SLC Protects 163 Acres of Mendocino Redwoods and Meadows

Landowner Donates Easement for Rare West County Wildland

 

A researcher examines one of the extensive rolling meadows protected by a local landowner and Siskiyou Land Conservancy in western Mendocino County. A vineyard, on a neighboring parcel, can be seen in the background. Photo by Greg King/Siskiyou Land Conservancy.

 

Siskiyou Land Conservancy recently recorded a conservation easement that permanently protects 163 acres of privately owned second-growth redwood forestland and meadows in western Mendocino County.

 The two parcels, near Elk, stretch from a rolling ridgetop to a significant salmonid stream, and feature extensive redwood groves, including some of the oldest second-growth forest in the county. The conservation easement also protects scattered “residual” old-growth redwood trees and unentered stands of old-growth Douglas fir.

Second growth redwood trees on the Mendocino County property protected by a local landowner and Siskiyou Land Conservancy. Photo by Greg King/Siskiyou Land Conservancy.

 

The land’s elegant ridgetop meadows are noteworthy. They remain undeveloped in a region of coastal Mendocino County that is otherwise highly desirable for large ridgetop homes and vineyards. The easement allows just one new dwelling, and the possible expansion of an existing dwelling, on the entire 163 acres.

“This conservation easement is especially exciting for Siskiyou Land Conservancy,” said Greg King, SLC president and program director. “The easement protects two small private parcels that contain rare and significant habitats. It’s this type of action that was a primary motivator for creating Siskiyou Land Conservancy five years ago.”

The owner of the Mendocino County property contacted Siskiyou Land Conservancy last year to develop and hold the easement. A conservation easement is a legally binding agreement between a land trust and landowner that protects private parcels by disallowing certain uses. The easement is recorded with the county and remains binding even if the land is sold.

A volunteer takes GPS coordinates on one of the protected meadows on the Mendocino County property placed into a conservation easement by a local landowner and Siskiyou Land Conservancy. The property runs downhill along both sides of the ridgetop meadow, all the way to the creek below. Photo by Greg King/Siskiyou Land Conservancy.

 

This easement disallows subdivision, commercial logging, road building and other potentially harmful uses, including application of pesticides. It protects more than one-half mile of a large creek that provides habitat for salmon and steelhead, and another half-mile of a smaller creek that provides clear water year-round.

Preserving the meadows protects native grasses, which are returning to the land after the owners removed sheep from the property when they bought the land 40 years ago. The meadows also provide habitat for coyote mint (Monardella villosa), which the state of California lists as a “threatened species.”

Redwood forest and a small creek protected by Siskiyou Land Conservancy's Mendocino County conservation easement. Photo by Greg King/Siskiyou Land Conservancy.

 

Siskiyou Land Conservancy also holds a conservation easement on 148 acres on the South Fork of the Smith River, in Del Norte County. This easement protects the largest privately held riverside flat along the South Fork Smith River, as well as the easternmost redwoods on the Smith River. In addition, Siskiyou Land Conservancy owns two parcels: 80 acres of rare plant habitat on the North Fork Smith River, and 160 acres of Coho salmon spawning habitat on the South Fork Eel River.

Siskiyou Land Conservancy serves private landowners in the five northwestern California counties of Humboldt, Del Norte, Mendocino, Trinity and Siskiyou.

The Value of Water and the Great Klamath Giveaway

Siskiyou Land Conservancy President Greg King delivered the following address at the Humboldt Watershed Council’s annual meeting on Nov. 20, 2009 in Arcata.

Good evening. I’m honored to be presenting the Klamath River to this particular audience. Many thanks to Humboldt Watershed Council, Bill and Carlos, for asking me. There is no shortage of individuals who could make this address. The dedication shown to this fantastic river by residents and activists living in the huge, 12,000-square-mile Klamath watershed, and by people living well removed from the Klamath basin, is a testament to the cultural and biological importance of this great river. It also speaks to the river’s powers of seduction.

I am one of the many people who have been seduced by the Klamath River. In August of 2002 I traveled to the mid-Klamath River to look at a property for sale in the foothills of the Salmon Mountains. I was living with my family in Sonoma County, but Joanne and I both desired a return to the North Coast. So that month we made an offer to buy the property. One month later 68,000 Klamath salmon died in the largest adult fish kill in U.S. history. In October we closed the deal, and in November we moved to the Klamath River.

The Klamath so big — in fact its subbasins are so big, that trying to present some sort of State of the Klamath in a short talk is impossible. I could spend two hours just on the Scott River, where the state department of Fish and Game has handed over creation of an incidental take permit (ITP) for Coho salmon to the farmers who would be most affected by an ITP. The ITP was predictably terrible, and it is being litigated. But the situation in the Scott River is so horrible, with farmers taking up to 90 percent of the river’s flow during the dry season, that Coho could simply disappear from the best remaining Coho river on the Klamath. The situation on the Shasta River, the Klamath’s best tributary for Chinook salmon, is similarly dire.

Scott River, Sep. 2, 2009

 

Seemingly, though, what’s on everyone’s Klamath mind these days is the co-agreements forged over a three-year period to remove dams and guarantee water for upriver farmers. The Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement, or KBRA, and the Klamath Hydro Agreement are intimately linked by an indivisibility clause that disallows codifying one without the other. And that’s really too bad. Dam removal should be a stand-alone agreement, because the four Klamath dams in question have nothing to do with upriver farming. But upriver farming has everything to do with whether or not fish downstream have enough water to survive. And it has everything to do with whether or not that water will be relatively clean and full of the oxygen that fish need, or poisoned by agricultural chemicals and lacking oxygen due to elevated levels of nutrients and ammonia as a result of upriver farming.

