This year all those who harvest Klamath
River Chinook salmon ought to be particularly thankful. That's
because all fisheries – commercial and sport, in-river and ocean,
tribal and non-tribal – had plenty of opportunity to catch all the
salmon they desire. While final catch numbers are not in, it appears
that most fishers did not reach the quota allocated for their
industry, tribe or sport.
Yurok subsistence fishers at the "Mouth"
The model used to predict Fall Chinook
Salmon run size is supposed to get better over time as more years of spawning data are incorporated. Judging from the
2013 pre-season prediction, however, that model still has a long way
to go before it will yield accurate estimates of how many Klamath
River Fall Chinook are available for commercial, tribal and sport harvest
in the Pacific Ocean and Klamath River.
While final totals won't be available
until February, preliminary Fall Chinook counts for the Trinity,
Klamath, Salmon, Scott and Shasta Rivers indicates that the actual
2013 in-river Fall Chinook Salmon run may be as little as 50% of the
pre-season prediction issued by the Pacific Fisheries Management
Council (PFMC). That prediction was for a record breaking 273,000
Fall Chinook to enter the river system.
The PFMC's run-size forecast is used to
set harvest quotas for ocean commercial, ocean sport, tribal
commercial, tribal subsistence and in-river sport fisheries. Harvest
quotas in turn are supposed to guarantee that a sufficient number of
Klamath Chinook get to spawn in their natal streams. According to the
PFMC, 41,000 Chinook must spawn naturally within the Klamath-Trinity
River Basin in order to assure maximum production of adult salmon
three and four years in the future.
The apparently wide discrepancy between
the predicted and actual run size has even fishing advocates like journalist EB Duggan wondering whether the Klamath-Trinity Basin will "be able to make the needed escapement goals.....to sustain the run or are we going to be short?”
If you are confused by all the numbers,
estimates, counts and quotas you are not alone. Salmon allocation
processes and politics remain a mystery even for many who have a
stake in proper salmon management. KlamBlog believes that the best
guide to understanding Klamath salmon fisheries management and
allocation remains “Understanding Allocation” by legendary
Klamath fisheries biologist Ronnie Pierce.
Ronnie Pierce's report, however, does
not explain the very human factors which influence harvest levels
and allocation of Klamath-Trinity Fall Chinook Salmon. Prominent
among those human factors is the dominance on the PFMC - and on other
regional ocean fishing councils established by the Magnuson-Stevens
Act - of industrial, tribal, government and sport fishing interests and
organizations which have an economic, cultural and bureaucratic stake in maximizing
the number of fish available for harvest by humans. Under these
circumstances, regional fisheries councils have a tendency to be
overly optimistic and to allocate more fish for harvest than ought to
be allocated. The result can be missed targets for spawner escapement
and depressed or even threatened fish stocks down the line.
The tendency to over-allocate and
therefore to over-harvest ocean fish stocks is not, however, only a
problem in US ocean waters; the phenomenon is world-wide. For those
who want to better understand the dynamics of overfishing and the
resulting world-wide decline and loss of ocean fisheries, KlamBlog
recommends the web page dedicated to the topic.
The Klamath Wildcard
One factor which may account for poor
PFMC Klamath Fall Chinook run-size predictions is in-river water
conditions during springtime and how those conditions impact the
number of juvenile salmon which make it to the ocean in a given
year.
Emerging from spawning gravels in the
spring, most Klamath-Trinity Chinook Salmon begin their long journey
to the sea immediately upon emerging. All those baby salmon must
negotiate the Klamath River in order to reach the ocean where they
will feed and grow for 3 to 5 years before returning to fresh water
to spawn. Due to extremely bad water quality in the mainstem
Klamath River, however, a number of those young salmon succumb to fish
diseases; dying before they can reach the ocean.
Klamath River fish disease investigations have documented that most Klamath River juvenile salmon are
disease infected by the time they reach the lower river. How many young salmon die before
reaching the ocean, however, depends on how bad Klamath water quality
is during spring; that, in turn, is a function of flow.
When spring flows are low, most juvenile Klamath salmoinids are infected with
fish diseases; Trinity River juvenile salmonids had a low infection rate in 2001
In years when there is abundant
snowpack and/or late and persistent spring storms, spring flows in
the Klamath and its tributaries are higher and the chronically poor
water quality in the Klamath, Scott and Shasta Rivers is ameliorated.
During these “good years” many more juvenile salmon make it to
the ocean and, therefore, more salmon return to the Klamath-Trinity
River Basin three and four years later.
