited and controlled burning has proven to be the most cost-effective method for maintaining fuelbreaks created through past OSB FSC brushing projects. To meet agency requirements, we have contracted the services of the Orleans Volunteer Fire Department for their fire engine and water tender, and a local retired USFS burn boss with 30 years of burning experience. To complement these resources, we get a mix of trained fire personnel and landowners interested in using prescribe fire together at the burn to have on-the-ground training and information sharing. This program will be strengthened by regional efforts to organize resources around fire and fuels issues, including the Nature Conservancy sponsored Klamath Siskiyou Fire Learning Network and the proposed Northwest California Prescribed Fire Council which will convene for the first time at Humboldt State University in November, 2009.
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This project will design and execute a multiparty monitoring protocol for the Orleans Community Fuels Reduction and Forest Health Project (OCFR) to be implementing in the Summer and Fall of this year. The OCFR is a 2700-acre commercial and non-commercial project located on the Orleans Ranger District, in Six Rivers National Forest. The entire project is within the Wildland Urban Interface. The goals of the multiparty monitoring effort are 1) to understand and document the effects of the proposed fuels reduction and logging work, 2) set a course for future management, and 3) build trust among partners. While our forests are amongst the most productive in the region, lack of trust between stakeholders over past projects has limited the number of landscape-level forest management projects here. This proposal would bring together a diverse group of stakeholders, including the USFS, Karuk Tribe, industry, environmental groups, independent researchers and foresters, and local residents to reach a common understanding on the successes and failures of this project through monitoring, and provide a foundation of trust to build a sustainable forest management program for our region. These stakeholders, called the `Roundtable', have been convening for over three years to work on the OCFR project, and will continue this effort through the implementation and monitoring phase.
Seiad Creek Channel Restoration and Habitat Enhancement Project
MKWC has been working with multiple landowners along Seiad Creek, a tributary to the Klamath River known for having consistent runs of Coho salmon, to address factors limiting the productivity of the stream, including channelization after episodic flood events which has led to a loss of off-channel and side-channel pond habitats that are critical habitats for rearing juvenile Coho. The lower four miles of the creek are low gradient and Seiad Creek historically meandered across this wide floodplain. However, heavy development within the floodplain beginning in the early 1900's and increasing since the 1970's have prompted landowners to establish berms along this reach to maximize areas for development in the riparian zone and protect against floods. Over time, this method has been both detrimental to landowners and fish, as floods invariably breach the berms, washing out roads and threatening homes and agricultural lands.
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>b>Klamath Tributary Fish Passage Improvement Project
Through a combination of decreased flows and elevated sediment loads in some Klamath tributaries due to upslope management practices (roading, logging, uncharacteristically intense wildfires), barriers to fish passage have formed at these tributary mouths, blocking critical juvenile and adult salmonid rearing and spawning habitat.
Since 2006, MKWC has been annually assessing around 60 tributaries on the Klamath River and lower Scott River for fish passage barriers and restoring fish passage through manual reconfiguration, including step-pool construction, concentration of stream flow, breaching temporary dams, and modification of log and debris jams. MKWC has received funding from the Bella Vista Foundation, the CDFG, and the USFWS for this work. Partners include the Karuk Fisheries Department, CDFG, USFS, Friends of the River, and local landowners.
In addition to the programs and projects highlighted above, there are many other entities implementing fisheries and upslope restoration projects in the Middle Klamath Subbasin. The Karuk Department of Natural Resources and the USFS have decommissioned hundreds of miles of roads in drainages suffering from excessive sedimentation. The Shasta Resource Conservation District has installed fish screens on water diversion systems and fenced riparian areas. CalTrans and CDFG have replaced culverts along Highway 96 with bridges to allow fish passage. Siskiyou County Public Works have done the same on county road stream crossings on high priority streams. There is still much more work to be done in the subbasin.
Issues that still need to be addressed include regulation of water diversions leading to key tributaries being dewatered in some reaches, restoring key off-channel and floodplain habitats on the Klamath River and low gradient tributaries, removing permanent fish barriers such as the culvert crossings at Fort Goff and Portuguese Creeks, and of course, the four mainstem Klamath River dams currently blocking salmonid fish passage to the Upper Klamath Basin. Looking upslope, we need to work across land jurisdictions to create a series of strategic fuelbreaks that will increase our ability to use controlled fire and contain wildfires burning in the hot summer months. We also need to continue to address sedimentation issues from road systems in unstable watersheds. Most importantly, we need to move forward in developing partnerships between a wide array of stakeholders in this diverse landscape to create a shared vision for prioritizing and implementing restoration projects that address the root causes of fisheries decline, degradation of upslope habitats and the lack of our historic fire regimes. Ultimately, our work will be gauged by how many fish are in the river, how many elk and deer and bear roam the woods, whether or not the diversity of vegetation types that Robert Whitaker described still remain, and how the people who live here choose to manage the landscape.
For more information: www.mkwc.org
Trees Foundation is pleased to welcome our new Partner, Mid Klamath Watershed Council
1 Fishes that spend all or part of their adult life in salt water and return to freshwater streams and rivers to spawn.
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TOC for Forest & River News, Summer 2009