Living in the basin, the anger stemming from the fish kill was palpable. But it was also focused. It had to be. Everyone was well aware that another fish kill of that magnitude could wipe out Klamath salmon runs altogether. Many salmon advocates were able to focus on one very clear culprit. In 2002 the Bush Administration, under able direction from the vice-president, leaned on federal scientists to deliver Klamath water to upper basin farmers even though the fishery was likely to suffer, and even though the federal Endangered Species Act should have prevented it. The Administration was unhappy about a four-fold reduction in water allocations to farmers that occurred the previous year, which resulted in about 100,000 acre feet of water going to the farmers, instead of the 400,000 acre feet they would have wanted. Many farmers suffered crop losses as a result, but the fish were saved from certain doom. So it was that in 2002 the farmers did get their 400,000 acre-feet of Klamath water, more than half of the river’s flow at the A Canal diversion, and the fish died.

For it’s part the Administration didn’t care about the fish, or the farmers for that matter. They cared about the 2002 reelection campaign of their Republican ally Senator Gordon Smith. Farmers were a key component of Smith’s constituency. In 2002 the farmers got their water, and Smith was reelected by a narrow margin.

As I said, the response to the fish kill was focused. Many tribal members and conservationists who for years had fought openly and bitterly with farmers over water were compelled to negotiate more amicably. The farmers, likewise, were looking for a way to prevent another water cut-off. The result is the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement and the Klamath Hydro Agreement: the water deal and the dam removal deal. Here I will focus primarily on the KBRA, because whereas the hydro agreement is deeply flawed — it allows too many years to pass before dam removal is to begin, if it begins at all; it lets PacifiCorp off the financial hook by saddling Oregon rate payers and California taxpayers with a $450 million obligation even though all estimates place the price tag for dam removal at $200 million or less; and it would indemnify PacifiCorp from liability due to its past practices on the river — while the KHA has a lot of problems, it could probably maybe someday result in dam removal. Maybe.

The Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement, on the other hand, could very well turn out to be worse than nothing. The existence and predominance of the KBRA in this setting illustrates that these agreements are not about dam removal as much as they are about water. To get to my point I’ll jump over to the Trinity River.

Trinity River at Hoopa Valley

At 3,000 square miles the Trinity is the Klamath’s largest tributary. Fights over Trinity water are legendary. Along with the Salmon River, the Trinity River provides the Klamath’s best remaining habitat for spring-run Chinook salmon, which nonetheless today teeter on the brink of extinction. And except for 30,000 acre-feet of water pumped each year from the upper Klamath basin to the Rogue River, in Oregon, the Trinity is the only tributary whose waters are diverted outside of the Klamath basin. And it’s a lot water — in some years more than 1 million acre feet is transferred annually to the Sacramento River en route to massive Central Valley agricultural operations and major cities. In 2006, 1.3 million acre feet went east out of the basin.

Last week California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger successfully passed through the state legislature his $11 billion water bond measure that would build more dams and a peripheral canal that would more than likely further wreck the Sacramento-San Joaquin ecosystem, despite whatever restoration provisions that bond may contain. What went less noticed is that at around the same time the federal Bureau of Reclamation petitioned the State Water Resources Control Board for an extension to the year 2030 on certain Central Valley Project water rights permits, including seven on the Trinity River. According to the Trinity Journal, the permits were originally granted to Reclamation in 1959, but they were never developed. If utilized, these permits could result in an additional hundreds of thousands of acre-feet of Trinity River water heading annually over the ridge to be consumed by powerful agribusiness. This would devastate the Trinity River.

But the farmers need more water, right? Well, not really. Conservation measures — like not using sprinklers at noon on a hot day — and diversifying crops — you know, growing rice and cotton in a desert is like fishing in a sandbox — would do more to save water than sending more water to farmers would do to save agriculture.

That’s because there’s another angle to this story: the value of the water itself. California’s powerful agricultural interests and water districts are vying for water not just because they’d like more of it right now for their crops, but because water is a crop, it’s a futures commodity.

Already many farmers in the Central Valley Project are selling their water to cities, counties and municipal water districts rather than use it to grow crops. Lloyd Carter, a former Central Valley reporter credited with uncovering the bird deformities at the Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge in the mid 1980s, puts it succinctly in a video recently produced by the California Water Impact Network: “Water is cash,” said Carter. “And the water in the public treasury, which is the stored river water of California, belongs to the people of California. Because of a law that was passed in 1992, agribusinessmen are free to take their federal irrigation water and resell that water on the open market in California. So you can buy water from the federal government for $70 an acre-foot, and you can sell it for $350 to $400 an acre-foot to anyone who’s willing to pay that price. Water has become the new cash crop.”
And yet Carter might be understating the potential here. A couple of months ago a Central Valley farmer agreed to sell 14,000 acre-feet of water to the Mojave Water Agency in San Bernardino County for $5,500 an acre-foot, or a tidy $77 million.

That’s Sacramento River water from the Central Valley Project, which of course in large part is Trinity River water. At these prices the annual diversion from the Trinity River could be worth upward of $5.5 billion.

Now let’s move to the upper Klamath, where the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement would guarantee farmers 330,000 to 385,000 acre feet of water every year. Notwithstanding Dick Cheney’s Mussolinian achievement in 2002, farmers in the upper basin have never been guaranteed water from the Klamath Reclamation Project. The lack of such a guarantee, combined with a mandate to protect Coho salmon as provided by the Federal Endangered Species Act, is what led the Bureau of Reclamation to reduce water deliveries to upper basin farmers in 2001.

Nonetheless, under the negotiated KBRA settlement farmers are guaranteed water but the fish are not. There is no flow guarantee for fish in the KBRA. Why is that? Because the key sections of KBRA dealing with water allocation were essentially written by Paul Simmons, the Sacramento attorney for the Klamath Water Users Association, a powerful interest group whose members irrigate more than 200,000 acres in the Upper Klamath Basin. In 1984 Simmons graduated cum laude from Cornell law school, where he also served as editor-in-chief of the Cornell International Law Journal. He’s a partner in the national law firm Somach, Simmons and Dunn, whose clients include dozens of municipalities and water districts that rely on water from the north and would no doubt be happy to see even more of it head their way.

