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The Guardian
3 days ago
- General
- The Guardian
The river that came back to life: a journey down the reborn Klamath
Bill Cross pulled his truck to the side of a dusty mountain road and jumped out to scan a stretch of rapids rippling through the hillsides below. As an expert and a guide, Cross had spent more than 40 years boating the Klamath River, etching its turns, drops and eddies into his memory. But this run was brand new. On a warm day in mid-May, he would be one of the very first to raft it with high spring flows. Last year, the final of four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River were removed in the largest project of its kind in US history. Forged through the footprint of reservoirs that kept parts of the Klamath submerged for more than a century, the river that straddles the California-Oregon border has since been reborn. The dam removal marked the end of a decades-long campaign led by the Yurok, Karuk and Klamath tribes, along with a wide range of environmental NGOs and fishing advocacy groups, to convince owner PacifiCorp to let go of the ageing infrastructure. The immense undertaking also required buy-in from regulatory agencies, state and local governments, businesses and the communities that used to live along the shores of the bygone lakes. As the flows were released and the river found its way back to itself, a new chapter of recovery – complete with new challenges – emerged. Among the questions still being answered: how best to facilitate recreation and public connection with the Klamath while recovery continues. There are hopes for hiking trails, campgrounds and picnic spots. A wide range of stakeholders are still busy ironing out the specifics and how best to define the lines between private and public spaces. It's a delicate process. Not just the ecology is being restored; the Indigenous people whose ancestors relied on the river for both sustenance and ritual across thousands of years are also renewing their relationships with the land. More than 2,800 acres, some of which emerged from under the drained reservoirs after the dams came down, will be returned to Shasta Indian Nation, a tribe that was decimated when construction on the dams started in the early 1910s. Ready to be stewards, they are also now navigating their role as landowners in a recreation region. On 15 May, the first opening day for new access sites on the Klamath, visitors got the first real glimpse of the extensive restoration efforts since demolition began in 2023. It also served as an early trial for how the public and an eager commercial rafting community might engage with the river and the landscapes that surround it. As the sun broke through a week of cloudy weather that morning, rafters readied their gear near an access now bearing the traditional name in the Shasta language, K'účasčas (pronounced Ku-chas-chas). 'If we were here a little over a year ago, we would be standing on the edge of a reservoir,' said Thomas O'Keefe, the director of policy and science for American Whitewater, as he helped Cross and Michael Parker, a conservation biologist, ready their boat for a stretch of river above where the Iron Gate dam once stood. The Guardian joined them to try the section on opening day. O'Keefe has played a pivotal role in bridging recreation and restoration on the river. He hopes connecting people to the landscapes will encourage future care for them. 'The vast majority of people want to do the right thing,' O'Keefe said, describing the extreme care taken towards ecologically and culturally sensitive areas. 'We want to make sure we can define where that can happen.' There is still a lot of work left to do. Rustic roads that lead to the river's edge are minimally paved and laden with potholes. It's not immediately clear where visitors should park. Finishing touches are still being added on signs and infrastructure – from put-ins to picnic tables – with the completion of five new public recreation sites planned for 1 August. And for rafters, of course, the river itself must be relearned. Roughly 45 continuous miles were unleashed between the Keno and Iron Gate dams. Rapids long-dependent on artificial surges from the hydropower operations are at last being fueled by natural conditions. 'We are kind of writing the book on it,' said Bart Baldwin, the owner of Noah's River Adventures, a commercial outfit out of Ashland, Oregon, who has taken guests downriver for decades. While he admits the releases from the dams made for 'world-class' rapids, he says the loss has created new opportunities. 