Although rain and snow were bountiful this spring, state biologists are asking ranchers and farmers near the Scott and Shasta rivers to voluntarily cut back their irrigation water use to protect threatened coho salmon.
The move is the latest in a dispute over fish habitat that has put the Department of Fish and Game in the middle of a battle between farmers and ranchers and environmental groups, Indian tribes and angling groups.
As such, a meeting that Fish and Game organized in Fort Jones to discuss the request may get a bit heated Tuesday night, said Sari Sommarstrom, the executive director of the Scott River Water Trust, a group that leases surface water from ranchers in Scott Valley to protect salmon habitat.
“I don’t know how politely they’ll be voicing them,” Sommarstrom said of the ranchers’ concerns.
She said the ranchers are frustrated because a wet storm season soaked the area, yet they’re being asked to cut back on their water use. She said 927 adult coho also returned to the Scott River last winter, well within the river’s historical averages.
Sommarstrom’s concerns were echoed Friday by Mark Spannagel, a spokesman for Sen. Doug LaMalfa, R-Richvale, who’ll be sending a field representative to the meeting.
“It’s a record water year. There’s still plenty of places that still have snow melting,” Spannagel said Friday. “Where do you need this water and why? … We hope they have answers.”
DFG spokeswoman Dana Michaels said the biologists have determined that the fish remain threatened, even after the rainy winter and spring. She noted that this summer biologists netted some 2,800 juvenile Scott River coho in two nearby tributaries so they could be moved to cooler water.
“Even in normal water years, some key locations in the Shasta and Scott watersheds get dry and shallow enough where it gets too warm and causes a problem for the coho,” she said.
Coho salmon in the Shasta and Scott River watersheds are listed as a “threatened” species under federal and state endangered species acts. DFG biologists have been monitoring their populations in the Shasta and Scott rivers since 2001.
They’ve seen precipitous declines in their numbers, they say.
Ranchers pulling water from low creeks to irrigate fields have contributed to the decline, the biologists say. Coho must stay in freshwater for 18 months before entering the ocean to grow and mature. Young coho salmon need cold, well-oxygenated water to survive as well.
The farmers counter that they’ve been irrigating the same way for decades, yet fish have come back even after dry years.
DFG officials say they believe more young fish will need to be moved in other tributaries of the Scott and Shasta rivers unless additional water is made available. That means asking the farmers to cut back.
Fish and Game’s request comes amid a series of court battles over agricultural water use in the two watersheds.
The Siskiyou County Farm Bureau has sued the department, challenging a system that requires farmers to get permits to use creek water to irrigate.
Last month, a Siskiyou Court commissioner ruled that the Karuk Tribe, Klamath Riverkeeper, Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations and Institute for Fisheries Resources couldn’t be included in the case.
Meanwhile, a San Francisco Superior Court Judge Ernest H. Goldsmith ordered the DFG to more tightly regulate water in the Scott and Shasta valleys after the DFG was sued by the same environmental and angling groups and Indian tribes.
The DFG has appealed that ruling.
What: The California Department of Fish and Game will host a meeting to ask ranchers to cut back irrigation to protect coho salmon in the Shasta and Scott valleys.By Ryan Sabalow
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