Early in Klamath dam removal negotiations Simmons made certain that his clients would get their water before anyone else in the room got anything. Certainly there were many others who contributed to creating what would become the KBRA — with dam removal itself relegated to separate agreement — which created a “Christmas tree” deal totaling 300 pages of legalese, and containing far too many conflicting and unwieldy provisions. But the imprateur of the deal was caste from the start when Simmons demanded a guaranteed water allocation for ag in order for talks to proceed, despite the fact that upper river farmers have nothing to do with the Klamath dams. They don’t get water from the reservoirs behind the dams, they don’t get flood control, and their power subsidy was phasing out.

But they did get the Bush Administration in their corner, and that was their trump in this game. The farmers were essentially able to get a seat at the table by hooking the proverbial thumb over the shoulder at a smirking Cheney and saying, “You either deal with us or you deal with him.”

But of course, subsequently negotiators had to deal with the Bush Administration anyway. In 2007 Steve Thompson, appointed by Bush to manage the US Fish and Wildlife Service California-Nevada Operations Office, joined Simmons and certain tribal members in an organized assault on the two most able and outspoken groups in the negotiations at that time. Oregon Wild and Oregon WaterWatch were providing expert legal objections to the KBRA’s water give-away, as well as it’s provision to allow 50 more years of chemically intensive agriculture on 22,000 acres of the Klamath National Wildlife Refuge, which any ornithologist worth his field glasses would say shouldn’t be allowed at all. With assistance from a couple of key allies who work for the tribal governments that support the KBRA, Thompson and Simmons were able to orchestrate the removal of Oregon Wild and WaterWatch from the negotiations.

That left the Northcoast Environmental Center and the Hoopa Tribe as the only negotiators in the room, out of 26 remaining parties, that openly opposed many of the provisions of the KBRA. There is not enough time to go into all those provisions now, but you can check them out on our web site, where you’ll find the full KBRA analysis I wrote for the NEC, and which is still current. The NEC continues to take a pro-active track on the deals, and I encourage you to contact them or check out their web site for more information.

What I want to emphasize here, along with the fact that much of the KBRA falls within the realm of a dangerous sham, is the value of the water in the Klamath River. Take an average water year of, say, 370,000 acre feet delivered to Klamath farmers from the Klamath Reclamation Project. Add to that 100,000 acre feet or more pumped out of the ground annually with taxpayer subsidized pumps and delivery systems, and what do you think that water is going to be worth to a thirsty southland in 20 years? Even at a meager $400 an acre-foot that water could be worth more than $200 million. But that price is so 1999. What about in 2030, with climate change continuing to dry up California’s battered water delivery system, and not coincidentally its watersheds, which is not only the prediction of all the climate models, but it’s happening right now. The Sierra snowpack, which feeds California’s key reservoirs, is all but disappearing. The people in the south part of the state charged with finding more water are mostly looking northward. Water is California’s new Gold Rush.

At this point supporters of the KBRA will make one of dozens of reasoned, studied, rational arguments they’ve got for why concerns over the agreement are unfounded. I like to believe a lot of these arguments, such as: Flows at Iron Gate can run lower than the current court-ordered minimum of 1,000 cubic feet per second (cfs) once dams are out, because the water will be colder and cleaner. I really want to believe that, because if the KBRA goes into effect flows will definitely run below 1,000 cfs. Modeling used by tribal and government scientists to judge what the flows might be under the KBRA with dams out show the river running as low as 414 cfs in the driest years. Fish kill flows in 2002 were around 700 cfs. When I point that out they say, oh, it’ll never go as low as 414 because we’re going to create a technical advisory team and a drought plan to prevent all of that. And I hope this is true. It just gives me pause to remember that when I recommended that the TAT and the drought plan be created before the KBRA is implemented I was ignored and even chastised, including by a couple of the big green groups in the room.

Let me say here that negotiators are in a tough spot. Beginning with the Bush Administration’s stranglehold over the early proceedings — kowtowing as they were to Big Ag and directly threatening another dangerously low Klamath River during salmon migration if farmers didn’t get guaranteed water deliveries — and then through subsequent negotiations in which the administration’s representatives expertly manipulated the meetings, it wasn’t easy even for the hydro experts at American Rivers and Trout Unlimited to craft a healthy, workable agreement. But that’s doesn’t excuse American Rivers, CalTrout, and Trout Unlimited, as well as negotiators for the United States, the states of California and Oregon, and three of the four tribes in the room, for agreeing to a guaranteed water delivery to farmers of up to 385,000 acre-feet. This was done without any public notice or review or input, and no public meetings as one might expect to be mandated under the National Environmental Policy Act or the California Environmental Quality Act. None of the otherwise fine and useful restoration measures subsequently added to the KBRA will suffice to undo the damage of the ag water allocation should it result in another fish kill. And it very well could.

Back to the cash value of Klamath water. Supporters of the KBRA have tried to convince me that such value is irrelevant because the KBRA contains an “out-of-basin transfer” provision that would prevent sending the water outside of the Klamath. Well, assuming that the out-of-basin provision survives legislation needed to codify the KBRA, as well as subsequent legislation that may arise as the West’s water crises deepen, what does the “out-of-basin transfer” provision say? It says this:

“The Parties (except state agencies with direct decisional authority over such transfers) shall make all reasonable efforts to oppose any additional out-of-basin water transfers from the Klamath River Basin.”

Iron clad! Really, that provision doesn’t say anything, it doesn’t prevent anything. Yet almost everyone in the negotiating room — half the green groups, three of the four tribes, the states and the feds and even the fishing groups — just sort of rolled their eyes and said live with it … and then they rolled over. They rolled over throughout this deal. They rolled because there are very powerful forces at the top levels of government and commerce who are allied to accrue water. Water today is the most valued commodity in the world. It is worth more than gold, more than oil, even more than food. It’s why upper Klamath River farmers have reportedly paid more than $1 million in legal fees since the beginning of KBRA negotiations. If a Central Valley farmer can earn $77 million for 14,000 acre-feet of water, then a million bucks might seem like a worthy gambit to farmers who stand to control the rights to hundreds of thousands of acre feet of water.