'The scenery is stunning and I think it's going to be special.' The waters of the Klamath have burst back to life in recent weeks, spurred by melt-off from strong winter storms. The Iron Gate run bumps and sways through a mix of class II and class III rapids, enough for a fun ride that's manageable for most experience levels. Upriver, the exciting and challenging K'íka·c'é·ki Canyon run winds through more than 2.5 miles of class IV rapids, beckoning those with more expertise. As he called out paddling orders to navigate his boat's small crew through splashy sections, Cross was relieved. In the years before the dams came out, he'd worked to outline the new river and its whitewater potential, armed with historical topographic maps, old photos and bathymetric data that showed depth and underwater terrain. Rooted in science, it requires a bit of guesswork. The volcanic geology here often comes with surprises. 'I spent the first six months sweating bullets watching the water recede and the channel scour and wondering if there was going to be a waterfall I didn't predict,' he said. Even with strong flows, there was space to breathe between more challenging sections. There were spots to beach boats for a picnic lunch, places to quietly float through the vibrant scenery. Vestiges of the recent past are still visible. Gradients of green shroud a scar left by the high-water mark of the reservoir. Columns of dried mud, remnants of the 15m cubic yards of sediment held behind the dams, are clumped along the river's edge. But there are also signs of nature's resilience. Swaying willows stand stalwart from the banks. Behind them, rolling hills splashed with orange and yellow wildflowers and ancient basalt pillars stretch to the horizon. Far from the hum of highway and roads, the silence here is broken only by the purr of the river as it rolls over rocks, accented with eagle calls or chattering sparrows who have already claimed sites along the water for their nests. Years before the dams were demolished, as teams of scientists, tribal members and landscape renovation experts tried to envision how recovery should unfold, there wasn't a guidebook to go by. There weren't records for how the heavily degraded ecosystems should look or function. 'Creating the mosaic we are currently seeing out there has been a work of educated estimation,' said Dave Coffman, a director for Resource Environmental Solutions (RES), the ecological recovery company working on the Klamath's restoration. 'There's nothing in that watershed that hasn't been touched by some sort of detrimental activity.' In less than a year's time, a dramatic reversal has taken place. Some spots have bounced back beautifully. Others had to be carefully cultivated to mimic what could have been if the dams never disrupted them. Native seeds were cast across the slopes, some by hand and others from helicopters. Heavy equipment trucked away mounds of earth. Invasive plants were plucked from around the reservoir footprint before they could spread across the barren ground. 'We are giving nature the kickstart to heal itself,' said Barry McCovey Jr, the fisheries department director for the Yurok tribe. What he calls 'massive scars' left by the dams 'aren't going to heal overnight or in a year or in 10 years', he added. Giving the large-scale process, time will be important – but a little help can go a long way. In late November last year, threatened coho salmon were seen in the upper Klamath River basin for the first time in more than 60 years. Other animals are benefiting, too, including north-western pond turtles, freshwater mussels, beavers and river took mere months for insects, algae and microscopic features of a flourishing food web to return and sprout. 'It's amazing to see river bugs in a river,' he said. They are good indicators of water quality and ecosystem health. It might seem like a happy ending. McCovey Jr said it's just the beginning. 'We are going to have ups and downs and it will take a long time to get to where we want to be,' he said. Ongoing Yurok projects will focus on making more areas 'fish-friendly' and closely monitoring aquatic invertebrates in coordination with the other tribes, researchers and advocacy organizations, and the Klamath River Renewal Corporation that was created to oversee the project. There are also far-flung parts of the watershed they are still working to restore. Close to 47,000 acres of ancestral Yurok homelands in the lower Klamath basin will be returned to the tribe this year after being owned and operated for more than a century by the industrial timber industry. Considered the largest land-back conservation deal in California history, the work there will complement and benefit from what's being done upriver. Even as recovery on the river remains perhaps at its most fragile, most people who have been part of this enormous undertaking are looking forward to welcoming the public. 