Meet the Western Rivers Conservancy, one of the best friends a trout ever had. The Portland-based private nonprofit land-conservation organization has set a goal of protecting just over 47,000 acres in the watershed of the trout-and-salmon-rich Klamath River. “So far, 37,767 acres have been purchased,” said Danny Palmerlee, communications director of the group. “We have 9,330 acres left to go.”
Much of the land is being bought from a timber company in the watershed of Blue Creek, which runs into the Klamath 16 miles upstream from where it joins the Pacific. The conservancy’s Blue Creek preservation effort also is being done in partnership with the Yurok Tribe, which will ultimately own all the property as part of the Yurok Tribe Community Forest and will manage it as a salmon sanctuary. Because it will be managed as a sanctuary, Blue Creek will be off-limits to the public, according to Palmerlee, who, along with half of the conservancy’s 16-member staff, is a fly fisher. He added that if appropriate, the conservancy wants to make its other properties open to the public for outdoor recreation, such as fly fishing.
Work to protect various parts of the Blue Creek and the lower Klamath watershed started a number of years ago. “The first phase of this effort was completed in 2011, when the conservancy and the Yurok created the Yurok Tribal Community Forest by acquiring 22,237 acres and placing the property into permanent stewardship with the tribe,” according to the conservancy’s progress report on the effort. “The tribe now manages the land for the sake of forest health, clean water, cultural rejuvenation and fish habitat.” “In December, 2013, we closed on the next phase, 8,489-acres that form the heart of our work on the Klamath, conserving Blue Creek itself,” the conservancy says. “Over half of this acquisition — 4,707 acres in all — lies within the Blue Creek watershed. The acquisition also conserves land along Bear Creek and Pecwan Creek, two smaller tributaries just upstream from Blue Creek. In March 2015, we acquired another 6,479 acres, adding extensive forest and river land to both the salmon sanctuary and the community forest.”
The Western Rivers Conservancy is the only conservation organization in the West whose sole purpose is to buy land to protect fisheries and enhance fishing waters. “If you [fly] fish, odds are you spend a lot of time on the river, thinking about the river, planning your next trip to the river, dreaming about the river,” says the fly-fishing section of the organization’s Web site. “You know the joy of casting to rising trout at sunset, of experiencing an afternoon hatch and the feeding frenzy that follows, or of hooking a steelhead at dawn while the rest of the world sleeps.
You also know the importance of clean, cold water, healthy habitat and public access. These are the values that motivate us at Western Rivers Conservancy as we work each and every day to save our most outstanding streams.”
It is projects like Blue Creek that drew University of California Davis professor Peter Moyle to serve on the conservancy’s board of directors and advocate for the long-term protection of the property. On the California Water Blog, Moyle has noted:
There’s a lot about lower Blue Creek worth protecting. It’s the largest tributary on the lower 40 miles of the Klamath River, and its watershed drains 127 square miles of coastal rainforest, where rainfall averages about 100 inches a year.
The upper watershed is already protected; it starts in the Siskiyou Wilderness at about 4,800 feet above sea level. Blue Creek maintains its salmon-friendly chill and clarity because it is so steep and so often fogged in. The creek will be somewhat buffered from global warming, assuming the fog continues.
The stream’s flows are typically 40 to 50 cubic feet per second (cfs) in early fall and rise as high as 48,000 cfs during big storms. Because of the relatively high flows, there is usually a large pool just below its mouth in the Klamath River. This serves as a cool-water refuge for salmon migrating upstream in early fall, when river temperatures are often stressful,” he added. “Blue Creek supports runs of coho salmon, winter steelhead (rainbow trout), coastal cutthroat trout, fall Chinook salmon and a unique late-fall run of Chinook. . . .
But Blue Creek is far from pristine. Much of the watershed has been logged at one time or another, so the forest is predominately second and third-growth redwood, fir and cedar. Logging roads lace the lower watershed.
The creek has cut down below its natural channel height in places, the result of past logging, road construction and grazing. Feral cattle graze the meadows and stream banks. Wild coho and Chinook are in decline largely because of these factors and production of hatchery fish, which stray and interbreed with wild fish.
Protecting the large swaths of land in the Klamath and Blue Creek watershed relies on the conservancy’s experience and a complex funding partnership with government agencies, foundations, individuals, and nonprofit groups such as the Flycasters Inc. of San Jose and a progressive timber company that owns the land. Indeed, the project would not be possible without the partnership of that company, the Green Diamond Resource Company, a fifth-generation family-owned business that is headquartered in Seattle and that sustainably logs only 2 percent of its lands annually in California, Oregon, and Washington.
