Klamath River Institute: Dispatches from the Road, Part 2

As the Klamath cohort continues their journey toward the coast, they’ve met with a wide variety of stakeholders who have been generous enough to share their time and thoughts.

On Monday, Fellows met at the confluence of the Williamson River and Spring Creek, where they were welcomed to the ancestral lands of the Klamath, Modoc and Yahooskin people by former Klamath Tribes chairman Don Gentry. They heard about conservation efforts in the headwaters to improve water quality, shared a lunch at goos oLgi gama - the Klamath Tribes’ cultural center - and then met with representatives from the tribe, the Klamath Drainage District, the Klamath Watershed Alliance, a local rancher and USFWS about wetland restoration efforts at Lakeside Farms, owned by Karl Wenner, who took the group to a newly restored wetland that, 18 months ago, was a barley field. The field “just wanted to be a wetland and it happened quick” once they put water on it, he said.

On Wednesday the group spent the morning with folks from the Mid Klamath Watershed Council who are working on a project led by the Karuk Tribe to create off-channel ponds on Klamath tributaries for juvenile coho salmon to use to overwinter (an important part of their early life cycle). The journalists saw one pond in the process of being built, and Fellows suited up in dry suits to see the results of a finished one - and even saw some young coho salmon using it as intended! Then we met with Bill Tripp, director of Natural resources and environmental policy for the Karuk Tribe and some members of local fire crews to talk about restoring intentional and cultural fire to  the landscape as plumes from current fires drifted overhead.