'I think one of the biggest fears of this project is that it wouldn't work,' Coffman said. 'I am excited for more folks to get out here and see what we are capable of.' The work goes beyond the water line. The lands that hug this river have had their own transformation, along with the people who once called them home. 'People are really focused on dam removal and fish and recreation – and those are all great things – but it is a very personal story for us,' said Sami Jo Difuntorum, cultural preservation officer for the Shasta Indian Nation. As the tribe returns to their ancestral lands, they are envisioning ways to introduce themselves to a largely unfamiliar public. Their story is laced with tragedy, but also resilience. Shasta Indian Nation is not federally recognized, largely because they were massacred in the mid-19th century when gold-seeking settlers poured into the region. Their villages and sacred lands were drowned in the damming of the river. But the people tied to these lands have largely remained close by; many still reside in the county. As the waters of the reservoirs receded, it revealed a place held at the heart of their culture for thousands of years. 'The return of our land is the most important thing to happen for our people in my lifetime, for the generation before and the generation ahead,' Difuntorum said, standing on a quiet overlook watching the river course through the sacred K'íka·c'é·ki Canyon. This steep basalt chasm was left dewatered while the river was rerouted to the hydroelectric plant. 'There are so many things we are learning, like how to coexist as future landowners with the whitewater community, the local community, the fishermen – and then all the tribes,' she added. 'It's a lot – but it's all good stuff. It's huge for our people.' Looking ahead, plans are being made both for public use and for tribal reconnection. There will be access trails across their lands and efforts to plant traditional medicinal and ceremonial plants. Old buildings that provided electricity from the plant will be converted to an interpretive center. Places have been picked for sweat lodges, an official tribal office and the area where the first salmon ceremony will be held in more than century. Difuntorum's grandsons – ages nine and six – will be dancing in that ceremony this year. For the tribe, reconnecting to the river has provided an opportunity to reconnect to their culture and history. Part of reconnecting comes through reintroducing their language. James Sarmento, a linguist and tribal member, is helping Shasta people learn and use pronunciations for recovered places as they were once known along with the stories of creation tied to them. The public will learn them, too. 'It's about making a relationship and having conversations with the land,' Sarmento said. 'These are landscapes that we are not only working to protect – we are working to speak their names out loud.' The darker moments in the tribe's history live on. Remnants of the now-inoperable hydroelectric plant still sit solemnly on the embankment: coils of metal, enormous pipes, nests of wires that connect to nothing. A cave, tucked into the steep slopes among ancient lava fields where 50 or so Shasta people sought refuge in the mid-1800s, still bears the violent marks of a miners' raid that left five people, including women and children dead. Difuntorum said it used to be hard for her to see it all. 'I don't feel that now,' she said. 'Of all the places I have been in the world, this is where I feel the most me – out here at the water.' Cross, O'Keefe and Parker pulled up their paddles to ease into the final float of the run, gliding through the channel that once propped up the Iron Gate dam. Overhead, an osprey settled into its nest with a large fish as a throng of small birds scattered into the cloudless sky. There are sure to be challenges ahead. The climate crisis has deepened droughts and fueled a rise in catastrophic fire as this region grows hotter. Habitat loss and water wars will continue as city sprawl, agriculture and nature increasingly come into conflict. For now though, the river's recovery is a hopeful sign that a wide range of interests can align to make a positive change, even in a warming world. 'I never thought I would see the run under reservoirs be revealed,' Cross said, smiling as he packed up his boat. As a new chapter begins, the Klamath has already become a story of what's possible, fulfilling the hopes that the project could inspire others. And, after decades of advocacy and years of work, 'we have salmon and beaver and poppies,' he said. 'This river will go on forever.'
