Floodplain Farmlands Benefit Juvenile Western Native Fish

Think of all sorts of Pacific Salmon varieties including the endangered California Steelhead Trout species. But there's more. In the deserts southwest historically there were once large six foot long native fish once called the "White Salmon" (Colorado Pikeminnow) & the recovering Razorback Sucker. What do all these native fish have in common ? They desparately need meandering river floodplains

Image - Carson Jeffres

SierraClub.org - July 16, 2012

Back in the 1970s, I was intrigued by an article from the Arizona Highways magazine article which told about a Native golden Apache Trout which almost went extinct were it not for the efforts of Biologists working with the Apache Indian Reservation. But they also referenced other native fish, even mentioning that some 35 different species of native fish once occupied the desert aquatic environments of Arizona. That was almost hard to believe. Like California, Arizona has dammed up it's rivers and channeled much of their watercourses to faciliate agriculture and urban sprawl. Take the river channel in photo on the right which has large tall levees on both sides to prevent the ancient floodplain from reappearing and reclaiming it's former territory. This area of Northern California is known as the Yolo By-Pass region where the floodplain is allowed to prevail once a year. Here below is a video of a very long elevated freeway section of Interstate 80 which allows the floodwaters to do their former inundation of the former wetlands landscape.

Of course there have been times (like the recent 1016/17 winter rainy season) when wetter than normal rainfall events have caused the rivers near the delta region to burst these levees in numerous places and reclaim former territories which are now towns, cities and other farmlands. This ends up in the News and the Army Corps of Engineers are called back to the reign in the power of Nature, saddle break it and force it to do what mankind wants and needs it to do. Very little of human infrastructure actually works with Nature instead of against it. Unfortunately humans are learning (too late) the correct course to take, but sometimes things in many areas are just permanently lost. There's no going back. But maybe with a few exceptions.

Image - Yolo County Flood Control - 1993

Here's a prime example above of those horrific flooding events in California's Central Valley back in 1993. Traditionally, almost the entire valley flooded in one way or another. This only happens now after long periods of rainy years where many of the reservoirs overflow their spillways and rivers run again freely with nothing to really block their former historical flow. If the flow is intense enough and more rains come, then breaches in these levees like the one above are common. Take a look at an article about a research study from U.C. Davis where solutions to Salmon decline have been found in rasing them in former floodplains.

The Solution to Restoring the Native Fish populations is restoring the Floodplains

Photos by Jacob Katz

Image - Plos.org

Using Rice fields as floodplain Nurseries

“This study demonstrates that the farm fields that now occupy the floodplain can not only grow food for people during summer, but can also produce food resources and habitat for native fish like salmon in winter,” said lead author Jacob Katz of California Trout. “Our work suggests that California does not always need to choose between its farms or its fish. Both can prosper if these new practices are put into effect, mimicking natural patterns on managed lands. By reconnecting rivers to floodplainlike habitat in strategic places around the Central Valley, they have the potential to help recover endangered salmon and other imperiled fish populations to self-sustaining levels,” said Ted Sommer, lead scientist for the California Department of Water Resources and a co-author on the study. 

Using Rice Fields as Floodplains

Since 2012, a team of scientists has been examining how juvenile salmon use off-channel habitats, including off-season rice fields. The experiments provide evidence that rice fields managed as floodplains during winter can create “surrogate” wetland habitat for native fish.  The team suggests that shallowly flooded fields function in similar ways to natural floods that once spread across the floodplain, supplying extremely dense concentrations of zooplankton — an important food for juvenile salmon. Foraging on these abundant and nutritious invertebrates, the young salmon grow extremely quickly, improving their chances of surviving their migration to sea and returning in three to five years as the large, adult fish. Take note of the succees above of the fish size after being released within the rice field for a month. Representative juvenile Chinook salmon before (top) and after (middle) rearing for six weeks on the Knaggs Ranch experimental agricultural floodplain on Yolo Bypass. Bottom picture is of a tagged Knaggs fish incidentally recaptured in a rotary screw trap in the Yolo Bypass Toe Drain 13 miles downstream of the release site four weeks after the termination of the experiment. These small fish have no real chance of  survival in a large river channel. Too many predators in the deeper river and not enough food trsources for them as would be the case in large shallow bodies of water where the zooplankton and insects thrive in warmer shallow waters.

