[env-trinity] Klamath-Trinity News- KFMC Opening and Trinity water to mean fewer dead fish?

[Tom Stokely]

KLAMATH RIVER BASIN
State needs fishery adviser for Klamath council 
Eureka Times-Standard - 8/25/04
By John Driscoll, staff writer
California is seeking nominations for a key post on the Klamath Fishery Management Council, which recommends harvest limits for commercial and sport fishing to the federal government. 

The management council is an 11-member advisory committee that brings together fishermen, tribes and agencies to manage salmon and steelhead produced in the Klamath basin. 

The council narrowly avoided being de-funded last year. Inland California Congressman Wally Herger slipped language into an interior appropriations bill to yank the council's $110,000 in funding after it recommended changes to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's irrigation project on the Klamath following the massive 2002 fish kill. 

The council wrote two letters to U.S. Interior Secretary Gale Norton, asking her to consider fish other than protected coho salmon when allocating water to the lower river. 

Herger, R-Chico, claimed the council had overstepped its bounds, but council members and others on the lower river saw it as a measure meant to stifle legitimate concern. 

But Rep. Mike Thompson struck a deal with the chairman of the House Interior Appropriations Committee to have the language taken out in conference, said the St. Helena Democrat's spokesman Jonathan Birdsong. 

"We caught it," Birdsong said. 

The management council meets three to four times each year to review the past year's harvest of chinook salmon, and the outlook for the coming year. The nominees for the vacant position should be willing to represent the sport fishery in the Klamath Management Zone. Nominations are due by Sept. 30.

More information can be found at www.r1.fws.gov/yreka/kfmc.htm #



RELATED
Editorial: Trinity water to mean fewer dead fish?
Klamath Falls Ore. Herald & News - 8/24/04
If nothing else, the increased flow of Trinity River water into the Klamath River that began last weekend should tell people something. We hope it demonstrates more clearly the relationship between the temperature of water hitting the lower end of the Klamath, and fish mortality.

Two years ago, 34,000 or more fish died in the lower Klamath from a disease that's always present in the water, but runs wild under certain conditions. Included in those conditions may well be high water temperatures, low river flow and the number of fish returning.

The contention in 2002 was that more water should be taken from the Klamath Reclamation Project in the Upper Klamath Basin and sent down river. But it couldn't be shown that high-temperature water from this area would have helped the fish. What was far more certain was that farms in the Upper Klamath Basin would have been deprived of irrigation water.

The Trinity River flows into the Klamath River 43.5 miles from the Pacific Ocean. Unlike the Klamath River's warm water, the Trinity's is cold, which should be more valuable to salmon - even critically so. In 2002, most of the fish deaths were below the confluence of the Trinity and the Klamath.

Last year, more water was sent down the Trinity River and there was no fish die-off. We hope the same result comes this year, but even if so, it's too early to declare colder water is the cure-all. Other conditions may differ from 2002. One of the factors that led to the 2002 die-off, for example, was a heavy return of salmon. There was also speculation that changes in the river's channel from storms some years ago made it harder for the salmon to migrate upriver, which forced fish to congregate and become more susceptible to disease.

In short, there are likely to be a number of factors involved when fish die in large numbers. The reason the amount of water in the river gets the attention is because it's one that agencies can control.

We don't expect a definitive answer this year on the role that water temperature plays in fish die-offs. We hope, however, that if there continue to be fewer fish dying in years that colder water makes it downstream, people begin to realize that not all water is created the same.#


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