~ By Sumalee ~
We have to start out with the pictures first, to get the heartbreak out of the way in order to write this story. Here are some before and after pictures of Lower Klamath Lake and Tule Lake, the heart and soul of the Pacific Flyway, once upon a time, for eons.
Tule Lake Channel, October 2019
Same Channel, January 1, 2023
Discovery Marsh, October 2019
Discovery Marsh, January 1, 2023
Path to Tule Lake Blind, January 2022
View from Tule Lake Blind, January 2022
For our New Year's holiday 2022-23, we decided to head back to our beloved Klamath, site of some of V.'s first quality bird photography. We were baby birders on our first trek to the Upper Klamath, Lower Klamath, and Tule Lake refuges and since then, our annual treks to Klamath have witnessed us develop as birders. In our first visit, our bird-naïve eyes would only see different kinds of ducks: these dabble, those dive. In subsequent visits, we identified among them: pintails, teals, gadwalls, canvasback, dowitchers, Canada or cackling goose, and of course, the trusty mallard.
During our winter 2021-22 trek, we were shocked and overwhelmed with disbelief by the complete disappearance of Tule Lake. A 30,000-acre expanse of cracked petrified mud with islands of dried tule lay before us in dead silence. We were haunted by the memory of vibrant blue water teeming with hundreds of thousands of birds, in particular, whole colonies of pelicans and enormous flocks of snow geese with their joyful noisy racket. However, that winter we at least had some reprieve in the Lower Klamath refuge, where canals and peripheral marshes still harbored many water birds as well as marsh wrens.
This year, winter 2022-23, we prepared ourselves for the worst as we headed down for New Year's. We had read an Audubon article that more or less rehearsed the scenario that we encountered the previous year, so we knew nothing had changed for the better. The devastating silence and the absence of migratory life not only from Tule Lake but from the Lower Klamath proved that only a heart that has already abandoned hope can prepare itself for such sights. We weren't prepared and were thus forced to go through the motions of a "happy" new year and endure the reverberations of stunned psychic refusal to believe for weeks after our return home.
S. combed the internet for any mention of the problem, which seems gargantuan given the role of the Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuge Complex for the Pacific flyway. To our surprise, a hunting organization, California Waterfowl, rendered the most concrete and detailed information on what we discovered is an exceedingly politicized and policy-captive issue. Other sources were mainly local television news pieces. As we found out after a belated response to calls and emails, California Audubon has recused itself altogether from any "direct" role.
To our dismay, policy and politics rather than the simple drought to which the issue is popularly and ignorantly ascribed are directly responsible for this ecological nightmare. In our desperation to feel as if we're "doing something," we'll touch on the key components of the predicament, which California Waterfowl summarized as "ongoing drought, water kept in-stream for endangered fish, increased pumping costs, and lack of senior water rights." The latter represents the primary cause of drought conditions at Tule Lake and Lower Klamath.
"Senior water rights" refers to the pecking order of federally-mandated rights-holders of water. The Bureau of Reclamation governs the "Klamath Project," which includes several bodies of water, including Tule Lake and Lower Klamath Lake. Reclamation decides (1) whether to release water from Upper Klamath Lake, (2) when to release water, (3) how much water to release, and (4) the apportionment of water to all interested parties within the Klamath Project. The high-priority or "senior" rights-holders to Klamath water are three species of fish that are included in the Endangered Species Act and as culturally sacred to specific Native American tribes. They are the primordial grantees of the water, so that even when the numbers of juvenile fish are not significantly decreased or if the federally-designated and protected spawning grounds are less frequented (even if others proximate are more frequented!), Reclamation has decided and continues to keep all water dammed up in Upper Klamath Lake and lock the gates. The second priority rights-holder to water are the farmers or in official parlance, "irrigators." Irrigators are organized and represented by water districts that preside over the delivery and distribution of water. Low-priority rights-holders are those who, if water exists in excess of the needs of senior water rights-holders, may receive water. The migratory birds, resident species, and wildlife have unwittingly become actors in this anthropocentric farce, and they are the lowest ranked.
The Reclamation also produces "biological opinions" which, like the Ten Commandments, are issued from on high as if by God and to be followed without question, challenge, or appeal. These biological opinions purport to rationalize natural forces such as rainfall, weather, and topography, the environment, and wildlife into quantifiable priorities according to scientific means but they are transparently political and economic. It is a bitter irony that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages the refuges, is a main developer and contributor to the very biological opinions that directly act against the interests and birds and wildlife. (In short, withhold water from the refuges, preserve all water for the fish in Upper Klamath, and put farmers in a position where they have no recourse except to drain the lakes and canals.) Appeals by various organizations to expand biological opinions so that the plight of the millions of migratory birds are acknowledged as worthy of ecological interest in the project have been declined by Reclamation, U.S. Fish & Wildlife, and NOAA agents. As of February 14, 2023, after S. began writing this piece, Reclamation announced even further restrictions despite acknowledging the historic rainfall and flooding in the Northern California and southern Oregon region.
It is strange to read news releases and public announcements regarding actions to be taken and their purported rationales after the fact of the destruction they wreaked. Of course, one feels embarrassed to see that the Emperor indeed has no clothes, but one feels even more disgraced at the bald-faced lies and bad faith that so many individuals and representatives of organizations propounded as charitable acts and life-saving measures for the birds, especially waterfowl dear to hunters. In a complex set of rationales and "scientific" lean-ins, one Tule Lake marsh (sump 1a) was drained to replenish another Tule Lake marsh (1b) but the water in 1a was "overestimated" (goodbye 1a). A temporary loan of water from a nearby reservoir was granted to marsh 1b since 1a was now bone-dry but the water earmarked for the birds never made it to the marsh: irrigators diverted the water for their farmlands with the blessing of so many organizations, government agencies, and private businesses. It is beyond doubt that video footage of individuals collecting tens of thousands of carcasses--limp lifeless birds with rotted eye sockets who were meant to fly with freedom and joy--has failed to shame those who claimed that "the goal of exposing wetland soil promote[s] the germination of perennial wetland vegetation like cattail and bulrush which large grebes use to build nesting platforms . . . with ancillary benefits to waterfowl and other waterbirds" and acted in bad faith, permitting the diversion of water even as they knew that the marsh would become a festering death-hole.
The filthy mud water in that video has been replaced by rock-hard dirt. There was no water this winter, and we wonder where the millions of birds went. Were they able to fly southward 300 more miles without rest or food to the next stopover in the Sacramento Valley? Because Birding Unfettered is essentially a love of labor and a project of hope, we will close with a tribute to the few lifeforms we saw remaining on the Lower Klamath. Beyond a channel we've driven alongside so many times, on the far side of trees that historically nest bald eagles and which, thankfully, still nest eagles as we saw on our drive, V. spotted what looked like a long, though shallow, pool of water. Our binoculars proved that the flickering in the sunlight was water and birds were on it. We looked and we counted. We salute these plucky individuals: 4 Canada geese, about 20 mallards, 4 pintails, 14 Green-winged Teals, and the sage that, like the wizard Gandalf the Grey, always accompanies his wards--the sole Great Blue Heron.
View from Tule Lake Blind, October 2019
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