Special water delivery saves 50,000 ducklings.
TULELAKE, Siskiyou County — More than 50,000 ducklings and other newborn waterfowl and shorebirds were saved from certain deaths this week after an emergency delivery of water to the Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuge, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
“A week ago, we were worried the birds wouldn’t make it,” said John Vradenburg, supervisory biologist for the refuge.
The water will keep large areas of the refuge from drying up, he said. Baby ducks cannot fly for the first 50 days of their life, so they must have water where they are hatched in order to survive.
In a drought year for the Klamath Basin that has imperiled farmers, salmon and waterfowl, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt visited the region two weeks ago to meet with farmers in a nationally publicized visit. What is lesser known is that he also met privately with leadership of the California Waterfowl Association, who asked Bernhardt to deliver water to the refuge to help birds and wildlife survive, including waterfowl, bald eagles and white pelicans.
Water had been receding so fast that in one area of the refuge this week at Lower Klamath, flocks of Canada geese were sitting on what looked like a meadow girdled with sand. During Bernhardt’s visit just a week before, the same “meadow” was a wetland covered with an inch of water that provided habitat for waterfowl and shorebirds.
“The Klamath refuge is the heartbeat of the Pacific Flyway,” said Rob Plath, a director with California Waterfowl. He said CWA would team with the Nature Conservancy and Audubon Society in a new push with farmers, irrigators, Native American tribes and the Department of the Interior to develop a new longterm water solution for the refuge.
The Klamath Basin straddles the CaliforniaOregon border, where at the turn of century, there were 350,000 acres of wetlands in the basin, plus 150,000 seasonal wetlands associated with riparian corridors, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. After dams, water diversions and canals were built, only 13,000 acres of permanent wetland habitats remain.
In the process, waterfowl populations at peak have plummeted from more than 10 million to sub 500,000, Vradenburg said. Some 95% of the birds on the Pacific Flyway have historically funneled through the refuge, he said.
The wildlife refuge here is the last in line for water, behind the endangered sucker fish of Klamath Lake, farming and river flows for salmon, according to USFWS.
“I spend most of my time fighting for water,” said refuge manager Greg Austin. “My whole thing is, ‘What can we do so this never happens again?’ ”
Over the course of a year, the wildlife refuge complex provides homes for roughly 700 species of birds, 220 species of mammals, 250 species of reptiles and amphibians, and 200 species of fish, according to studies by the USFWS.
As water receded at the refuge last week, word came Thursday that an infusion of water from the Klamath River would arrive. The headworks wheel was turned, the gates opened, and what looked like a relatively small amount of fresh water — 30 cubic feet per second from the Klamath River — poured through a pipe and into the refuge.
“We need water and right now it’s coming,” Vradenburg said. “This is the best hatch (of ducklings) we’ve had in five years. I’ve seen a lot of dry and we need water to get the ducklings to the fledging period.”
Along the CaliforniaOregon border, Highway 161 parallels the state line and provides access on a series of dirt roads to the south where the public can drive in, explore and see the birds in the waterways of the Lower Klamath. Binoculars, spotting scopes and a camera with long lenses are essential, plus slow, quiet approaches.
At one stop, on a levee road along the edge of a tulelined slough, a surprise barn owl launched out of an adjacent tree and rocketed overhead amid the roar of wing beats. In the next few hours, thousands of baby ducks of many species, plus Canada geese, white pelicans, ibis, egrets, coots and grebes, and many songbirds, were sighted, often in as little as a halfinch of water.
With the inflow this week, the refuge is no longer drying up, Austin said. “It has stabilized.”
“How long these wetlands persist is really an unknown,” Vradenburg said. “A little bit of water certainty could go a long ways how we can manage for the longterm.”