Yahoo
27-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The Backup plan
This story was produced by Grist and co-published with Underscore Native News. Anita Hofschneider and Jake BittleI llustrations by Jackie FawnGrist PART III — The Backup Plan In February of 2010, Jeff Mitchell shook California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's hand before reporters at the state capitol building in Salem, Oregon, with the governor of Oregon and the secretary of the interior looking on. 'Hasta la vista, Klamath dams,' Schwarzenegger said as he leaned over to sign the agreement to demolish the four dams, settle rights to the river's water, and return land to the Klamath Tribes. Beneath the capitol dome, the former bodybuilder joked that, even for him, the deal had been 'a big lift' to get over the finish line. The mood in Salem that day was ecstatic. After years of protest and negotiation, the entire basin — the Yurok, Karuk, and Klamath tribes, the region's conservative farmers, and environmentalists — had come together behind a plan to take the dams down, and they'd brought both the federal Department of the Interior and the dams' corporate owner over to their side. Because the deal hinged on millions in federal restoration funding, as well as a legal directive to let Interior take the lead on dam removal, the last remaining step was for Congress to pass a bill that authorized the demolition and allocate money to restore the river to its original undammed state. Later that year, the Republican Party scored a resounding victory in the 2010 midterm elections, riding a wave of backlash against the election of Barack Obama two years prior. Many of those elected to the congressional majority that emerged in the House of Representatives were partisans of the far-right Tea Party movement. They advocated a scorched-earth opposition to the Obama administration's entire agenda, rejecting bipartisan achievements like the Klamath deal, despite its origins in the Bush administration. 'I think there was a whole lot of just blocking of anything that could be a potential positive legacy for the Obama administration,' said Leaf Hillman, the former vice chairman of the Karuk Tribal Council. 'Congress was hell-bent on making sure he got nothing to be proud of.' Like many legal settlements, the Klamath deal had an expiration date at the end of 2012. If Congress didn't ratify the deal and the settlement lapsed, the parties had to start all over again to negotiate a new one. After the 2010 election, a few years suddenly didn't seem like much time at all. The Republican resurgence also elevated a man Mitchell knew well: Greg Walden, a longtime congressman for the Oregon side of the Klamath Basin and now an influential leader in the House Republican caucus. For years, Mitchell had known Walden as a fierce advocate for the state's agricultural interests and a critic of the Endangered Species Act. The two men had spoken about fish issues on the river, but Mitchell had never felt like Walden cared much about what he had to say. Still, Walden had expressed his support for the Klamath settlement when it came together in 2008, saying that the negotiators 'deserved a medal.''He kept saying, 'If you guys can develop an agreement, I'll do my job and I'll get it through Congress and get it funded,'' recalled Mitchell. Walden had been engaged on Klamath issues since the 2001 water crisis, and had secured funding for financial relief and infrastructure in the basin. He had even enabled the dismantling of a very small dam on a tributary in Chiloquin, Oregon. As a high-ranking Republican and the member representing Oregon's side of the basin, he seemed to be in an ideal position to advance a bill that would ratify the settlement. But despite urging from farmers, tribal leaders, and other elected officials, Walden failed to push for the settlement — a decision that many advocates saw as an attempt to block dam removal. Before long, he became public enemy number one for the settlement parties, who soon found themselves forced to extend the ratification deadline to the end of 2015. In the summer of 2013, after multiple years of stagnation in Congress, Oregon Democratic Senator Ron Wyden held a public hearing on the Klamath deal in an attempt to generate some forward momentum. Mitchell, Hillman, and Troy Fletcher of the Yurok Tribe came to Washington to testify in support of the deal and urge legislators to pass it. 'We hope that you will work with us to make sure that [the settlement] gets passed,' said Fletcher in his impassioned remarks to the Senate natural resources committee. 'People have got to move off their entrenched positions.' Part of the reason for Walden's resistance to moving the agreement through the House was that the landmark Klamath agreement, which brought together dozens of parties, was still not inclusive enough for his tastes. The settlement, he said, had left a number of groups out, including local residents who lived around the dams. Most important to him were a small group of farmers and ranchers that worked land upstream of Upper Klamath Lake and had walked away from initial settlement talks. In an attempt to satisfy Walden, Oregon's governor deputized Richard Whitman, the state's lead environmental official, to work out a separate deal that would resolve a water conflict between these farmers and the Klamath Tribes. Over the next two years, with the other campaigners waiting in the background, Whitman dutifully managed to negotiate an irrigation settlement the holdouts could accept. Walden praised the settlement and suggested he would help push through the broader Klamath deal, including the dam removal, according to Whitman. Then he never did. 