Here is what Green Diamond says about itself: “Green Diamond Resource Company has taken care to protect and nurture such forests for over a century. We pride ourselves on our stewardship principles and our longstanding commitment to environmental excellence. Our commitment to sustainable forestry shows in our compliance with the rigorous forest practices rules for California, Oregon, and Washington, and in the Habitat Conservation Plans that cover our lands in California and Washington.”
The Western Rivers Conservancy was founded in 1988 and is one of a number of agile national and regional private nonprofit organizations that buy resource-rich lands in California that are often threatened by development or logging. Typically, these organizations purchase the land to prevent their development, then sell the parcels to local, regional, state, or federal agencies or a tribe for long-term protection as open space, parks, or recreational areas.
How does the conservancy pay for its work? It’s complicated. But that’s why the group has a team of finance experts and attorneys on staff. As example of the funding complexities, here is what the group’s Web site says about funding — something only a tax or investment expert would appreciate:
To create a salmon sanctuary of this scale, the conservancy is pioneering new approaches to conservation finance. Through the federal New Markets Tax Credits Program, designed to spur revitalization in low-income communities, the conservancy is now tapping a significant — and nontraditional — source of private funding. Combined with donor and foundation support, including generous funding from the Wyss Foundation and a grant and low-interest loan from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the conservancy was able to raise the needed funds to purchase these lands.
The conservancy will now pay off the loan from the Packard Foundation through the sale of carbon offsets and sustainable forestry practices that will rejuvenate old-growth habitat and improve the overall health of the Blue Creek watershed. To accomplish this, the conservancy created a supporting nonprofit, called Western Rivers Forestry (WRF), which will hold the land until it can be conveyed to the Yurok Tribe for permanent stewardship. From the outset, the tribe will manage the lands on behalf of WRF and in line with the conservancy’s conservation vision.
Who said land conservation is simple? In addition to Blue Creek area, the conservancy also is currently working on other river protection projects, including:
The Santa Margarita River. Work is underway to protect 1,348 acres along five miles of this river, located in the arid lands near San Diego. It is the southernmost stream in North America that sustains a population of steelhead trout. The river flows from its high-desert source, gathers water from creeks in the Santa Ana Mountains, and runs through Temecula Canyon and the Camp Pendleton Marine Base before entering the Pacific at Oceanside.
The Mojave River. Work is underway to protect 1,640 acres of desert landscape and fish and riparian habitat on this river, which flows 100 miles from the San Bernardino Mountains to its terminus at Soda Lake, near the town of Baker.
And the conservancy has already completed several projects in California:
Deer Creek. Deer Creek flows into the Sacramento River and provides habitat for endangered salmon and steelhead. In 2012, the conservancy purchased 600 acres along this creek and then conveyed them to the Northern California Regional Land Trust in Chico for long-term management.
The Eel River Estuary. In 2012, the conservancy purchased 440 acres of the Eel River estuary, which was transferred to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife for management.
Goose Creek. From 2005 to 2008, the conservancy bought from the Green Diamond Resource Company 9,500 acres of land that included 13 miles of Goose Creek in the Smith River area. This project, which was conducted in partnership with the Smith River Alliance and California Trout, became part of the Smith River National Recreation Area plus open space for Del Norte County.
The Redwood Creek Estuary. In 2009, the conservancy protected 77 acres of the Redwood Creek estuary habitat for chinook salmon and steelhead on California’s North Coast. The land was transferred to the North Coast Regional Land Trust in Arcata for management.
The South Fork of the Trinity River. In 2009, the conservancy protected 170 acres of watershed and half a mile of river access on the South Fork of the Trinity for spawning areas for fish. The property became part of the Shasta-Trinity National Forest.
More Information
For a complete list and profiles of all of the conservancy’s projects, including many in neighboring Oregon, see the group’s Web site at http://www.westernrivers.org/projectatlas. You can read Peter Moyle’s complete post on the California Water Blog at https://californiawaterblog.com/2014/03/06/yurok-stewardship-ofklamaths-blue-creek-bodes-well-for-fish. To find out more about the Northern California Regional Land Trust, go to http://landconservation.org/about-us, and for the North Coast Regional Land Trust, go to http://ncrlt.org. Information about the Green Diamond Resource Company can be found at https://greendiamond.com. See the limited-edition reel that Abel Fly Reels has created to support the work of the conservancy at http://www.westernrivers.org/fieldguide/flyfishing/abelflyreels.