https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/study-floodplain-farm-fields-benefit-juvenile-salmon

Update (March 7th 2018)

Jacob Katz, with California Trout, says growing bugs in rice fields could be part of the solution for boosting salmon populations in rivers statewide. 😀

Image - Ezra David Romero/Capital Public Radio

NPR: "A 'Floating Fillet': Rice Farmers Grow Bugs To Replenish California's Salmon" 

Some other articles and references to this floodplain restoration concept to save Salmon and still allow commercial farming

https://californiawaterblog.com/2013/05/09/a-sweet-spot-for-farms-and-fish-on-a-floodplain/

PLOS.org: Floodplain farm fields provide novel rearing habitat for Chinook salmon

Studies show the rice-field fish are larger, healthier and more robust than those in the river at the same age

Image - Biographic 

So many of the native species of Colorado River basin native fish have disappeared for the very same reasons that have troubled the Salmon. Some are making a comeback and their story is not so dissilmilar to the Salmon rebound of California. The native fish above is the Razorback Sucker, but it itself is not the top predator. That would be the Colorado Pikeminnow (Ptychocheilus lucius) which ranged throughout the Colorado Drainage Basin as far south as the San Pedro River in southeastern Arizona into Mexico where old west historical accounts of six foot long fish were said to be common. In fact it could rival any large Salmon, even called at one time by the common name, White Salmon. But the deeper waters of the modern Colorado River which has been controlled by dams and channelization to keep it from flooding into former floodplains has hurt the reproduction efforts of many of the native fish which once dominated the river. Below is the story of the Razorback Sucker as seen in the picture above.

Image - Biographic

Image - Biographic

The fingerlings here have been captured by the researchers using a seigning net along the shallows where small fingerlings would be located. While you look at this bag of small fish on the right, only four were actually Razorback Suckers. The others were Bluehard Suckers and Flannelhead Suckers. Both native and that is good thing, but their main goal was the Razorbacks. Apparently these Scientists captured both adult Razorback Suckers and larvae in the canyon, but they didn’t find any juveniles or sub-adults. Just mature adults and larvae. These adults were living in Lake Mead and moving up the canyon to spawn. But again, beyond finding the Razorback larvae, there were no larger juveniles which indicated a problem. 

Image - Biographic

The only way to tell Razorback Sucker larvae (at the bottom) from more common cousins like Bluehead Suckers (top) and Flannelhead Suckers (middle) is through a microscope, using diagnostics like the density of back speckles and muscle fibers. So the other sucker species were doing okay, just not the razorbacks. The Glen Canyon Dam made the Colorado River simultaneously more stable, by eliminating massive spring floods, and more volatile, by instituting unnatural tide levels in the river. By tides we are basically talking about higher and lower water levels fluctuating regularly, something unnatural to this river canyon. In the Arizona morning, millions of people in Phoenix and other desert cities flick on their lights and air conditioners, then the dam managers crank up flows through Glen Canyon’s hydroelectrical turbines to meet power demand. But then at night they power back the turbines. These water level fluctuations in the river are called hydropeaking, because they cause the river to rise and fall by several feet each day. This messes with the aquatic ecosystem's biological food supply, especially for the tiny fish. More on that in a moment. 

Image - Biographic

At several days old, larval Razorback Suckers have developed little more than digestive tracts, leading some biologists to dub them, "squiggles with eyes." Doesn't such scientific intellect speak just make your spine tingle and hairs stand up on the back of your neck ? Whatever. What they found was that the Colorado River canyon was almost completely bereft of mayflies, stoneflies, and caddisflies, river-edge specialists whose eggs are most likely to be exposed and desiccated by this hydropeaking. Tiny blackflies, which lay eggs in open water, are relatively unfazed by tides, but they don’t compensate fish for the loss of the more nourishing prey. Scarce food, more than perhaps any other factor (like larger predator fish), is what's holding native fishes back from increasing within their native habitat.