'Congressman Walden refused to move legislation notwithstanding that we had satisfied his conditions,' said Whitman. 'He never lived up to that commitment.' Walden said he did not recall making this commitment to Whitman and defended his engagement on the settlement. He said that even if he had backed the settlement, it would never have made it through Congress with a dam removal provision. There were a slew of dam supporters in charge of House committees at the time, and since 2013 Walden's counterpart on the California side of the basin had been the far-right Doug LaMalfa, a former rice farmer and stalwart supporter of western agriculture. LaMalfa was dead-set against the dam removal agreement, and his constituents were on his side — residents of Siskiyou County, California, which was home to three of the dams, had voted 4-to-1 against dam removal in a symbolic local referendum. 'It just hit a brick wall, and that brick wall was just the realities of control of Congress,' said Walden. 'I kept saying … 'I realize you want to blame me, but tell me the path.'' As the extended deadline got closer, Fletcher, Mitchell, Hillman and other dam removal advocates escalated their pressure campaign. They held a rally in Portland, boosted an anti-dam campaign in Brazil, and organized countless meetings between irrigators, tribal leaders, and elected officials. But nothing happened in Congress. When Senator Wyden introduced a Klamath bill in the Senate in early 2015, with just months to go until the settlement expired, it went nowhere, failing to secure even a hearing in the chamber's energy committee.'In my lifetime, I've seen moments where Congress could really do bipartisan stuff, and try to really solve problems,' said Chuck Bonham, who participated in Klamath negotiations first as a lawyer for the fish advocacy organization Trout Unlimited, and later as California's top fish and wildlife official. 'When the negotiations started, that was the prevailing theory. By the time we got there, that was impossible.' By the start of 2015, campaigners had been trying to pass the settlement for almost five years. Senior officials at the Department of the Interior, which had brought the deal together under the Bush administration, were desperate to get something through Congress before the uncertainty of the following year's election. That fall, then-Interior Secretary Sally Jewell and longtime Interior lawyer John Bezdek decided to try a last-second gambit. They conveyed to Walden they would support a broader Klamath settlement bill without a dam removal provision. The bill would provide hundreds of millions of dollars to restore the river and settle the water conflict between the Klamath Tribes and the farmers, and it would even preserve the Klamath Tribes' land restoration agreement — but it would allow the dam agreement to expire, leaving the basin with no guarantee that PacifiCorp's dams would come down. 'We couldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good,' Jewell said. Meeting with Bezdek in a side room in the U.S. Capitol, Walden again sounded an optimistic note. If the dam removal mandate disappeared, he thought the rest of the settlement could pass, despite hesitance from other Republicans. But it took him until the final month of 2015 to introduce a settlement bill, and that bill stood no chance of passing — it opened up thousands of acres of federal forest land to new logging operations, a carve out that Democrats and Indigenous nations dismissed as unacceptable. The bill went nowhere. Walden said he didn't remember the specific conversation with Bezdek, but said he thought his final bill had a chance of passing. 'This one got away,' he said. 'I couldn't figure out how to do it.' With the settlement's expiration imminent, the fragile coalition that had come together around the dams' removal began to fall apart. Leaders from the Yurok, Karuk, and Klamath Tribes had put decades of work into the negotiations, and some tribal leaders, like Fletcher, had made removing the dams their life's work. Watching all that progress vanish due to Congress's inaction felt like an echo of previous betrayals. 'There was a sense of extreme frustration, because these agreements were very difficult to negotiate,' said Amy Cordalis, a Yurok Tribe member who came on as its lead counsel in 2014. Cordalis had decided to go to law school after witnessing the mass die-off of salmon on the river in 2002. Most of her work since then had led up to this moment, and now it was about to vanish. In September of 2015, the leadership of the Yurok Tribe announced that it was withdrawing from the Klamath deal, essentially dooming the watered-down agreement. In a press release, the tribe said that the 'benefits of the agreements have become unachievable.' The Karuk and Klamath tribes said they would follow suit by the end of the year if Congress didn't act. A few weeks after Yurok leadership announced they were pulling out of the deal, Yurok Tribe biologist Mike Belchik met up with Fletcher on a scorching day while the Yurok director was hitting golf balls. Belchik was frustrated with Fletcher for abandoning the deal, but Fletcher was adamant that the move was a strategic maneuver designed to bring everyone back to the table. 