Restoring Klamath Tributaries
By Nicholas Grube, Crescent City Triplicate
July 10, 2009

More than $500,000 in federal stimulus money has been awarded to the Yurok Tribe to bolster its efforts in repairing riparian zones on the lower Klamath River.

The money, which is coming through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, will be spent on constructing a tribal plant nursery and restoring about nine acres of tributary habitat to benefit threatened coho salmon as well as chinook and steelhead.

“That nursery is going to be integral for those restoration efforts,” Yurok Tribe Fisheries Program Manager Dave Hillemeier said last week. “We will be growing trees that will be used for restoring this riparian area throughout the lower Klamath Basin.”

The Yurok Tribe’s watershed restoration efforts are already under way to aid in the recovery of a declining salmon population, and officials have already begun growing trees to help in that process.

Hillemeier said the new federal money will allow the tribe to enhance its current nursery operations, and do additional work in Terwer, McGarvey and Waukel creeks, which are tributaries to the Klamath River.

“A lot of those areas were managed timber lands, and a lot of the regulations have changed to protect those riparian zones,” Hillemeier said. “We’re trying to get the riparian conditions back to their more historical conditions that the fish have evolved in over thousands of years.”

The Yurok and Karuk tribes have been monitoring salmon in the Klamath River for several years. As the young fish come down the river, scientists found that the salmon will use the lower Klamath tributaries for several months, resulting in a better survival rate because they are larger and healthier before journeying into the Pacific Ocean.

“They have really good survival rates in these lower tributaries,” Hillemeier said. “It’s really important for chinook and coho.”

Alder, cottonwoods, willows and conifers will be grown in the nursery near the Tribe’s Klamath headquarters and planted along the creeks to provide additional cover for these juveniles.

The stimulus funds will also go toward augmenting and digging some channel ponds in Terwer Creek that Hillemeier said get a lot of traffic.

“You’ll get thousands of fish in an acre or two of these off channel ponds,” he said. “We’re finding there’s a lot of use from all of the fish throughout the basin.”

U.S. Department of Commerce Secretary Gary Locke announced Tuesday that the NOAA was given $167 million through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for marine and coastal habitat restoration.

The money will be spread among 22 states and two U.S. territories for projects ranging from removing obsolete dams for fish passage to reducing threats to coral reefs to rebuilding oyster and shellfish habitat.

“These Recovery Act projects will put Americans to work while restoring our coasts and combating climate change,” Locke said in a statement. “They reflect our investment in sound science and commitment to help strengthen local economies.”

Only 50 projects were chosen out of a pool of 814 applicants that together were asking for more than $3 billion in stimulus money. The NOAA made its selections based on several criteria, including whether it met the agency’s highest priority needs for ecological restoration and if the project would create a large number of jobs quickly.

Hillemeier said he expects some of the $527,000 to make its way to the Klamath area within the next couple months, and added that it could lead to the creation of anywhere from 12 to 20 temporary and long-term jobs.

“We’re really excited about the news that we’re receiving that funding. It was a really competitive grant process,” Hillemeier said. “It’s going to be a great complement to the restoration program we have going on in the lower basin.”

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, and as defined under the provisions of "fair use", any copyrighted material herein is distributed without profit or payment for non-profit research and for educational use by our membership.