State of the Salmonids

by Will Harling, Executive Director, of Mid Klamath Watershed Council

Recent studies from Washington and Oregon by NOAA scientist Michael Pollock and others are further defining the intimate relationship between beaver, beaver ponds, and coho smolt production. A recent multi-year study being prepared for publication by the Karuk Tribe, Yurok Tribe, Larry Lestelle, and others, on the ecology of coho in the Klamath River identifies the lack of low-velocity habitats, primarily during winter flood events, as a major potential limiting factor to coho distribution and abundance3. Further studies are needed to relate the loss of beaver and associated habitats to the loss of coho in the Klamath River, but based on other studies, it appears that beaver ponds would provide much needed overwintering and summer rearing habitat for juvenile coho.

Get your Sunday morning coffee and pastry-of-choice to curl up with Will’s delightful account of the relationship between beavers and salmon. His friend Brock Dolman nudged the article our way, and I have been sending it to everyone I can think of. The Klamath is a much-guarded river that has active stewards from headwaters to mouth. It is also the site of some truly MASSIVE historic beaver trapping in California.

Beaver are slowly coming back to the Klamath, recovering from intense trapping that began in the mid-1800’s and continued for nearly a century after, until beavers were almost extinct. In 1850 alone, famed frontiersman and trapper Stephen Meek and his party reportedly trapped 1800 beaver out of Scott Valley, which at the time was called Beaver Valley. The last beavers in Scott Valley were trapped out by Frank C. Jordan in the winter of 1929-1930 on Marlahan Slough1.

1800 beavers. Ugh. My favorite part of the article details the plan between the Mid Klamath Watershed Council (MKWC) and various tribes to create an engineered log jam in a section of the stream that would divert water and create a great wintering space for salmonids –  no doubt filling out forms and applying for grants and getting property owner permission…

This spring, MKWC proposed a project near the mouth of Boise Creek, a tributary to the Klamath near Orleans on property owned by the Coates Vineyard and Winery, that would have used an engineered log jam to re-route the creek around a bedrock cascade barrier at the mouth through a series of existing ponds maintained by several families of beavers (Figure 1). However, before the project could be implemented, beavers constructed a five foot tall dam across the creek at the exact location of the proposed log jam, diverting a portion of Boise Creek through their ponds, and into the Klamath River at a location that provides adult and juvenile fish access. MKWC and Karuk Tribe biologists have observed thousands of juvenile chinook and coho utilizing these ponds through the summer, and moving through the ponds into Boise Creek above the barrier! This fall and winter, we will see if the beavers have also effectively redesigned the creek to allow for adult spawning chinook and coho salmon to access more than three miles of high quality spawning habitat above the barrier.

Sometimes nature knows best. And sometimes she needs a helping hand….

Seiad Creek provides an example of what can be accomplished on larger tributaries, such as the Scott River (once called Beaver River) which has also been degraded through channelization, dewatering, beaver extirpation, and upslope management. Innovative research by Michael Pollock and others on a small tributary to the John Day River in eastern Oregon is demonstrating how degraded stream and riparian habitat can be restored by working with beavers to aggrade streams, connect off-channel habitats, restore groundwater and increase stream sinuosity. At a presentation in Whitethorn organized by Tasha McKee from the Sanctuary Forest this past September, Dr. Pollock showed how wood posts pounded into an incised stream channel at key locations allowed beavers to recolonize sections of the stream and create stable dams that would otherwise be washed out during high flows, resulting in increased off-channel habitat, decreased erosion, and aggradation of the stream channel.

Wood posts to help prevent washouts! Be still my heart! (Shhh, don’t tell our beavers, they’ll be jealous.) It’s all I can do as it is  to keep from bringing a sandbag or two during the rains.)

The restoration of threatened coho salmon popolations in the Klamath River system may be intricately tied to enhanced beaver populations and restoration projects that mimic the positive benefits of beaver dams. Educating the public about the critical role of beaver in restoring coho salmon populations in the Klamath River and other coho salmon streams in Northwest California may also help to decrease take of beaver as a nuisance species and allow them to reclaim their role as an ecological process shaping our streams and valleys.

I love everything about that paragraph except the word ‘mimic’. I have very little patience for killing off beavers and then using bulldozers to do “pretend beaver works” in our streams. From a Cost-benefit analysis perspective alone its ridiculous. And from a beaver-advocate perspective it’s sacriledge.  Anyway, this is a beautiful article. Read the whole thing and pass it along.  In the meantime I am happy to announce that I bought my plane ticket for Oregon yesterday for the State of the Beaver Conference. I will fly to Eugene and get a lift down from Mike Callahan of Beaver Solutions who will be coming from Massachusetts via Portland. Assuming the hotel has Wifi I will continue to endeavor to bring you the very best in developing beaver news, discoveries,  and gossip.