In essence, Klamath-Trinity Chinook Salmon production is a gamble, dependent on notoriously
fickle snow pack, spring storms and resulting stream flow conditions.
It is likely that the variability of spring flows – and
the resulting variability in water quality conditions year-to-year -
explains why Chinook Salmon runs in the Klamath-Trinity River Basin
are extremely variable as well as unpredictable. Run-size estimates displayed below demonstrate the
huge variability in the Klamath-Trinity Fall Chinook run over time.
Years when few adult spawners return to Klamath streams correlate with low
flow, poor water quality and high juvenile disease three and four years earlier
In search of certainty
Just as agricultural producers
seeks “certainty” in the water supply available to them,
fishers and the fishing industry would like greater certainty (that
is, less variation) in how many Fall Chinook Salmon they will be able
to catch each year. Greater certainty will not come, however, in
relation to snowpack and spring storms. In fact, if climate change
predictions for the Klamath River Basin prove accurate, snow pack
will be generally lower but even more variable than at present.
Spring storms will also remain unpredictable.
There is, therefore, only one way to
provide greater salmon run size predictability – and therefore
greater stability - for those dependent on Klamath-Trinity Basin
Chinook Salmon. If water quality improves, the rate at which juvenile
salmon descending the Shasta, Scott and Klamath Rivers will become
disease infected and die will go down no matter the level of the snowpack or
how many storms come in spring.
Taking down PacifiCorp's Klamath River
dams will help improve Klamath River water quality somewhat. But the
main source of the Klamath River's poor waster quality is agriculture
in the Upper Basin and in the Shasta and Scott River Basins.
Unfortunately, prospects for cleaning-up agricultural pollution in
those areas are not good.
We have had agricultural pollution clean-up plans in place in the
Shasta, Scott and Upper Basin for over six years; but water quality has
not improved significantly in those areas. KlamBlog believes the main reason we
have not seen significant improvement in water quality in spite of
many millions of taxpayer dollars invested in agricultural operations
for "conservation" and "restoration" is the reticence of water
quality officials in Oregon and California to require riparian protection and to effectively regulate
polluted agricultural wastewater discharges.
State bureaucrats will write plenty of clean-up plans which the EPA will review and approve; but until those bureaucrats summon the will to effectively regulate agricultural operations, water quality will not improve.
Unpacking the reasons efforts to
regulate agricultural pollution in the Klamath River Basin have been
so spectacularly ineffective is a complex topic and must await a
future post. Stay tuned!
BOR doles out KBRA funding
It's official: the United States Bureau
of Reclamation has declared that the KBRA and KHSA were “entered
into by the Department of Interior on February 18, 2010.” The
announcement came in an obscure document dated November 15, 2013.
Solicitation Number R14SS98002 announces that Reclamation “intends
to negotiate a Firm Fixed Price, Single Source Purchase Order, with
Klamath Water and Power Agency (KWAPA), 735 Commercial Street,
Klamath Falls, OR 97601-6243.” According to the solicitation
document “the proposed contract action is for Reclamation's
participation and obligations under two existing agreements with
bearing on the acquisition of Federal power,” i.e. the KHSA and
KBRA.
Reclamation's declaration may come as a
surprise to those who believe propaganda issuing from KBRA/KHSA
promoters. For almost three years, these promoters have been telling us
that the feds could not commit to the Klamath Dam and Water Deals
unless and until Congress endorses and funds them. KlamBlog has long
insisted that the KBRA and KHSA are not only being implemented by the
feds but that the deals are themselves creations of the Interior
Department which reflect federal priorities rather than the will of
those whom are called "stakeholders".
We now have it from the horses mouth
(so to speak).
What is certain in these two deals is
federal priorities - including taking care of Reclamation's own
irrigators whom KlamBlog has dubbed the Irrigation Elite
because of the many benefits - and the distinct competitive
advantage – bestowed upon them by Reclamation with funding from US
taxpayers.
What remains uncertain in the KBRA and KHSA is
benefits to tribes and the environment. Those benefits are sometimes
wholly rhetorical and where they are real they depend on special
funding authorized by Congress and not on Reclamation's regular
funding which is apparently reserved via sole source contracts for
the Irrigation Elite.
In KlamBlog's view that proves the
wisdom of the admonishment: If you want to know what is really going
on with American Government, just follow the money.
KlamBlog hiatus
KlamBlog is going on vacation for a
couple of months; look for new posts coming your way in February.
Until then, have a peaceful and thankful holiday season and remember
to trust but verify!
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