Elk River con't from page 13
Developing a Plan for Recovery
Despite these challenges, CalTrout recognizes that the Elk River has the potential to be a productive watershed. With sufficient investment, it could once again sustain robust salmon and steelhead populations. The Elk River has plenty of low-gradient tributary habitat for adult spawning, and its main stem has a 12-mile long, meandering section that could provide excellent summer and winter rearing habitat for juveniles. Water temperatures are moderated by the nearby marine environment and thus remain favorable year-round. And, its estuary could once again provide highly productive tidal marsh lands that offer excellent nursery habitat for young salmon and steelhead.
The initial technical feasibility project that emerged, the Elk River Recovery Assessment, was launched in 2014 and will result in a Recovery Framework, a comprehensive set of actions intended to hasten improvements in water quality and its “beneficial uses” – regulatory-speak for the public trust values that the watershed once provided. The program will initially carry out smaller-scale tests of various recovery actions such as dredging. This approach is aligned with CalTrout's strategy of using scientifically-based studies and data to inform how conservation efforts should proceed,
and then scaling up. This project also fits with CalTrout's investments in “working landscapes” where resources are being extracted but with the goal to maintain functional habitats for fish and wildlife. CalTrout's Central Valley "Nigiri" project, where rice farming and floodplain salmon rearing coexist, exemplifies this approach to land management.
The results of these pilot projects will inform the scientific basis for recovery efforts. In the next phase, to be launched in late 2018, CalTrout and its partners will form an Elk River Stewardship Program to seek consensus with Elk River residents, regulatory agency partners, and other stakeholders on the best approach to achieve recovery of the Elk River. How quickly this next phase proceeds depends on cooperation from the historically divided mix of stakeholders.
A Path Forward
After more than a century of logging and other human impacts to the Elk River watershed, time alone won’t be enough to bring back this severely impaired waterway. Strong regulations and significant restoration efforts will be necessary. But with multiple constituencies competing and advocating for different goals, it is exceedingly hard to gain any momentum on river restoration efforts. The actual work to restore the river already exhibits the characteristics of a "wicked problem": full of complex interdependencies where solutions often have unintended consequences that themselves become problematic.
From the point of view of the fish and the health of the ecosystem, the ideal course of action would involve a temporary moratorium on logging and road building in the headwaters of the Elk River; replanting hillsides and taking other steps to limit further erosion, some of which is ongoing; reducing sedimentation through dredging; and, taking steps to restore a healthy, functioning estuary. These actions would also benefit the residents who can no longer rely on the Elk River for their drinking water. However, the reality of the current political and economic situation makes this ideal scenario challenging. Progress will have to be made incrementally and painstakingly.
The Elk River is in a way a microcosm of California's competing economic and political interests. The owners of the timber companies have a bottom line and keep pushing for allowable harvest of trees in sensitive areas, which in turn provides jobs in the local community. The Regional Water Board has a mandate to protect water quality, but it meets with stiff resistance from timber companies and their employees if they try to impose a moratorium on logging. State fishery and forestry agencies have divided loyalties due to hard lobbying by the timber industry and other business interests.
Recovery will be slow at best. CalTrout is in the struggle for the long haul, and has the necessary experience in solving complex resource issues that require balancing the needs of fish and people. We have no illusions about the obstacles that must be overcome along the way, but it is a fight worth waging for the protection of this public trust resource.
Darren Mierau, CalTrout's North Coast Program Director, offers this perspective: “This is a very challenging program for CalTrout to manage and participate in, but we’re involved and leading this process, in part, because it has to be done and no one else will do it.”