During our second day on the river, we pulled over to run our seines along a cobble bar. Nothing. Healy knelt to inspect the lifeless rocks. “In every other river, that cobble would be covered with caddis and mayflies and all kinds of algae,” he said glumly. “Here you don’t see anything because these huge tidal fluctuations leave it dry half the time.”   

Even in the pre-dam era, Healy added, the Grand Canyon’s tight confines would have challenged larval razorbacks, which prefer to grow up in wide, shallow floodplains. What little habitat the canyon had once afforded, hydropeaking now erodes and dries out. “Razorbacks need warm, stable habitats full of food to get out of that larval stage,” Healy said. “They’re not getting that here.”

Biographic: In Search of Suckers

Photo: Michael Short, The Chronicle

Unfortunately other than giving honorable mention to floodplain shallows back prior to dam construction on the Colorado River and lack of shallows for pond insects and the zooplankton which would feed the little Razoeback Squiggles and other fish larvae, the Biographic article goes no further with it than that. Too bad because creating such artificial floodplain settings would probably go along way in making successful larval transition into larger juveniles and sub-adults. Like the farm/floodplain experiments which have proved quite successful in fattening up small Salmon fingerlings on zooplankton like that in the jar above right and later on aquatic insects who appear later. Below you can see the various forms of large aquatic insect life that help the California Salmon move up the food chain. The Grand Canyon Park Service quite often sings the praises with great enthusiasm about the canyon’s bizarre native fish, defending them against the complaints of the sport fish anglers who’d prefer to see the place given over to rainbow trout. And that's probably one of the biggest obstacles to recovery. The original intent of satisfying sport fishermen who were used to game fish from back east. Brian Healy, their lead fish biologist for Grand Canyon National Park, said this about the sport fisherman, “You always get that one guy who says, ‘Well, can you eat ‘em? No? Then what good are they?’” Such a typical response reveals ignorance of how an aquatic system actually works. If the average farmer has little understanding of how a natural ecosystem works in supplying plants with nutrients and in naturally maintaining checks and balances for keeping pests under control and trusts only what Industrial Ag Science tells him, then why should your average fisherman be any different ??? 😞

animated illustration - fcps.edu

And that is the other issue is humans having this need to see instant gratification in the way they view something's worth or value to them. In the Pacific Northwest and in California, it's much more easy to argue for conserving the Salmon, a fish that sustains the Native peoples and keeping the multi-million dollar commercial fisheries in profit. But here in the Southwest, it is considerably harder challenge to make the case for the humpback chub and razorback sucker, two species that support no industry, provide no tangible ecosystem services from the average person's perspective (which exposes their ignorance), and are effectively invisible to the overwhelming majority of park visitors. And yet this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. The California river systems and other native fish there like the Delta Smelt, while not being a sport fish, do provide a further food source for larger sub-adult Salmon. And yet the idea of saving and preserving the Delta Smelt habitat is something controversial because of large scale industrial agricultural business interests and industrial water aqueduct construction interests.

Image - Ben Kiefer/UDWR

Take special note here of a native Colorado River fish called the Colorado Pikeminnow. This one in the photo on the right was caught by Logan Johnson who is holding a Colorado Pikeminnow on the Middle Green River in Whirlpool Canyon which is a tributary river north of the Colorado River. From the historical accounts and oldest photographs in existence regarding this fish, the one Logan here is holding is a juvenile by comparison to old photographs of fishermen holding six foot long Pikeminnows from their head to the ground. Such sizes no longer exist, but this really illustrates how such a western fish could have been a large game fish which is supported by the smaller less desirable sucker species we've been discussing. Again, all of this aquatic life starts with small tributaries and floodplains. 