A few years ago I traveled to Montreal to interview the great performer and activist Bruce Cockburn. Cockburn himself has traveled extensively as a witness to human tragedy and injustice, which he found well represented in the drought-stricken countries of Somalia and Mali. Cockburn told me, “We’re going to run out of water, for one thing. I’ve been to places where people already don’t have easy access to clean water. There’s hardly any pure water left in the world, and nobody’s doing much to remedy that or even prevent it from getting worse. If we’re not careful there will be wars fought over water. Fighting for oil is nothing compared to what will happen when the world starts fighting over water.”

A response might be that in California we’re not fighting a war over water. We’re working things out diplomatically, politically. But not all wars involve guns. In 2002 the Bush Administration attacked an ecosystem, and 68,000 salmon died. Are these fish not victims? What about the Klamath’s indigenous people, who have lived in the basin for time immemorial … who have nurtured and survived on salmon for 10,000 years without depleting the resource … who pray for the salmon, and who love and revere this mighty fish as if family? Now that the entire Karuk tribe is down to catching about 100 salmon every year, the fish inhabit the realm of ceremony rather than sustenance. The salmon have become ghosts. Are the Karuk not victims in this particular water war? The Yurok? The Hoopa? The Shasta? The Klamath tribes? How about the sport and commercial fishing industry? How about the people who live along the banks of the Klamath who can no longer walk their dogs there or allow their children to even touch the water, it’s so toxic due to the war against this ecosystem?

Boaters brave the toxic, algae-choked waters of Iron Gate Reservoir. The algae creates a toxin called microcystin, which is consequently found 190 miles downstream at the mouth of the Klamath River.

 

Like many people with an intimate connection to the Klamath basin, I live with these issues in my heart and in my thoughts. The Klamath River has inhabited my soul. I am grateful for that. I am fortunate to have garnered even this limited knowledge of the cultures and politics of the Klamath basin, and I am blessed to have discovered the places along the Klamath that I have come to know and love.

I took this photo two days ago on a ridge between two pure-water creeks draining off of the Salmon Mountains, in the heart of the 50,000-acre Orleans Mountain Roadless Area. The view is southwest into the Klamath basin as it winds from Orleans toward Weitchpec. To know this world is a privilege, to fight for its survival is an honor. Thank you.

Silent Auction Items for Dec. 4 Benefit Concert

During Siskiyou Land Conservancy’s Dec. 4 benefit concert with David Jacobs-Strain and Joanne Rand (see previous post), we will offer a small silent auction. Below are some of the items to choose from. As always, we greatly appreciate the donations, and we encourage you to shop with these merchants. 

In addition, we owe thanks to the following local businesses that have provided food and drink for the evening:

• Wines: Cabot, Coates, Elk Prairie, Moonstone, Violet Green.
• Six Rivers Brewery
• Cypress Grove Chevre
• North Coast Co-Op

Also, keep in mind that this concert is a double CD release celebration. We kept the cost of admission low as encouragement to buy the new CDs from David Jacobs-Strain and Joanne Rand. 

Auction Items

(Sorry, we can’t take on-line bids. You’ll have to come to the show!)

Framed, original watercolor by Alan Sanborn. Value: $500. Minimum bid: $100.

 

Original watercolor by Joyce Jonte (unframed). Value: $150. Minimum bid: $75.

 

Original redwood carving ("Crescent Moon") by Jessie Groeschen. Value: $200. Minimum bid: $75.

 

Gift basket from Plaza Design. Value: $75. Minimum bid: $25.

 

Home water filter from Green Living Center in Fortuna. Filters out 99.9% of chlorine. Value: $80. Minimum bid: $30.

 

In addition (photos not yet available):

• Painting by Anna Oneglia.
• Gift certificate and wine glasses from Libation.
• Watercolor by Patricia Holbrook.
• Hand knitted wool sweater from Hot Knots.
• Dinner for two at Chapala Mexican restaurant.
• And more!

Siskiyou Land Conservancy Holiday Benefit Bash in Arcata: David Jacobs-Strain and Joanne Rand

Double CD-Release Extravaganza With Indie Greats

David Jacobs-Strain and Joanne Rand

 Dec. 4, 2009   Redwood Raks, Arcata

 

TWO LEGENDS OF THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST MUSIC SCENE take stage with their bands in Arcata on Friday, December 4 for one of the hottest holiday shows of the year. Come prepared to dance! 

Blues great David Jacobs-Strain and Arcata singer-songwriter Joanne Rand offer a double-CD release performance of traditional and psychedelic blues-rock revival at the beautiful Redwood Raks Studio, in the Old Creamery Building in Arcata (824 L Street).

Tickets are $10 in advance, $13 at the door and are available at The Works in Arcata and Eureka. The concert is a benefit for Siskiyou Land Conservancy, an Arcata-based land trust dedicated to protecting wildlands and promoting sustainability on the North Coast.

David Jacobs-Strain

During the concert Siskiyou Land Conservancy will offer “Taste of Place” local foods and beverages for sale, as well as a small silent auction.

Doors open at 7 p.m., and the music starts at 8. For more information call (707) 498-4900.

Sponsored by  KHUM — Radio Without the Rules.

This fall Rand released her tenth independently produced record in 20 years, Snake Oil and Hummingbirds (submitted for Grammy nomination), which pianist George Winston called, “Another soulful recording by Joanne. Great renditions also of the Old Time songs.” Rand recently earned a BFA in Music Composition from Humboldt State University, an influence that tickles the edges of Snake Oil and Hummingbirds. The record’s avant-garde Appalachian traditionals, original orchestral compositions and contemporary folk-rock are performed in Rand’s inimitable sonic style. 

David Jacobs-Strain’s newest CD, Terraplane Angel will be offered at the concert as a limited edition advance CD ahead of its release on a label.

A consummate finger-style and slide guitarist, and rootsy blues singer, David Jacobs-Strain is a veteran of the national club and festival circuit. In 2008 and 2009 Jacobs-Strain was chosen by Boz Scaggs to be the opener for his tour. A favorite at Humboldt’s Blues by the Bay, Jacobs-Strain has also shared the stage with T-Bone Burnett, Bob Weir, Los Lobos, Lucinda Williams, Taj Mahal, Etta James, Dave Mason, and the Blind Boys of Alabama.