'The dam removal deal won't die,' he told Belchik. 'It's got too much life in it. It's going to happen.' Two weeks later, during a meeting on Klamath water issues on the Yurok reservation, Fletcher suffered a fatal heart attack. His sudden death at age 53 was a blow not only to the Yurok Tribe but to the entire Klamath Basin: The breakthrough deal to restore the river was no more, and the man who had done so much to bring it together was gone. 'It was just such a terrible shock, it was awful,' said Belchik, who had spent countless hours with Fletcher — driving to and from PacifiCorp meetings, playing poker and golf, and strategizing about how to bring the dams down. 'He really in a lot of ways gave his life to Klamath dam removal and to the river,' said Cordalis. With Fletcher gone and Congress having failed to pass the settlement into law, it seemed like there was just one strategy left for the Klamath, albeit one that negotiators had rejected a decade earlier. PacifiCorp's overriding priority was that some other entity — any other entity — take responsibility for demolition of its dams, allowing the company to avoid legal liability for the removal process. The Klamath settlement deal had come together around the appealing idea that the federal government would be that entity — having the Interior Department take the dams down had always made the most sense, given the federal government's sheer size, expertise, and funding. As Congress stalled, longtime dam opponent and tribal counsel Richard Roos-Collins thought back to the early days of the settlement talks. He had been involved in Klamath negotiations for more than 10 years, and had been one of the tribes' only representatives at the tense West Virginia talks back in 2008. He recalled that, during those early stages, before the Bush administration had signed on to the deal, environmental groups had proposed that PacifiCorp transfer the dams to a new corporation run by the tribes or by the states — essentially a holding company that would accept the dams only to destroy them using money from PacifiCorp and the states. At the time, PacifiCorp had rejected the idea as ridiculous and unproven, and negotiators had given up on it, putting their hopes in the Interior Department. But Roos-Collins remembered that a group of environmentalists and local organizations in Maine had created a nonprofit trust to purchase two dams on the Penobscot River back in 2004. The trust had since destroyed those dams, reopening the river for fish migrations. He thought there might be a chance that the same idea could work with PacifiCorp: The utility would apply to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for permission to transfer the hydroelectric dams to a nonprofit entity, and that nonprofit would take them down, shielding PacifiCorp from liability and costs. It was still an outlandish plan. The Klamath dams were several times the size of the ones in Maine, and far larger than any other dams that had ever come down in the United States. FERC had a history of support for hydropower, and there was no way to know if it would endorse the idea of demolishing an active power facility if the Interior Department wasn't the one doing it. Neither the states, the tribes, nor the environmental groups wanted to take ownership of the dams, which meant the 'removal entity' would have to be a bespoke nonprofit created for that express purpose. 'There was resignation, and kind of a demoralization, that was, 'Well, we only have one option left, and that is FERC,'' said Chuck Bonham, who had helped negotiate the original settlement at Trout Unlimited and was now the lead Klamath negotiator for the state of California. PacifiCorp executives worried the system was a Trojan horse to keep the utility involved: If the process cost more than projected, would the dam removal entity come back to the company for more money? If the sediment that got released from behind the dams turned out to be toxic enough to kill off downstream wildlife, would lawsuits drive the removal company into bankruptcy? Federal, state, and company negotiators went back and forth over the details for months toward the end of 2015 as the settlement fell apart in Congress. They made little progress. Remembering his meeting with Fletcher back in 2008, when Fletcher demanded that the Bush administration bring PacifiCorp to the table on dam removal, Interior lawyer John Bezdek called another closed-door meeting at the same remote site in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. Once again, he bartered with PacifiCorp official Andrea Kelly late into the night, pushing her to endorse the idea of transferring ownership of the dams. She refused to commit: The proposal left PacifiCorp too exposed to liability. As Kelly and Bezdek debated utility law, they grew increasingly frustrated. After dinner one evening, the two got into an argument and stormed off to their respective dormitories, fed up with one another. 'I actually thought for sure it was done,' Bezdek said. 