Our new Biological Assessment is out - Klamath Basin Crisis

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Klamath Project Operations Biological Assessment Coho Salmon: Environmental Baseline River Basin was constructed in 1928 to impound irrigation water for the Montague Water Conservation District. No minimum flow regimes were established in the Shasta River. In the 1960s, the Trinity and Lewiston Dams were completed in the Trinity River Basin. The initial operation plan diverted at least 80 percent of the Trinity River flow into the Sacramento River Basin. Indian Tribes in the Klamath River Basin have an interest in water management. Although they have yet to be quantified, the Klamath Tribes may have water rights that predate those of irrigators (p. CRS-7, Powers et al. 2005). A court has held that the rights of the Klamath Tribes have a priority date of “time immemorial 23 ” and are not restricted by the date of the Tribes’ 1864 Treaty with the U.S. Government 24 . The Federal district court for Oregon held that the Klamath Tribes have reserved gathering rights along with their hunting, fishing, and trapping rights, and that all of these rights have accompanying water rights 25 . The decision stipulated that these rights are to be quantified at a level that will sustain productive habitat so that there will be game to hunt, and fish to catch, as well as edible plants to gather. How these and other recent court rulings will affect Klamath River Basin water allocations under the ongoing water rights adjudication is not yet clear. Climate Variability Climate variability plays a large role in driving the fluctuations in salmon abundance by influencing their physical environment, the availability of food, the competitors for that food, and the predators that prey on salmon. The complexity of influences on salmon, both climate and otherwise, combined with the scarcity of observations of factors important to salmon in estuaries and the ocean, make it challenging to identify the links between salmon and climate. However, ocean conditions unfavorable for coho salmon are believed to be partially responsible for the depressed status on naturally produced coho salmon stocks in California (p. 10, NMFS 2007). 23 United States v. Adair, 723 F. 2d 1394 (9th Cir. 1983); Parravano v. Babbitt, 70 F. 3d 539 (9th Cir. 1995); Klamath Water Users Association v. Patterson, 204 F. 3d 1206 (9th Cir. 2000). 24 United States v. Adair, supra, at 1414. 25 United States v. Adair, 187 F. Supp. 2nd 1273 (D. Or. 2002). 187
Klamath Project Operations Biological Assessment Coho Salmon: Environmental Baseline Mantua et al. (1997) demonstrated a connection between salmon abundance and a North Pacific climate variation, named the PDO. Warm phase PDO is generally associated with reduced abundance of coho and Chinook salmon in the Pacific Northwest, while cool phase PDO is linked to above average abundance of these fish. The Upper Klamath River Basin is an arid region. To best illustrate this, Appendix Table 3-D-3 reflects IGD flows as the total quantity of water available at IGD if all net inflows into UKL are passed directly through Keno Dam and all accretions from Keno Dam to IGD are added to those flows. This reflects no Klamath Project diversions and no refilling of UKL or meeting ESA requirements for listed suckers. Under this scenario, the 1961 to 2006 historical median monthly IGD flows would range from a low of 819 cfs in August to a high of 3,490 cfs in March. Climate divisions for the entire United States have been established by the National Climatic Data Center. Monthly division values are obtained by averaging values for all NOAA Cooperative stations available for a given month. Division 5, High Plateau 26 of the Oregon Climatic Divisions includes a portion of the drainage (input) for the UKL (Figure 3-9). It is noted that the UKL is located within Division 7, the South Central zone. However, since Division 7 represented such a large area, Division 5 was used to better illustrate potential UKL inputs. 26 188
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Biological Assessment The Effects o
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Biological Assessment The Effects o
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Klamath Project Operations Biologic
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This biological a
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Part 1 INTRODUCTION, ACTION AREA, A
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Part 2 ENDANGERED SUCKERS Sucker De
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Table 2-7. Upper Klamath Basin Nutr
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Description Part 5 BALD EAGLES A la
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Figure 5-1. Bald Eagle range in Nor
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Part 7 CONSULTATION HISTORY Section
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Part 9 LITERATURE CITED Agrawal, A.
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Accomplishment Report, Winter 2007.
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