Image - Tom Teske & Google Earth

Image - Tom Teske

The  image above is Tom Teske's of El Centro novice attempt to show the lake level near the beach. The view is toward Fish Creek Mts. But I believe he's done a very good job of illustrating the expansive shallows of the ancient Lake Cahuilla shoreline. This area would have been a prime spawning habitat area of shallow floodplains along ancient Lake Cahuilla's western shore. Incredibly, the Cahuilla Indians constructed numerous shallow fish traps, for which several bones of native Colorado River fish were present possibly by the millions. These fish traps above right are up near the city of Indio/Thermal in the southern Coachella Valley. In both traps and camps sites where the Cahuilla peoples lived, many of these fish bones have been found. I have no doubt that the larger Colorado Pikeminnow (formerly Colorado Squawfish) were in present in Lake Cahuilla in the deeper portions of the ancient lake, but the Humpback Chub and Razorback Sucker were smaller and apparently spawning along the shoreline. Clearly the Cahuilla Indians would have easily observed this shallow spawning behaviour. I've also seen this Razorback spawning habit in the sandy shallow shorelines of Lake Havasu along the California and Arizona border. So have others. Who hasn't as a kid figured out how to trap fish with cobblestone river rocks in a small stream and tried to catch them in a bucket ? We use to devise simplistic contraptions like that. The natives would have also made some type of special reed basket fishtrap for scouping up their prey like the one below I referenced from the Oakland Museum. 

Image - Tome Teske

These traps above are some other unique fish traps on the western edge of ancient Lake Cahuilla further south in Imperial county and are radically different from those of the Indio fish traps further north. Certainly the stones are much different. Altogether they have discovered around 69 of these traps on the shallow flats. I've posted an example of a common native American fish trapping basket that may have been close to what the Cahuilla would have built and  used. Interestingly they have found the bones of native the Colorado River fish down here as well. Ninety-eight percent of the fish bones found at these archaeology sites are bonytail chub and razorback sucker which we discussed above. Both of these fish thrived in the warm, productive, plankton-rich environment of Lake Cahuilla. Remember, such shallows afforded these tiny delicate  babies an opportunity to fatten up and move upwards in the food chain where insects would have become part of their diet. The reeds and other tules would have offered protection from predators, though many would have become food sources for many other lifeforms like birds. Still once big enough, they would have moved out into deeper water only to become prey for the top predator, the Colorado Pikeminnow. Also something else to ponder, with open access from the outflow of lake Cahuilla south of Mexicali to the Sea of Cortez by means of an extremely expansive delta, who knows what else may have entered the lake from the sea at one time. Perhaps the endangered almost extinct Vaquita porpoise and other fish we know almost nothing about. Some fish do migrate from sea to fresh water and back again. There is so much we will never know. But floodplains play major roles if only people will utilize them again. Fortunately the present system as it stands now has no future. Only then will things heal to the point of recovery and improvement far better than they were before.

What was once the Colorado Delta Floodplain once was (1905) and what it is today (2017)

Image - National Fish and Wildlife Foundation

Important References

http://www.ivdesertmuseum.org/files/5214/2852/5354/Fish_Traps.pdf

http://willamettepartnership.org/7-reasons-why-you-should-care-about-floodplains/

http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/California-drought-Ray-of-hope-in-fish-vs-farms-5336353.php

How human dams destabilize river food webs & Beaver Dams stabilize them

Department of the Interior - Bureau of Reclamation


Glen Canyon Dam - Lake Powell Arizona

A few days ago there was an article about research work which has been done revealing the destructive nature of the historic Human Dam building projects over the past 20th Century. The large poster child for this subject of course was the Grand Canyon, so I found it worth a re-post in some of it's parts, plus other issues regarding fresh water problems for the Western USA. Humans tend to want to do everything on a Grand Industrial Scale. The claim is made be human leadership that, "Well, we're simply replicating what Nature does out in the wild". Well, not quite. Nature generally can be found to build systems on thousands of small scale systems and in turn collectively entire ecosystems benefit for free. Humans do things on Grandiose Scales under the guise of "We just want to serve our fellow man", but where only a handful of individuals actually profit, and generally in terms of monetary worth and financial gain. Out in Nature, when there is an imbalance and one species of whatever organism takes completely over, the entire system suffers and eventually collapses the whole. Maybe humans should pay more to Nature's often humble small scale collective systems which when working together instead of against, benefits the whole. Industrial Scale Dams, Industrial Agriculture, etc are killing this planet. Here's the article from the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies

Credit: Emma Rosi-Marshall

Humpback chub are a federally-protected endangered species

The research team investigated food webs in the Grand Canyon Reach of the Colorado River. Study sites were distributed along a 240-mile stretch downstream of Glen Canyon Dam, which was completed in 1963 for water delivery and hydroelectric power needs. During the three-year study, samples of over 3,600 animal diets and 4,200 invertebrate populations were collected and processed. Among the team's findings: following an experimental flood, sites near the dam had the most dramatic changes in the structure and function of their food webs.

Dams destabilize river food webs: Lessons from the Grand Canyon Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Drs. Wyatt Cross and Emma Rosi-Marshall
 seining for fishes in the Grand Canyon

(Millbrook, N.Y.) Managing fish in human-altered rivers is a challenge because their food webs are sensitive to environmental disturbance. So reports a new study in the journal Ecological Monographs, based on an exhaustive three-year analysis of the Colorado River in Glen and Grand Canyons.

Food webs are used to map feeding relationships. By describing the structure of these webs, scientists can predict how plants and animals living in an ecosystem will respond to change. Coauthor Dr. Emma Rosi-Marshall, an aquatic ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, comments, "Given the degraded state of the world's rivers, insight into food webs is essential to conserving endangered animals, improving water quality, and managing productive fisheries."

The project – which relied on a team of more than 10 researchers from the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, Montana State University, Idaho State University, University of Wyoming, U.S. Geological Survey, and Loyola University of Chicago – assessed six sites on the Colorado River, many so remote they required two-week boat trips through the canyon.

Lead author Dr. Wyatt Cross of Montana State University comments, "Glen Canyon Dam has transformed the ecology of the Colorado River. Immediately downstream, cold, low-sediment waters have favored exotic plants and animals that haven't co-evolved with native species. We now see reduced biodiversity and novel species interactions that have led to the instability of these river food webs."

My interruption here: 

Take a long look below at this peculiar looking fish which is actually a Colorado River native. This is a fish called the Humpback Chub which are a federally-protected endangered species. This is one of the fish whose skeletal remains have been found in and around the old Cahuilla Indian fish Traps along the ancient sea level line of Ancient Lake Cahuilla locted in the Coachella Valley. The ancient lake water was not like that of the present Salton Sea, but if not totally fresh, was at least brackish water where this and other Colorado Natives once thrived.

Near Glen Canyon Dam, the researchers found food webs dominated by invasive New Zealand mud snails and non-native rainbow trout, with large mismatches in the food web and only a small percentage of available invertebrates eaten by fish. In contrast, downstream food webs had more native fish species, and a less productive invertebrate fauna that was efficiently consumed by fish, including a federally-listed endangered species, the Humpback Chub.

In March of 2008, the Department of Interior conducted an experiment that simulated pre-dam flood conditions, providing an opportunity to see how high flows affected food webs with very different characteristics. Rosi-Marshall explains, "Food web stability increased with distance from Glen Canyon Dam, with downstream sites near tributaries proving the most resistant. At these locations, the flood didn't cause major changes in the structure of food webs or the productivity of species." 

It was a different picture for sites near the dam. As co-author Dr. Colden Baxter, an aquatic ecologist with Idaho State University, notes, "These energy inefficient, simplified food webs experienced a major restructuring following the experimental flood." New Zealand mudsnails were drastically reduced. And changes in algal communities led to a rise in midges and blackflies – favored foods of trout – resulting in a near tripling of non-native rainbow trout numbers.

Rainbow trout, introduced below Glen Canyon Dam in the 1960s, support a valued recreational fishery. But when trout density increases upstream, and fish move downstream into Grand Canyon, they can compete with native fishes for limited food resources, sometimes preying upon juveniles.