'I went back to my room, and I called my wife, and I said, 'I think it's done. I don't think we can get there.'' Some time after midnight, Bezdek got a call from Kelly, who couldn't sleep either. They threw on their coats, met on a bench outside the dormitories, and started talking again. Bezdek emphasized that the entire Klamath Basin, from the tribes to the farmers, had come together in the belief that the dams needed to go. It was time for PacifiCorp to do the same; the fight would never be over until the company let go. By the time the sun came up, Kelly had agreed to the new plan. California and Oregon would endow a joint nonprofit dedicated to the dams' removal, and PacifiCorp would apply to FERC for permission to transfer the dams to that nonprofit. Bezdek took the agreement to his boss at Interior, Sally Jewell, who approved it. There was no need, with this new arrangement, to get Congress involved. Walden said he wishes he had known it was possible for the dam removal to take place without Congress' involvement. If he had, he said, he would have pushed to pass the rest of the Klamath settlement and advocated for the FERC path toward dam removal, potentially saving the settlement and speeding up removal by several years. 'Had I understood that, dam removal would never have been a federal issue, because it didn't need to be, and we might have been able to find a different solution,' he said. 'That's my fault.' A few months after the second Shepherdstown summit, on a hot April day at the mouth of the Klamath River in Requa, California, tribal leaders gathered with Jewell, Bezdek, and the governors of California and Oregon to celebrate the revived dam removal agreement. They signed the documents on a traditional Yurok fish-cleaning table, a long white plank of stone that tribal members had cleaned for the occasion. Then the dam removal advocates took the group on a boat up to Blue Creek, the same part of the river where the devastating fish kill had occurred in 2002. There was a notable absence: Jeff Mitchell of the Klamath Tribes was not part of the celebratory photo op at the fish table. There was still a path toward dam removal, but the broader Klamath settlement had died in Congress, dashing hopes for a water accord between the Klamath Tribes and the irrigators. The Klamath Tribes did not sign the amended dam removal agreement because it did not have the same protections for their treaty rights as the original deal. 'I wish that we would've been able to work through that,' Mitchell said. 'The price that we paid for that was pretty, pretty deep — pretty, pretty big price — because it took us away from the table.' For the other tribal leaders who had been fighting for dam removal, the day felt momentous. 'I was naively stoked,' said Amy Cordalis. To her, the memory of the dead salmon was still fresh, even 15 years later — she could still smell the rotting flesh. It had been a moment of clarity of her life's purpose. 'I felt like my great-grandmother, who had passed away when I was 6, came to me and was like, 'You need to make sure that this never happens again,'' she said. Cordalis was part of a new generation of tribal leaders and their allies who were determined to carry on the fight. But neither Sally Jewell, nor the governors of California and Oregon, nor the tribal activists knew whether or not FERC, a government body that operates independently of the presidential administration, would accept the new transfer proposal. It would take years to refine the details of the new agreement, and it was far from certain that the coalition would hold together: Not only was Fletcher gone, but PacifiCorp's Kelly was about to retire. Bezdek was about to leave the negotiations as well, since the Interior Department would no longer have direct involvement in the dam removal. More than a decade after the fight to remove the Klamath dams began, none of the campaigners could have known that the new agreement would next have to survive a global pandemic. This is Part III of a five part series. This story was first published by Grist.
Yahoo
28-02-2025
- General
- Yahoo
In a First, California Tribe May Freely Burn Its Ancestral Lands
In California, a state increasingly beset by devastating wildfires, the Karuk Tribe will be able to freely set controlled burns, helping to clear the dense underbrush that fuels larger and more destructive fires. Before Europeans arrived to the region, the Karuk would undertake some 7,000 burns each year on their lands along the Klamath River in northern California. Burns could be applied to a single tree or spread across many acres, and were administered ceremonially and to shape the landscape. The need for such burns is clear, tribal official Bill Tripp told The Los Angeles Times: 'One: You don't have major wildfire threats because everything around you is burned regularly. Two: Most of the plants and animals that we depend on in the ecosystem are actually fire-dependent species.' Until recently, tribes would need to secure permits for cultural burns, but a law passed last year allows federally recognized tribes to forge agreements with the state that allow them to administer burns without prior approval. This week the Karuk became the first tribe to reach such an agreement. Controlled burns are 'a real big part of our cultural identity and who we are,' tribal official Aja Conrad recently told Boise State Public Radio. 'It's about how to steward this place. It's about actively, physically tending to this place and rebuilding these sacred relationships.'