“[Jacobs-Strain] is just one of these guys who is in his own class. A great singer and guitar player,” says guitarist Jorma Kaukonen (Jefferson Airplane, Hot Tuna). In 2008 the Washington Post agreed: “[Jacobs-Strain’s] acoustic and electric guitar work is crisp and driven, and his voice can rise to a soulful pitch or fall quietly in sync with a loping beat.”

Jacobs-Strain’s Terraplane Angel was produced by legendary Nashville music master Ray Kennedy (Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle, Ray Davis). Guitar Player magazine said Jacobs-Strain “plays slide-driven country blues with a passion and authority that few artists of any age can muster.”

Rand is likewise accustomed to accolades. Dubbed “Psychedelic-Folk-Revival,” the Santa Rosa Press Democrat called Rand’s music “nothing short of brilliant.” A Sonoma County Bohemian readers’ poll voted her “Best Acoustic Band,” and the newspaper has called her a “legendary …longtime local hero.”

Links:

http://www.davidjacobs-strain.com/

http://www.myspace.com/joannerand

Habitat Changes Endanger Rare Plants

Siskiyou Land Conservancy owns 80 acres of rare plant habitat on the North Fork Smith River, in Del Norte County. Botanists, including U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service scientist Dave Imper (quoted below), contend that this Stony Creek property ranks among the top 10 most biologically important private parcels in the north state, owing to its unique and pristine plant communities.

Following is an article that ran in the current (October 2009) issue of Econews, the newsletter of the Northcoast Environmental Center.

By Greg King

 A group of unusual and rare plants in the North Fork Smith River area is threatened by fast-growing shrubs that formerly were held in check by fire.

 Most travelers on U.S. Highway 199, between Crescent City and Oregon, unwittingly speed past this international botanical treasure. Yet just a half mile north of the Gasquet store is a trail that enters another world: The North Fork Smith River Botanical Area.

 

Looking down the North Fork Smith River to Siskiyou Land Conservancy's Stony Creek parcel. Photo by Greg King.

 For decades hikers, rafters and plant enthusiasts have explored this rocky, almost eerie wonderland of weird soils and crazy flora.

 The trail enters the Stony Creek watershed, where botanists have discovered not one or two,  but three carnivorous plants living side by side. (See: “Carnivorous Plants of the Smith River Region,” ECONEWS, June 2009.) Also found at Stony Creek are the western bog violet and a dozen other rare plants including the lovely McDonald’s rockcress, which is federally listed as an endangered species. Stony Creek, it turns out, is a gateway to one of the world’s most unique botanical communities.

Stony Creek is alive with Darlingtonia, one of three carnivorous plants in the watershed. Photo by Greg King.

I discovered the Stony Creek Watershed ten years ago while identifying “inholdings” (private parcels surrounded by public lands) for Siskiyou Land Conservancy. I was looking for parcels in the Smith River National Recreation Area that might be in need of conservation protection. Since it turned out that Stony Creek is the North Fork’s only roadless tributary, this was an important inholding.

 “The Smith River’s north fork is a country of sparse vegetation, serpentine barrens, and extensive soggy fens,” writes John Sawyer, professor emeritus at HSU, in his seminal 2006 book, Northwest California: A Natural History. “This is the land of the Josephine ophiolite, which boasts the highest number of endemic vascular plants (70) of any outcrop of serpentine substrates on the continent.”

 While the professor has retired from teaching, he has not retreated from his passion for plants. His enthusiasm for the unusual soils and resulting flora of the North Fork Smith River remains unabated.

 “The fens of this area are famous for the insectivorous California pitcher plant (Darlingtonia californica),” writes Sawyer. “Growing with this remarkable plant is a diverse set of wet-adapted species, many associated with bog and fen conditions in Canada, including the insectivorous butterwort and sundew. … The botanically famous Stoney Creek Trail is an excellent introduction to the serpentine plants of the Josephine ophiolite.” (The creek name is alternately spelled with and without the “e,”depending on document.)

 But Sawyer, who has been studying Stony Creek for the past four decades, is concerned. While the parcel remains untouched by road or machinery, to say it’s “pristine” is to ignore the important missing element: fire.

 Prior to white settlement, fire in the region of the North Fork-Middle Fork Smith River was a regular occurrence. Lightening fires often spread through the area, and Tolowa Indians burned to maintain dominance of acorn-bearing oak trees. Now, after a century without fire, said Sawyer, the North Fork’s rare plant communities are threatened by a “densification” of shrub species.

Western azalea overlooking the North Fork Smith River, on the 80-acre parcel owned by Siskiyou Land Conservancy. Photo by Greg King.

 “Just leaving it alone is mismanagement,” he said. Because the areas containing rare plants are relatively small, Sawyer recommends “reducing the number of trees and cutting the shrubs back” by hand in these regions, rather than using fire, which is less predictable.

 After my first visit to the Stony Creek watershed in 2000, I contacted Nan Croley, who owned the 80-acre parcel containing the rare plant communities that botanists have been visiting for nearly 100 years. After four years of negotiating and fund raising, Siskiyou Land Conservancy purchased the parcel as an ecological preserve.

 Croley, who has since died, had previously declined to sell the land to Six Rivers National Forest due to concerns that the government would allow logging of the pristine hillside forest on the parcel’s south side.

 Siskiyou Land Conservancy is now developing a long-term management plan to restore and protect the rare plant habitat on this parcel, as well as on surrounding federal lands and an adjacent 120 acres owned by the California Department of Fish and Game.

 Dave Imper, a botanist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, agrees that a plan for managing and restoring the North Fork’s rare plant habitat is important.

 “It [the Stony Creek parcel] is the best jewel around. … It would be nice to get it mapped and figure out where exactly the rare plants are,” said Imper. Once the inventory is complete, he continued, a restoration program should move forward. If a such a program is not put in place soon encroaching shrub species could suck up the seeping surface water that many of the rare plants require for survival.

