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Monday • May 24, 2021
Dead in the water: Serious fish kill
consumes the Klamath River
By aLEX SCHWaRTZ
Herald & News (Klamath Falls)/Report for America
WEITCHPEC, Calif. — As it enters
the Yurok Reservation, the Lower Klam-
ath River is as picturesque as it gets. Clear
water rushes over gentle rapids, framed
by verdant hills and a cerulean sky. An
untrained eye would never notice the
devastation beneath the surface — save
for the tiny fish floating lifeless in the wa-
ter.
Over the past several weeks, an outbreak
of the parasite Ceratonova shasta has
ripped through young salmon through-
out the lower reaches of the Klamath wa-
tershed. Driven by high temperatures and
low flows out of Iron Gate Dam, the dis-
ease is resulting in what the Yurok Tribe is
calling a “catastrophic” fish kill.
Last week, nearly every single juvenile
salmon trapped by researchers and fisher-
ies staff was infected with C. shasta, and a
majority of them were dead.
“This feels like failure,” said Yurok Vice
Chairman Frankie Myers. “It feels like
some real, deep failure.”
The alarm began sounding around
the beginning of April, when spore con-
centrations of C. shasta measured at six
monitoring sites along the river between
Iron Gate Dam and Tully Creek, in the
heart of the Yurok Reservation, began
to climb. The number of spores per liter
of water (considered concerning once it
reaches between five and 10) went above
70 at the Beaver Creek site, in the heart of
the infectious zone downstream of Iron
Gate Dam.
See Fish / A11
Alex Schwartz/Herald & News
The yurok Tribe is enduring what it calls a “catastrophic” die-off of ju-
venile salmon on the Klamath River. Unlike other fish kills, this one is
occurring throughout the lower watershed, not just in the hotspot for
fish parasite C. shasta downstream of Iron Gate dam.
NEIGHBORHOOD JOYRIDE
Photo by Ryan BREnnECKE • The Bulletin
With a snack in her hand, 16-month-old Georgia Freeman sits back and takes in the sights as her father, Chad Freeman, uses a remote control to
drive her battery-operated car through a grassy area while exploring their Bend neighborhood Saturday. The pair took advantage of a lull in the
rain showers to get some fresh air. Rain and a chance of thunderstorms are forecast through Monday with a high of 65 degrees.
Forestry board moves quickly to find a state forester
— and prove its own effectiveness to lawmakers
800,000+
The number of acres of state forestlands
that are managed by the Oregon
Department of Forestry
TODAY’S
WEATHER
The state Board of Forestry met
Thursday to discuss hiring both an
interim and permanent leader for the
troubled Oregon Department of For-
estry, even as legislators discuss taking
that authority away from the board
because of its ineffective oversight of
the agency.
State Forester Peter Daugherty
submitted his resignation two weeks
earlier, after years of financial and
management problems at the forestry
Mostly cloudy
High 65, Low 41
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department, tensions on the board,
and deep frustration at the Legislature
and the governor’s office over their in-
ability to force changes.
Sens. Kathleen Taylor, D-Portland;
Jeff Golden, D-Ashland; and Betsy
Johnson, D-Scappoose, have intro-
duced a bill that would strip the au-
thority to hire and fire the state for-
ester from the seven-person volunteer
board and give it to the governor’s
office, subject to Senate confirmation.
Senate Bill 868 would also give the
state forester the authority to appoint
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a deputy and assistant state foresters
subject to the board’s approval.
Forestry policy is some of the most
controversial in Oregon, and whom-
ever is hired as interim and perma-
nent leader of the agency will have a
full plate. The agency has faced con-
sistent cash flow problems since at
least 2015 due to its mushrooming
wildfire costs and inability to quickly
invoice and collect hundreds of mil-
lions of dollars in receivables, mostly
from federal agencies.
The agency’s management of more
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than 800,000 acres in state forestland
has also been the subject of consistent
controversy, with an ongoing tug of
war over harvest levels and conserva-
tion commitments. A slow-moving,
and in the eyes of critics, ineffectual re-
vision of the agency’s state forest man-
agement plan has laid those conflicts
bare, as did a Linn County jury’s award
of $1 billion to rural counties’ that re-
ceive harvest revenues from state for-
ests because the agency failed to maxi-
mize timber harvests since 2001.
See Forestry / A3
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