A report issued by a
California fisheries agency in January contains
fatal flaws in its conclusion that low instream
flows in the lower Klamath River led to the
deaths of more than 33,000 salmon last fall, a
fisheries biologist said Monday.
David Vogel said the flaws
contained in the report are of such a degree as
to call into question the motives of the agency
involved, California’s Department of Fish and
Game. Vogel added the errors were substantial
enough to dismiss the report in its entirety.
"It is clearly a
conclusion-driven document," Vogel said of the
63-page report issued by Fish and Game. "Fish
and Game was determined to show that low
instream flows killed those fish, and they went
out and proved it."
Vogel, who spent 14 years
working for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife, said
there were numerous errors contained in the
report. Particularly egregious was Fish and
Game’s misreading — and misreporting — of a
river temperature gauge located in the vicinity
of the fish die-off at river mile six, called
the Terwer Gauge.
Fish and Game erroneously
charted river temperatures from the Terwer Gauge
four days before they actually occurred, Vogel
said. The mistake resulted in peak high
temperatures of the river being shown occurring
on Sept. 16, two days before fish began dying.
According to the true reading
of the Terwer Gauge, Vogel said, the peak high
temperature occurred Sept. 20, the day after
reports of salmon dying reached Fish and Game’s
office in Eureka.
"If you plot the temperatures
correctly, you see that the timing of the fish
die off coincides with the peak temperatures,"
Vogel said. "The report doesn’t say that."
In fact, Fish and Game’s
report says the opposite.
"Therefore, water
temperatures in and of themselves, were not the
factor causing the 2002 fish kill," the report
states.
Mark Stopher, a habitat
conservation program manager for Fish and Game
and the designated point man for the agency’s
report, said he did not know how the Terwer
gauge came to be misreported.
After noting that the title
of the report contained the word "preliminary,"
Stopher was asked how the mistake happened.
"I don’t know the answer to
that," Stopher said. "If we did do that it’s
another reason to wait for a final report."
Vogel appeared to be stymied
by Stopher’s response.
"Fish and Game still has that
report on the front page of their website, and
they immediately handed out copies to the
media," Vogel said Monday. "The way Fish and
Game did it was so conclusionary, it suggested a
certain finality to it."
A lesser point, but one worth
considering, Vogel said, was Fish and Game’s use
of the phrase "fish kill" in the report.
In an earlier incident in the
summer of 2002 more than 3,000 spring run
Chinook salmon died in Butte Creek, a tributary
of the Sacramento River.
Although spring run Chinook
are listed as a threatened species, Fish and
Game cited the cause of the salmon demise as
"natural conditions," Vogel said, and reported
the incident as a fish "die off."
The report on the Klamath
incident was immediately called a "fish kill,"
and less than 20 of the more than 30,000 dead
fish were the threatened Coho salmon.
Most of the dead fish were
fall run Chinook salmon that were destined for
the Trinity River, a major tributary that joins
the Klamath River 40 miles from its mouth,
approximately 24 miles upstream of the fish die
off.
Historically, the Trinity
River contributed 25 percent of the Klamath
River, and is much colder water than that coming
from the shallow lakes and marshes of the upper
Klamath Basin, yet the Fish and Game report does
not even mention the lack of Trinity River
water.
"It’s not clear to us that
Trinity water would have helped," Stopher said.
Further, Vogel said, Fish and
Game relied on average monthly air temperatures
to conclude it their report that "...no evidence
that unusually high temperatures in 2002 were a
factor in the fish kill."
"Monthly averages would be
appropriate if you were looking at a
corresponding model," Vogel said. "When you are
investigating a specific incident, like a fish
die off, you would examine very discreet data.
If you were looking at a model, say, of a
1,000-year period, maybe then monthly averages
would be appropriate."
Stopher said Fish and Game
now has access to data "we didn’t have before,"
and wished aloud that a working relationship
could be developed with Vogel.
"If Mr. Vogel produces a
technical report, the sooner the better from my
perspective," Stopher said. "We haven’t done a
good job at developing a dialogue."
Stopher’s response gave Vogel
hope, the biologist said.