 “As these [rare plant habitats] close up they dry up,” said Imper, “and there go the carnivores.”

News and Opinions on Klamath water deal

Siskiyou Land Conservancy President and Program Director Greg King recently added some clarity to the Klamath dam deals in the letters section of the North Coast Journal. The entire letter is pasted below.

The letter was in response to the cover story, by Journal editor Hank Sims, on the Klamath water and dam deals.

On Sunday, Oct. 18, Hoopa Valley Tribal Chairman Leonard Matsen expressed his council’s concerns over the Klamath deals in an op-ed in the Sacramento Bee.

As always, longtime Klamath resident and activist Felice Pace provides excellent updates on his Klamblog.

Here is King’s letter:

No Settlement

Editor:

Thanks to Hank Sims for producing one of the better journalistic examinations of the Klamath deal (“The Klamath Settlement,” Oct. 8). However, the article’s subhead — “weighing the pros and cons of a proposal to end the crisis on our most important river” — is misleading.

The Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement (KBRA) and the Klamath Hydro Agreement (KHA) are crafted to be “indivisible” from each other. That is, without the KBRA there will be no dam removal. After immersing in these negotiations for nearly three years I realized that these efforts are more about allocating water than removing dams. Rather than “ending” the Klamath crisis these deals could exacerbate it.

As the Journal noted, early into its regime the Bush Administration strong-armed Klamath scientists into denying that a lack of water would harm fish. Klamath farmers tended a half-million acres of crops in the upper basin, and the Oregon agricultural industry was an important Republican constituency. The resulting massive water delivery to upriver Klamath farmers in 2002 violated the Endangered Species Act and decimated 70,000 salmon, the largest adult fish kill in U.S. history.

Appalling as the fish kill was, it afforded farmers a real threat that allowed injection of their demands for “water security” into a dam removal negotiation that had nothing to do with upriver farming. The questions, though not verbalized, were hardly rhetorical: You want to avoid another fish kill? You want the president, who happens to be in our pocket, to sign dam removal legislation? Then we get a seat at the table and an unprecedented guarantee of water, even though we receive no water or flood control from the dams.

The result is a deal that, as Sims points out, guarantees water for farmers but not for fish. Farmers get first draw, the fish get what’s left. The KBRA could actually subvert the Endangered Species Act. Current court-ordered ESA protections disallow flows at Iron Gate from going below 1,000 cubic feet per second (cfs). A close look at the WRIMS model (cited by the Journal) shows that flows under the Agreement could actually run as low as 414 cfs. The 2002 fish kills flows fluctuated at around 700 cfs. Dr. Thomas Hardy — whose eventual support for the KBRA was highly qualified — has said he could never support Klamath flows this low.

Then there’s the requirement that California voters pass a $250 million bond to help pay for dam removal. Even if voters were inclined to tax themselves (which the last election showed they are not), Governor Schwarzenegger has promised that he will fight any water bond that does not include two new dams and a peripheral canal on the Sacramento-San Joaquin ecosystem. Environmentalists could actually find themselves fighting California’s funding of Klamath dam removal in order to protect the Sacramento River.

Greg King, President/Program Director, Siskiyou Land Conservancy

“How’s the Jacoby Creek Garden Coming Along?”

This report to the City of Arcata describes a garden project organized by parents and Siskiyou Land Conservancy for Jacoby Creek Elementary School, in Arcata. The school leases city-owned land for the garden.

Although SLC President Greg King issued this report last month, it is worth noting now that most of the “next steps” (at bottom) are either accomplished or in process, with the exception of brassicas. Next year we’ll get those in for sure.

Report to the City of Arcata

Open Space and Agriculture Committee

 Jacoby Creek Elementary School Garden Project

Presented by Siskiyou Land Conservancy 

September 14, 2009

Jacoby Creek School students pose during the school’s garden groundbreaking ceremony April 22, 2009. Standing in back, l-r: Arcata Mayor Mark Wheetley, JCS Principal Eric Grantz, and SLC President Greg King. Photo courtesy the Arcata Eye.

Background

Siskiyou Land Conservancy launched the Jacoby Creek Elementary School Garden Project in late 2005. The school already had a few large planter boxes that some teachers were using to grow food and flowers, but there was no institutionalized garden education program, and the boxes were too small to create a viable quantity of produce.

Photo courtesy the Arcata Eye.

Objectives

The genesis for the Jacoby Creek Elementary School Garden Project was the desire by parents to do several things, including:

• Engage their children scholastically in learning about the origins and importance of food.  
• Generate and add to a collective, community knowledge base of how to produce and prepare food. 
• Add to the local region’s availability of fresh food, thereby reducing the need for outside nutrition and the fossil fuels needed to transport it. 
• Improve school lunches with fresh, homegrown produce, thereby also improving nutrition and, according to several studies, academic achievement. 
• Use garden curricula, in as many classrooms as possible, to satisfy California state educational standards. 
• Get students outside more often.

Timeline and Results

In 2006 Jacoby Creek’s garden organizing began in earnest. The following has occurred since then:

• Meeting with rancher Dean Hunt, who kindly agreed to give up for the garden a portion of the rangeland he leases from the City of Arcata.
• Meetings with JCS parents, five of whom now serve as primary organizers of the JCS garden project.
• Secured, in 2007, a California Instructional School Garden Program grant of $2,500.
• Organized and funded an archeological survey of the site, in 2008, by Humboldt State University, in consultation with the Wiyot Tribe, which found no cultural concerns with the project.
• Attended meetings with Mark Andre and Karen Diemer of the City of Arcata Environmental Services Department, securing, in 2008, a three-year lease of city land for the garden.
• Purchased and installed fencing for the garden in 2009. Also purchased water systems.
• Developed databases of JCS parents.
• Met with community garden organizers including those from Community Alliance with Family Farmers, UC Davis Agricultural Extension, Mendocino County Schools, and several local farmers.
• Groundbreaking ceremony on Earth Day (April 22), 2009. Volunteers planted raspberries, pumpkins and two-dozen fruit trees. Field recently tilled and amended for fall planting.

