Endangered Salmon Evacuated from Shasta and Scott Rivers in California

[annm4peace]

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/05/05/18647057.php

The California Department of Fish and Game (CDFG) is evacuating endangered coho salmon from the Scott and Shasta rivers while Arnold Schwarzenegger, the worst Governor in California history for fish and the environment, continues to allow irrigators to dewater these Klamath River tributaries.

This is the same Governor has attacked the biological opinion protecting Delta smelt and Central Valley salmon, has relentlessly campaigned for a peripheral canal and new dams and has fast-tracked his corrupt and unjust Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative. Schwarzenegger, who is worshipped by the corporate media and some "environmental" NGO's for his grandstanding about "climate change" and "green energy" corporate greenwashing, makes Governors Gray Davis and Pete Wilson look like veritable John Muirs in comparison.

"These last-ditch fish rescue attempts are an admission of failure where we should be seeing stiffer law enforcement, mandatory instream flows and restrictions on groundwater pumping," concluded Klamath Riverkeeper Erika Terence.

Below is the press release from the Klamath Riverkeeper:

Klamath Riverkeeper Press Release | For Immediate Release

Contact: Erica Terence, Klamath Riverkeeper, office: [phone]; cell: [phone], erica klamathriver.org, http://www.klamathriver.org

April 27, 2010

Endangered Salmon Evacuated From Northern California Rivers While Dewatering Problem Goes Unaddressed

Happy Camp, CA—River conditions on the Scott and Shasta Rivers of Northwestern California are expected to get so inhospitable this year that California fish managers this month began to relocate what few endangered coho salmon can still be found in the two Klamath River tributaries, transplanting them dozens of miles down the mainstem Klamath River to supposed safety.

"At this point, coho are so close to extinction and the Scott and Shasta are so severely dewatered each year that this type of action may be warranted, but it cannot be a substitute for rewatering, and in the long term it's not likely to be a viable survival strategy for coho in these basins," said Klamath Riverkeeper Erica Terence. "It's a band-aid solution at best on what has become a major water hemorrhage," she added.

As young coho were being captured and shipped elsewhere in the Klamath River basin as part of their emergency rescue program by the California Department of Fish and Game (CDFG), Resource Conservation Districts (RCDs) in the Scott and Shasta valleys readied to start issuing permits (ITPs) with CDFG's blessing for Scott and Shasta irrigators and ranchers to kill coho as usual.

Klamath Riverkeeper joined a coalition of river and fish advocates that filed a legal challenge against the ITP program last fall. Co-plaintiffs in the lawsuit include the Quartz Valley Indian Tribe, the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, the Institute for Fisheries Resources, the Environmental Protection Information Center, the Sierra Club and the Northcoast Environmental Center.

"Both the fish rescue operations and the ITP program are an attempt to do the barest minimum possible to say that something is being done to protect coho, while enabling the same poor practices that caused these coho populations to crash in the first place," Terence noted.

Since the ITP program underwent environmental review last year, new data has come to light showing that only 9 coho returned to the Shasta River in 2009 (all of them male), while just 81 made it back to the Scott River. Based on these startlingly low counts and similarly low counts in 2008, CDFG scientists concluded in a report released last winter that two out of three generations of coho are "functionally extinct" in both river basins.

That makes this year's adult coho run and their offspring the last hope for the species in those two important river systems. Coho salmon in the Scott and Shasta were listed as threatened under the California Endangered Species Act in 2001. The listing followed creation of an exhaustive Coho Recovery Strategy ordered by the California Fish and Game Commission, most of which has yet to be implemented.

One obvious factor for coho salmon’s perilous situation in the Scott and Shasta River is excessive water diversions for local irrigation. Last year both rivers were pushed to record low water levels by a combination of out-of-stream water diversions and widespread (but largely unregulated) groundwater pumping which also seriously depleted local stream flows. Yet nothing in the DFG’s current ITP program prevents such irrigation dewatering in the future. If anything, the ITP program gives an official blessing to business-as-usual irrigation practices that harm fish.

"To truly prevent the imminent extinction of coho salmon in these watersheds, an ITP program needs to include mechanisms for keeping water in the stream, curbing excessive and unregulated groundwater pumping and completing an unflinching, comprehensive analysis of Dwinnell dam and its impacts to fisheries in the Shasta River," Terence said. "Unfortunately, Fish and Game's program doesn't do any of that."

Although the Scott and Shasta Rivers and their coho runs face similar challenges, hydrologic differences and differing human infrastructure dictate that solutions for the two river systems will be somewhat different.

In the Shasta River watershed, cold spring water feeding into the top of the system is impounded in Dwinnell Reservoir, where it is heated in the reservoir to lethal temperatures for fish before being released downstream. Much of the water in the reservoir is also sucked out for agricultural use by irrigation districts, an activity which can lower the lake as much as 80 feet by summertime.

On the other hand, the Scott River watershed is a snowmelt driven system which now goes completely dry in some reaches every year, fragmenting coho habitat and stranding fish in disconnected pools. Last year the flow gages in the Scott River zeroed out by September. Though the Scott River remains free of large dams like Dwinnell, nearly all of its water has been over-allocated to individual landowners who use small pushup dams or high-powered groundwater pumps to divert nearly all the water.

"These last-ditch fish rescue attempts are an admission of failure where we should be seeing stiffer law enforcement, mandatory instream flows and restrictions on groundwater pumping," Terence concluded.

Historically, enforcement of environmental laws and regulations in both the Scott and Shasta has been weak or altogether absent, due in part to resistance and in some cases even active intimidation of CDFG enforcement officers by landowners.

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[flamingdem]

1. whatthefug Arnold with his little violin about drilling... nt

[Submariner]

2. Kaleefornia needs to stop electing ignorant movie actors

as governor. First Raygun, now this dipshit. They must all be star-struck out there and not thinking clearly in the voting booth.