* First priority of program should be the protection of watershed and habitat quality.

* Need to prevent habitat degradation in the first place.

* Need to address the cause of habitat degradation rather than just the symptoms.

* Emphasize the necessity of avoiding harmful watershed and water use practices.

* Quality and quantity of fish reflect the watershed status.

* Agency management ineffective in protecting habitat.

* Need to identify where and in what form long-term habitat protection can be implemented.

* Need to identify practical processes for multi-agency review of projects which threaten fisheries habitat.

Even the tremendous ability of Western streams to naturally heal themselves has yet to match the opposing artificial stress constantly placed upon them. We have yet to turn the corner .... If Stewardship had its proper place in the management of the lands and waters over the past century, we wouldn't face this large, expensive challenge.

... unless more effort is devoted to looking forward toward prevention rather than backward toward correction, we will continually be trying to catch up. The successful management of erosion is as much a philosophical and political problem as a technical one.

Protection of habitat must be the first priority of a restoration effort if long-term success is to be achieved. The importance of "pristine" habitat for the health of the salmon fishery was first recognized by biologists in the late nineteenth century. In 1892, a scientist from the U.S. Fish Commission proposed setting aside an entire coastal watershed "as a great national nursery" for salmon. The most likely candidate, he thought, was the Klamath River: "the land extending some distance from the mouth of the Klamath River is, I believe, a Government reservation, requiring no special legislation to close the stream to outside commerce." (McEvoy 1986)

Such a sanctuary was never established. The Klamath watershed had already been substantially altered by 1892 from gold mining activities and the dramatic flood of 1861. Impacts yet to come were major dams, intensive water diversions, gold dredging, numerous roads, extensive logging, two more phenomenal floods, and catastrophic forest fires. Had we known then what we know now about the impor-tance of watershed and stream habitat protection, the salmon and steelhead popula-tions of the Klamath River Basin would very likely not need this restoration program.

Wild salmon and steelhead stocks have evolved with stream systems that were flushed by floods, blocked by fallen trees and beaver dams, muddied by natural landslides, and dried by droughts. The stream and watershed conditions we see today are also reflections of at least 150 years of human alterations. When fur trappers removed 1800 beaver from the Scott Valley in 1836, the anadromous fish habitat was altered. Land and water uses over the years have transformed the landscape, in many places permanently.

The historical perspective on how and when the land and water has been modified is brought into each section of this chapter: timber harvest, mining, agriculture, urban and rural development, dams, and water diversions. As ecologists have told us, it is important to understand the sequence of changes that have occurred for two reasons (Sedell and Luchessa 1981):

1. To learn from past mistakes and to provide better habitat protection in the future; and

2. To provide both a rational context and an effective direction for habitat restoration efforts.

To describe the various issues and findings on the subject of habitat protection, this chapter is divided into two major sections and several subsections:

LAND MANAGEMENT -----------------------------------------------WATER MANAGEMENT
Timber Harvesting -------------------------------------------------------------Water and Power Projects
Mining ---------------------------------------------------------------------------Water Diversions
Agriculture

Within each subsection, the findings are organized as follows:

History
Management Practices
Salmon and Steelhead Impacts
Regulations
Conclusions

At the end of each subsection is a list of Policies to be used for guiding Task Force actions on that subject. Since the Task Force does not have any regulatory powers of its own to protect habitat (though individual member agencies do), it is essential that the Task Force have a strategy on how it can be most effective. The following policy strategy is proposed:

* Promote a cooperative approach with land and water users, including incentives.

* Support information collection about habitat impacts.

* Feed the collected information back into the loop through data bases and regulating agencies.

* Seek changes in regulations which are ineffective and recommend minimum standards.

* Recognize decision-making and problem-solving methods locally available, such as the Coordinated Resource Management and Planning approach.

A description of the basin's general environment was offered in the 1985 Fisheries Resource Plan. Only a summary pertinent to the Habitat Protection chapter is offered here, along with some new information.

Precipitation and Runoff

A pattern of extreme floods and droughts has appeared to be the norm during the 20th Century in the Klamath Basin. As can be seen in Figure 2-1, the mean annual precipitation in the basin ranges from 10 inches near Klamath Falls, to 50 inches in the upper Scott River Basin, to 110 inches at Blue Creek. The historical pattern is best represented in Figures 2-2 and 2-3. For the upper basin, precipitation data for Yreka reveals fairly extreme annual fluctuations (7.53 to 33.10) with the average at 18.09 inches per year. For the Orleans area, records indicate that the 1920s were the driest decade, the 1950s were the wettest decade, and the 1980s were average.