Next Steps

• Install water system.
• Plant fall cover crops, as well as brassicas, garlic and onions.
• Organize garden fund raising events.
• Obtain city and Coastal Commission approval for a trail from campus through willow grove to garden site.
• Work with teachers, JCS School Board and Site Council, and JCS School Wellness Committee to more thoroughly integrate garden curricula, activities and food into students’daily regimens and diets (including through the school lunch program).
• Investigate and share curricula designed to allow school gardens to meet California academic standards.
• Integrate JCS Garden with other school and community gardens on the North Coast to augment and expand network and impacts of local, organic food production, and to reinforce the knowledge base necessary to maintain long-term community connectivity to food production.

Analysis of Klamath Deal

Dear friends,

Given the recently released Klamath Hydroelectric Agreement, and that agreement’s “indivisibility” from the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement (KBRA), readers might be interested in revisiting the analysis of the KBRA that I wrote for the NEC in April of this year.

Greg King

President, Siskiyou Land Conservancy

April 23, 2009

===================================

Analysis

The Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement

 Overview

The Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement (KBRA) is nearly 300 pages long. It is more than three years in the making, crafted by twenty-six parties as a “settlement” agreement designed to remedy many longstanding conflicts in the Klamath River basin. The Klamath Settlement Group (KSG) includes several U.S. government agencies (Bureau of Reclamation, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Marine Fisheries Service, Department of Justice), the states of California and Oregon, four Indian tribes, two fishing organizations and eight conservation groups.

 Early negotiations began with a focus on dam removal. PacifiCorp, the Salt Lake City-based energy company, operates several dams on the Klamath River as part of the Klamath Hydroelectric Project. The four lowermost of these dams — J.C. Boyle, Copco I, Copco II and Iron Gate — have long been the focus of dam removal advocates. These dams block 350 miles of upriver salmonid spawning habitat. The reservoirs behind the dams are shallow and warm, ideal conditions for growing the toxin microcystin, which has been measured in the reservoirs at levels 4,000 times higher than what the World Health Organization considers a “moderate” human health risk.

 PacifiCorp attended early KSG meetings, but soon the company left negotiations, apparently taking with them any provision for dam removal. The KBRA became a “water deal” only. Negotiations with PacifiCorp stalled for nearly two years, but were taken up again in 2008 and today remain ongoing.

 The NEC understands the necessity of solving longstanding conflicts over water in the Klamath basin. However, creating the KBRA out of a dam removal negotiation has stalled the dam decommissioning process and created a catchall agreement that is so confusing, unwieldy, and legally unsustainable that it could kill dam removal altogether. Yet KBRA parties are this year expected to ask Congress to approve and fund the deal.

 The Northcoast Environmental Center supports many elements of the KBRA, in particular provisions for habitat restoration and funding for tribal fisheries programs and land acquisition. However, many of the restoration projects, and much of the restoration funding contained in the KBRA, could occur with or without the Agreement. The NEC has therefore withdrawn from further negotiations of the KBRA, owing to our inability to negotiate changes in several provisions of the Agreement that we consider onerous at best. Some of these provisions are outlined below.

 Water for Farmers, but Not For Fish

The KBRA would provide an annual guaranteed water delivery to farmers, who receive water from the upper Klamath River via the federal Klamath Reclamation Project. Under the KBRA farmers would receive ample water even in dry years, when they would be guaranteed a minimum of 330,000 to 340,000 acre-feet during the March-October irrigation season. In wet year farmers could take up to 385,000 acre-feet of water.

In addition, a part of the $200 million in farmer subsidies contained in the KBRA budget could be used to expand groundwater pumping in the upper basin, further draining in-stream Klamath River flows.

 However, the KBRA does not guarantee water deliveries for salmon. Nor does the Agreement provide a “goal” for improved runs of Klamath River fish. The science in the KBRA — which models anticipated river flows  — was designed to fit the farmers’ negotiated water allocation. The risk of too little water is squarely on the fish, with irrigators getting their water first and fish getting what’s left.

 Upriver farmers have little to do with the four lower Klamath dams. The dams lie dozens of miles downstream of the upper Klamath farming region, and they do not provide irrigation water or flood control. With allies in the Bush Administration, however, Klamath farmers were able to exercise political clout and dictate many of the provisions of the KBRA.

Scientific flow modeling in the KBRA was aimed at achieving optimum flow levels only for fall Chinook salmon.  This may not be the best scenario for other species including spring Chinook, whose runs are quickly diminishing in the basin, and the ESA-listed Coho salmon. These species could be adversely impacted by flows that are predicted to be extremely low during adult Coho migration.  KBRA flows also have not been scrutinized for other species such as sturgeon and lamprey.

Klamath farmers have never before enjoyed a guarantee of water delivery from the Klamath Reclamation Project. This was clear in 2001, when the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation reduced water deliveries to upriver Klamath farmers to 75,000 acre-feet in order to provide more water for Coho salmon, which are protected under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. The water reduction resulted in planted fields drying up and significant crop losses. It also resulted in prominent community members in the upper Klamath basin taking the law into their own hands by breaking into Klamath River pump stations and forcing open the floodgates to their fields. What the water restriction likely avoided, though, was a massive fish kill.

Over the next several months, in order to bolster the reelection chances of Oregon Republican Senator Gordon Smith, Vice-President Dick Cheney personally intervened on behalf of Klamath farmers. By coercing federal scientists to alter their findings on low Klamath flows, farmers received a full water allocation even though 2002 was another dry year. Smith received farmer support and was narrowly reelected. That year 400,000 acre-feet of water, more than half of the river’s flow, ran out of Upper Klamath Lake and directly into the “A Canal,” which serves upriver farmers (see graphs). The result was the largest adult fish kill in U.S. history: at least 68,000 Chinook salmon died that year.

Since 2006 federal courts have enforced the Endangered Species Act by mandating minimum dry season flows for salmon. The court required that flows not dip below 1,000 cubic feet per second (cfs) at Iron Gate Dam. The KBRA would reverse this guaranteed flow for fish and thus undermine protections provided by federal law — protections that have thus far prevented another fish kill.

