<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.2800.1522" name=GENERATOR>
<STYLE></STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY bgColor=#ffffff>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>
<P><B>Budget cut crimps monitoring of Klamath water releases</B>
<P>Friday, October 28, 2005 <BR><A
href="http://www.capitalpress.info/main.asp?SectionID=67&SubSectionID=616&ArticleID=20732&TM=30190.3">http://www.capitalpress.info/main.asp?SectionID=67&SubSectionID=616&ArticleID=20732&TM=30190.3</A>
<P>KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. It’s a new federal fiscal year, with budgets yet to
be adopted by Congress, but <BR>what stakeholders in the Klamath Basin are
hearing isn’t good. Tight times could mean a reduction in <BR>fisheries data
critical to how water is managed for farmers.
<P>Mike Orcutt, fisheries manager for the Hoopa Valley Tribal Council, last week
told the Klamath Fisheries <BR>Management Council that juggling of U.S. Bureau
of Reclamation Funds on the Trinity River, the largest <BR>tributary of the
Klamath, is a recipe for data shortage.
<P>The government is working with a tentative $11.2 million allocation on the
Trinity for this fiscal year. <BR>That’s down about $700,000 from the year ended
Sept. 30. Most of the Trinity money goes for <BR>construction in a series of
river restoration projects that got their first live test during a planned May
<BR>water release. The Trinity Adaptive Management Group, which advises BuRec on
the experiment, meets <BR>Nov. 4 in Weaverville to work on 2006 plans.
<P>“A lot of the monitoring that this council depends on is under-funded,”
Orcutt told the Klamath Council. <BR>The council is are charged with setting
quotas and recommending fishing seasons for offshore, sport and <BR>tribal
fisheries in the Klamath and Trinity system.
<P>Data errors or gaps, council members said in a lengthy discussion, can lead
to wrong calls on fish quotas <BR>with far-reaching economic impact.
<P>Other issues tied to budgets include the status of California Department of
Fish and Game’s program to <BR>identify at least a portion of hatchery salmon
released into the Klamath from Iron Gate Hatchery. The <BR>council wants an
increase in the number of coded wire tags to increase statistical records of how
hatchery <BR>and wild fish interact. In past years it has shifted federal funds
to keep work going when state funds are <BR>tight.
<P>The upstream Klamath Reclamation Project’s operations are dictated in part by
protection of coho <BR>salmon, listed as threatened with extinction under the
Endangered Species Act. A court-ordered revision <BR>to that coho plan is in
progress, and as a result of a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision last
week, the <BR>timetable for assuring water for salmon is expected to be pushed
up a couple of years.
<P><STRONG><U>The Trinity’s headwaters are stored by BuRec and piped to the
Sacramento River, where they become a <BR>significant part of the irrigation
allocation for the sprawling Westlands Irrigation District, west of Fresno
<BR>in the Central Valley. Experimental “restoration” releases downstream on the
Trinity make use of water <BR>that, in years past, had been available to Central
Valley Project farms. </U></STRONG>
<P>While the Klamath Council waits for finalization of the federal budgets, it
faces another look at viability of <BR>both California coastal Chinook salmon
populations and the Southern Oregon and Northern California <BR>runs of coho
salmon. Eric Chavez of NOAA Fisheries’ Long Beach office said those reviews come
after <BR>courts ordered consideration of all salmon, both wild and hatchery.
<P>“The wild fish rule is unlikely” to change status of either fish population,
he said.
<P>Tam Moore is based in Medford, Ore. His e-mail address is
tmoore@capitalpress.com.
<P>Related Links
<P>Content © 2005 Capital Press </P></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>