Figure 2-1 -- Mean Annual Precipitation Map of the Klamath Basin.

Figure 2-2 -- Annual Precipitation in Yreka, 1916 to 1989.

Figure 2.3 -- Rainfall by decade at Orleans.

Individual years seem to attract the most attention. During the 1976-77 drought, the seasonal precipitation amounted to only 20% of normal in the Scott River and 40% of normal in the upper Klamath River. Since that period, a majority of years has been below normal precipitation (80% in 1987, 60-80% in 1988), according to records of the California Department of Water Resources. In contrast, the calendar year 1983 recorded the highest rainfall of the century.

Flooding of extreme magnitudes occurred in December 1955, December 1964, and February 1974. The only similar flood to be documented was in 1861-62, although good prehistoric flood evidence reveals others of similar severity (Helley and LaMarche 1973). In a study of historic and prehistoric flood deposits and botanical evidence in the Klamath River Basin, major flood events similar in magnitude to the 1964 flood occurred around 1600 and again about 1750. The 1955 flood was smaller and was probably equivalent to the one in 1861. Less intensive floods recur anywhere from two to fifty year intervals. The intensity of flooding also varies with location in the Basin.

Geology

The Klamath River Basin encompasses three major geologic provinces: the Southern Cascades to the east, the Klamath Mountains in the middle, and the North Coast Ranges to the west. Each province acts quite differently (Helley and LaMarche 1973). In the North Coast Ranges, landslides and soil slips are common due to the combination of sheared rocks, shallow soil profile development, steep slopes, and heavy seasonal precipitation. The Klamath Mountains are underlain by highly metamorphosed volcanic and sedimentary rocks that have been intruded by granitic and ultramafic rocks, which weather at different rates. Its drainages are deeply incised, exposing old land surfaces along river channels. In contrast, the headwaters of the Klamath River are found in the Cascade Range, which is volcanic in origin. Surface drainage is poorly developed, possibly because the highly permeable volcanic rocks allow ready infiltration of snowmelt and precipitation. Acreages of each geologic type in the Klamath Basin (only California figures available) and Trinity Basin can be found in Table 2-1, while a map is offered in Figure 2-4.

Recent Fires

Forest fires have always occurred in the region but the historical record was overshadowed by the most recent fire. An unusually intensive lightning storm, in late August 1987, ignited forest fires throughout the Klamath River Basin that were not extinguished until the rains of November. On the Klamath National Forest, where the most extensive fires occurred, about 217,000 acres were burned (C. Conklin, USFS, personal communication). As identified in Table 2-2, the intensity of the burn varied by area: 13% of the burned acres were of high intensity, 32% of moderate intensity, and 55% of low intensity.

The Klamath National Forest developed a Recovery Philosophy and Goal Statement to guide the Forest in responding to the fires: "to return, if possible, the burned areas to either their former or potential biological and economic productivity or to the best use based on existing land capabilities." Its short-term recovery goals are to "reforest burned areas, reduce fuels, salvage dead timber, and mitigate the impacts of the catastrophic event on wildlife, watershed, fisheries, and recreation values" (USFS 1989).

Emergency watershed measures were taken immediately after the fires. One saving factor was the lack of intensive rains on most of the burned drainages during the two years following the fires. Depending on the proportion of area burned with high to moderate intensity, each watershed is recovering at different rates. In the Elk Creek subbasin, degradation to fish habitat has been only minimal (J. West, USFS, personal communication). However, projections are that wildfire impacts causing excessive sedimentation in certain Salmon River tributaries (Crapo, Kanaka Gulch, Olsen, and Big Creeks) may reduce anadromous fish escapement by an estimated 80 percent between 1990 and 1998 (Goines 1988).

The fires have created both challenges and opportunities for the Forest Service. Seeking the appropriate balance in treating ground cover for fuel management and erosion control is one of the critical challenges related to water quality and fish habitat.

_________________________________________________________________________

Figure 2-4, Generalized Geologic Map (fold out).

   

---