Image: Bob D. burdick

Biological Technician, Rick Smaniotto holds a 17 pound female Colorado Pikeminnow (formerly known as Colorado Squawfish). The Colorado Pikeminnow was once found throughout the Colorado drainage basin, in which it occurred in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico,Utah, and Wyoming, as well as in Mexico. Damming and habitat alterations have confined this fish to the upper Colorado drainage; currently, remnant populations are known from the Green River, Gunnison River, White River, San Juan River, and Yampa River. There are  historical account records for catch size of these fish as being up to 6 ft (1.8 m) long and weighing over 100 pounds (45 kg). Arizona Historian Marshall Trimble referred to this reference in his description of their once historical presence in the San Pedro River in southern Arizona. More on this later. The Colorado pikeminnow was in the early days called "white salmon" and "Colorado salmon" by ealy settlers and also valued as a food and sport fish by both Indians and early pioneers.

Back to the Article on Grand Canyon Dams

"Understanding how and why high flows affect trout numbers is valuable information that decision makers can use to help manage and protect river resources," remarks Dr. Theodore Kennedy, project coordinator and a coauthor of the study with the U.S. Geological Survey's Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center.

Dr. Robert Hall, an ecologist at the University of Wyoming, notes, "While downstream food webs proved to be more stable in our study, they are clearly a shadow of pre-dam conditions. Four large native fishes have already been lost from the Grand Canyon reach of the Colorado River. And invertebrates that were once an important part of the food web, such as mayflies and net-spinning caddisflies, are conspicuously absent. "

Today, many ecosystems are like the Colorado River: an amalgam of native and non-native species living in human-altered habitat. The study's authors demonstrated that large-scale modifications, like dams, can have far-reaching effects on how energy flows through food webs, altering their stability and leading to less resilient ecosystems.

(Source)

With all that in mind, there are of course the original dam building  engineers long before mankind was ever appeared on the Earth. Beavers! They have had the past misfortune of being trapped out for their fur and the consequences were soon felt as a result of their absence from Nature. Even with their re-introductions in many areas, there has still been some controversy as to presence and benefits coming from Cattle Ranchers. I actually believe cattle ranchers don't like any other animal than cattle. Prairie Dogs, Wolves, Coyotes, competing Bison, *cough-cough* - Sheep, etc. Did I miss any ? But seriously, why Beavers ? In a recent article from oregonlive.com

(RICHARD COCKLE/THE OREGONIAN)

John Day ex-logger and ex-rancher, Loren Stout, inspects a beaver dam along Deer Creek in Grant County. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife opened up at least one beaver dam along this busy tributary of the John Day River System last spring to enable migrating steelhead to pass. Biologists say beaver dams benefit fish, but low water made it impossible for steelhead to get past some dams. Stout claims he freed two 29-inch steelhead that became caught in a dam.

The controversy here with the Cattlemen mostly was about the effects beaver were having on their Salmon run population in streams running through their land. Never mind that the beaver in reality benefit the landscape with better grazing forage extending a large distance from the creek to nourish the grasses and other plants cattle eat. In their total ignorance, they just didn't like what they thought the beaver were doing to their Salmon. Back in the middle 1990s, I had a conversation with the Garner Valley Ranch Forman, Robert Houdeshell, who was from up north around the eastern Washington State area and now in Idaho if I remember properly, about studies being done on the benficial effects of beaver being reintroduced into Ranchlands. I don't remember the exact publication he showed me now, but the gist of it mentioned the benefits of a beaver dam's ability of slowing water way down and backing the water way up and spreading over a greater landscape behind it. It explained how the beaver's dung along with that of  visiting waterfowl like Ducks and Geese have the effect of sealing the beaver pond's bottom, where instead of allowing the water to percolate deep down into the soil and under the dam headed only to make it's way down stream anyway, it actually forces the water to saturate the landscape in a sideways horizontal movement which benefits large riparian woodlands and meadows many many meters away from the main body of water course where cattle and other wildlife graze. The website,   did their own critique of the article here: http://www.martinezbeavers.org , and you may click on that link and read. But I'll do my own take on the Cattlemen's talking points against the beaver and what I know of Trout survival in some San Jacinto Mountain locations which would seem impossible to the experts. First some of the talking points in The Oregonian article:

"We got reports from two or three members of the public that there were Steelhead stacked up below this beaver dam," explained ODFW biologist Jeff Neal of John Day. He blamed a disappointing winter snowpack and undersized springtime flows for making it impossible for threatened Steelhead Trout to get past the dam. The spring dam removal highlighted the complex and sometimes controversial role that beavers play in the lives of fish.