Long-term Petrochemical Farming in the Klamath National Wildlife Refuge

The Klamath National Wildlife Refuge system is America’s premier waterfowl habitat in the lower 48 states. The importance of this vast wetland ecosystem was recognized as early as 1908, when President Teddy Roosevelt established the Klamath National Wildlife Refuge by setting aside 81,000 acres of marsh and open water in Lower Klamath Lake as the nation’s first refuge for migratory birds.

Nonetheless, since that time the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, in creating its massive Klamath Reclamation Project, has managed to drain, dyke, dewater and fill 75 percent of the 350,000 acres of wetlands that once constituted one of the greatest wetland ecosystems in North America. Currently, commercial agriculture dominates fully one-third (22,000 acres) of the 64,000 acres in the Tule Lake and Lower Klamath Lake refuges. A provision of the KBRA would make this pesticide-intensive farming a permanent feature for the next 50 years, despite the fact that several of the organizations and tribes involved in KBRA negotiations have long opposed refuge farming.[1]

KBRA section 15.4.3 states: “The Parties support continued lease land farming on TLNWR [Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge] and LKNWR [Lower Klamath Lake National Wildlife Refuge]. …” That is, signatories would be prevented from ever again opposing farming on the refuges, despite whatever damage agriculture causes to the wetlands, wildlife and the Klamath River. Further preventing such action is KBRA section 15.1.3, which states, “The fish and wildlife and National Wildlife Refuge purposes of the Klamath Reclamation Project shall not adversely affect the irrigation purpose of the Project.” This section places a higher priority on maintenance of farmlands than on protection of wildlife, an apparent violation of the 1964 Kuchel Act. The Kuchel Act regulates uses of the Klamath National Wildlife Refuge and is “dedicated to wildlife conservation…for the major purpose of waterfowl management.”

The NEC and other groups have long supported phasing out farming on the Klamath National Wildlife Refuge. This would remove from production less than 5 percent of the land currently farmed in the Upper Klamath Basin. However, it would add up to 100,000 acre-feet of water storage to the Klamath River system, with restored wetlands dramatically increasing the amount of habitat available to waterfowl and federally protected Klamath River suckers. The expanded wetlands would also provide the best possible filter for the greatly impaired water that now flows from surrounding farmlands back into the Klamath River.

 

Other NEC Objections to the KBRA:

• The water allocation to irrigators in the Klamath Reclamation Project is based on economics rather than science.
• The KBRA’s Drought Plan and Climate Change Reopener — essential provisions of the Agreement —will not be created until after the KBRA is signed. Also, Federal Advisory Committee Act rules will prevent NGOs, such as the NEC, from participating in creating these plans for up to two years after the KBRA is signed.
• There are no provisions to reduce pesticide use and other harmful farming practices on nearly 500,000 acres under cultivation in the Upper Klamath Basin.
• There is no meaningful provision to clean up Keno Reservoir, which will be the first reservoir that salmonids encounter once the lowermost four dams are removed. Keno Reservoir is 60 percent agricultural runoff. It is warm and toxic and is regularly the site of fish kills.
• The KBRA budget includes hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies for farmers but no funding for dam removal. Some of these subsidies would increase groundwater pumping to the detriment of in-stream flows. Other subsidies would provide debt relief for farmers, would pay for inexpensive power for pumping water through the Klamath Reclamation Project, and would give farmers $92 million to develop a water plan with no state or federal oversight.
• The KBRA budget is nearly $1 billion and would have to be legislated by a Congress currently in a fiscal crisis. Yet the KBRA provides that any negotiated dam removal settlement with PacifiCorp will be “indivisible” from the KBRA. If Congress does not approve the KBRA, then dam removal dies on the vine. Congress could balk not only at the budget, but also at the KBRA’s usurpation of the federal Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act, as well as the provision for permanent farming on the National Wildlife Refuge. Ironically, the KBRA is not even needed for dam removal, nor is a negotiated settlement with PacifiCorp. The Federal Power Act provides a process through the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to decommission dams. That process is now ongoing with respect to PacifiCorp’s dams, whose 50-year license expired in 2006.

 

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[1] Early language in the principles guiding the Klamath Coalition stated: “For the purposes of restoring wetlands, providing fish and wildlife habitat, augmenting refuge water supplies, reducing irrigation season water demand, and improving water quality, the leasing program on Tule Lake and Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuges for commercial farming shall be phased out, and the Kuchel Act is hereby amended accordingly.  All existing leases for commercial farming will be honored, but once the term of the lease is ended, the lands covered by a lease shall not be released for commercial farming, and shall thereafter be managed exclusively for refuge purposes and for the purposes provided above.”

Klamath Tributaries Running Dry, Threatening Endangered Salmon

Many Siskiyou Land Conservancy readers have already seen the recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle on the dire dry condition of the Scott and Shasta Rivers.

The article is very thoughtful and hits on most of the key points. Among them is the fact that some ranchers and farmers have become important allies in efforts to protect fish passage. What is lacking on that front, however, is a comprehensive effort by the agricultural community to return water to these critically important salmonid spawning rivers when it is most needed.

For instance, here is the Chronicle’s image of yours truly walking the dry Scott River:

Greg King, President of the Siskyou Land Conservancy, which has fought to protect the Salmon runs on the Klamath River, walks with his dog Wilder in a dry riverbed along the Scott River, a major tributary to the Klamath, on Wednesday September 2, 2009, in Fort Jones, Calif. Photo by Michael Macor/The Chronicle

Pretty bleak. Yet not 500 feet away is an irrigation ditch, which parallels the Scott River throughout the Scott Valley. On the day the above image was taken the irrigation ditch was full of water, and sprinklers throughout the Scott Valley were running full tilt, despite the 90+ degree evaporative heat. Here is my shot of the nearby irrigation ditch on Sep. 2. Note the pump and the lime-green fields:

So there’s the water. The fish have first rights to it but they are not getting it. Extinction is just around the corner, yet it’s entirely preventable. What sort of society would allow this to occur?