So the argument is, the beaver dams create barriers for migrating Steelheads especially during low flows. But some logical conclusions and observations made by the Biologists, are something anyone with any sense of education would understand about the ability of Steelhead to survive, migrate or whatever they choose to do. 

Biologist Chris Jordan of the National Marine Fisheries Service, says a beaver dam like the one Stout pointed out on Deer Creek might pose problems for fish in late summer's low water. But steelhead aren't migrating on these streams in August.  "Steelhead are amazing jumpers," says Jordan, who believes beaver and their dams improve aquatic habitat for fish.  Migrating fish usually "can get around them or through them or over them," says Jimmy Taylor,a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Wildlife Research Center at Oregon State University.

Those are all logical conclusions and things most people also understand. They are amazing jumpers, they don't migrate in August, etc. Would a small beaver dam be an issue to such fish that are known for scaling waterfalls and swifter rapids ? But the other question is, were these dam removals actually necessary as insisted upon by the cattlemen ? Take a look at some of the excuses given for Steelhead Trout being bottled up behind a Beaver's Dam. 

But ranchers like Stout and Stangle argue that summertime water in the pools behind dams turns warm under the sun's heat, which they say can't be good for Steelhead.  "The holy grail of the Steelhead is the temperature of the water," said Stangel, adding that, "beaver aggravate that problem by gnawing down trees, alder and underbrush that otherwise would provide cooling shade."

Foster Lake Idyllwild Calfornia Postcard

Here is what I know about Trout survival up in the San Jacinto Mountains. I'm talking about both Rainbow and German Brown Trout [which locals called the native, but not so, the name is probably a give away] which in many areas have naturalized. Just north of Idyllwild & before you come to Pine Cove on Hwy 243, there is a turn off to the Idyllwild Water District's water holding reservoir called Foster Lake which in the past was used by the public for picknicking, fishing and other recreational activities. Today, I believe it's closed.

Foster Lake photo above during the 2007 drought

Foster Lake August 1, 2013

In the early days of my living there, there was always plenty of water filled to the brim and often flowing over the spillway. The White Water Trout Hatchery regularly came up and release hatchery Trout at Lake Foster and other surrounding well hydrated watering holes for tourist fishing. During the entire time I was living there and right through the 1980s to 90s, there was always water, but not always enough to spill over the Dam's spillway down into what is called Lilly Creek. This creek flows down into Idyllwild Park where many may have visited the Nature Center there. This Park is rich in beautiful plant life as a result of traditionally being well hydrated from the Lilly Creek drainage up above. Now while that stream hasn't always flowed, it does have a few small deep pools which are well hidden to most people. It was at this creek location below the spillway at Foster Lake where we had friends purchase property and build a home on Foster Lake Rd above Hwy 243. One day another elderly friend came to visit this house and took my friend's son down to that creek which did have some flow to it, but not much. There were about 4 or 5 of these small but deep pools in boulders which always retained water. Now, this tiny Creek was never ever stocked with Trout. But we found trout there and each pool had a single trout which were huge, indicating that even if they had been hatchery trout released at Foster Lake, they had lived there for some years. No hatchery Trout are ever release at this size. They no doubt were trapped in these pools after being washed down the spillway at higher than normal flows during that El Nino period '78-83'. The point here is, they thrived and so would Steelhead behind a Beaver Dam thrive for a few months waiting for heavy flows.

California @ AARoads

San Jacinto Main River Canyon

Another example are the German Brown Trout living in the high country of Mount Jacinto State Park at high elevation. Not only me, but also Steve Raybould of the U.S. forest Service has seen these trout survive the end of the summer dry period where man streams had shrank down to no more than a long slender mud hole with warm cloudy water and the trout were still thriving. Another example is the always steady dependable deep pools in South fork Canyon of the San Jacinto River and up Strawberry Creek between north of Hwy 74 & Idyllwild's Grotto region. Deep pools which are spring or cieniga fed are always dependable water holes utilized by the naturalized trout as weigh stations until the winter and spring floods come through each season and as far as I know it has always been that way. I use to going down to the main boulder strewn canyon of the main channel of the San Jacinto River and German Browns could always be caught if you knew where to look in otherwise dry river rock cobblestone. Again, the point is, these trout survived much tougher conditions in a hot and often drier climate and geography, than some low flowing creek and Beaver Dam as the one referenced up in the State of Oregon. Now let's focus back on the Colorado River drainage and other tributaries which one had countless Beaver Dams.

US Bureau of Reclamation

There is actually an older article from 1994 in the Tucson Citizen which highlights beaver reintroduction planning as part of the San Pedro River Restoration project which in many many ways has been a success. The Sonoran Beavers who built the Dams along the  still in existence water courses through the arid Arizona southwest historically kept water within the riparian system which allowed even the large Colorado Pikeminnow (Squawfish) to be able to exist and be reported on by early settlers. This fish for the moment I don't believe is there, but no doubt be reintroduced. This is the river Marshall Trimble referenced as having large Colorado Squawfish which were between 3 and 5 foot long. Some parts of this once meandering back and forth river valley were channeled to allow settlement and farming on both side of the river. With the reintroduction of the native Sonoran Beaver once again creating a mosaic of river dams and backwater lakes, this river could once again create it's much more slowed down meandering back and forth structure which is what makes for prime wildlife habitat. Here are some pertinent quotes from that Tucson newspaper on the areas history of wildlife habitat of the San Pedro River Preserve:

Damaged San Pedro River healing again (1994)

"After the beavers are established, state and federal wildlife experts and public fans of this area hope larger birds of prey, native fish and maybe someday, just maybe, wolves will live here again."

SIDEBAR: Beaver return called benefit to river system 

 The “keystone’ species to the San Pedro River’s future is the beaver, says Arizona Game and Fish wildlife biologist Rick Gerhart.   

Beavers once thrived along the river, but were trapped out in the mid- and late 1800s during the country’s obsession with making hats and coats out of the giant rodent’s pelt. 

 By building dams, beaver slow the flow of the river, allowing what water there is in the desert to spread out, sink in and form habitat for other animals and plants. 

 “It modifies the habitat to benefit other species,’ says Gerhart. “(Beaver) dams allow much wider perimeter of the stream. It spreads the wetted area, three to five times wider and wetter. Water seeps out gradually during dry periods. Perennial stream flow had been found to return when there are beaver.’ 

 So wildlife experts are preparing to give Mother Nature another nudge. 

 Gerhart said, "beavers also create pools behind their dams that are perfect for some of Arizona’s threatened and endangered fish." 

If all goes as planned, maybe as soon as next year, a few beaver – North America’s largest rodent (up to 4 feet long and 60 pounds) – will be reintroduced into the San Pedro."

Here is a 2012 Update on the Beavers along the San Pedro River
Reintroduced beavers branching out in San Pedro

Here's a great video of the reintroduction to the of the Sonoran Beavers to the San Pedro River system (2009):
Reintroduction of the Beaver to the San Pedro River of Southeastern Arizona

Here is a great video on the Oregon Beaver Reintroduction Programs:  Oregon Field Guide: "Beaver Assisted Restoration"

Lake Skinner, Riverside County California

Future post on Lake Skinner and the Temecula Beavers

Further Reading references:

Bureau of Reclamation Forecasts Lower Water Release from Lake Powell to Lake Mead for 2014

(Very Kool Link) "Colorado River Map Zoomifier" Endangered fish program working to right wrongs of the past Grant County, Oregon: "Beavers, fish and cows: Beavers, Salmon and Cattle: Restless co-existence"

http://www.martinezbeavers.org - "Worth A Dam"