Yahoo
27-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
California tribe enters first-of-its-kind agreement with the state to practice cultural burns
Northern California's Karuk Tribe has for more than a century faced significant restrictions on cultural burning — the setting of intentional fires for both ceremonial and practical purposes, such as reducing brush to limit the risk of wildfires. That changed this week, thanks to legislation championed by the tribe and passed by the state last year that allows federally recognized tribes in California to burn freely once they reach agreements with the California Natural Resources Agency and local air quality officials. The tribe announced Thursday that it was the first to reach such an agreement with the agency. 'Karuk has been a national thought leader on cultural fire,' said Geneva E.B. Thompson, Natural Resources' deputy secretary for tribal affairs. 'So, it makes sense that they would be a natural first partner in this space because they have a really clear mission and core commitment to get this work done.' In the past, cultural burn practitioners first needed to get a burn permit from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, a department within the Natural Resources Agency, and a smoke permit from the local air district. The law passed in September 2024, SB 310, allows the state government to, respectfully, 'get out of the way' of tribes practicing cultural burns, said Thompson. For the Karuk Tribe, Cal Fire will no longer hold regulatory or oversight authority over the burns and will instead act as a partner and consultant. The previous arrangement, tribal leaders say, essentially amounted to one nation telling another nation what to do on its land — a violation of sovereignty. Now, collaboration can happen through a proper government-to-government relationship. The Karuk Tribe estimates that, conservatively, its more than 120 villages would complete at least 7,000 burns each year before contact with European settlers. Some may have been as small as an individual pine tree or patch of tanoak trees. Other burns may have spanned dozens of acres. 'When it comes to that ability to get out there and do frequent burning to basically survive as an indigenous community,' said Bill Tripp, director for the Karuk Tribe Natural Resource Department, 'one: you don't have major wildfire threats because everything around you is burned regularly. Two: Most of the plants and animals that we depend on in the ecosystem are actually fire-dependent species.' The Karuk Tribe's ancestral territory extends along much of the Klamath River in what is now the Klamath National Forest, where its members have fished for salmon, hunted for deer and collected tanoak acorns for food for thousands of years. The tribe, whose language is distinct from that of all other California tribes, is currently the second largest in the state, having more than 3,600 members. The history of the government's suppression of cultural burning is long and violent. In 1850, California passed a law that inflicted any fines or punishments a court found 'proper' on cultural burn practitioners. In a 1918 letter to a forest supervisor, a district ranger in the Klamath National Forest — in the Karuk Tribe's homeland — suggested that to stifle cultural burns, 'the only sure way is to kill them off, every time you catch one sneaking around in the brush like a coyote, take a shot at him.' For Thompson, the new law is a step toward righting those wrongs. 'I think SB 310 is part of that broader effort to correct those older laws that have caused harm, and really think through: How do we respect and support tribal sovereignty, respect and support traditional ecological knowledge, but also meet the climate and wildfire resiliency goals that we have as a state?' she said. The devastating 2020 fire year triggered a flurry of fire-related laws that aimed to increase the use of intentional fire on the landscape, including — for the first time — cultural burns. The laws granted cultural burns exemptions from the state's environmental impact review process and created liability protections and funds for use in the rare event that an intentional burn grows out of control. 'The generous interpretation of it is recognizing cultural burn practitioner knowledge,' said Becca Lucas Thomas, an ethnic studies lecturer at Cal Poly and cultural burn practitioner with the yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini Northern Chumash Tribe of San Luis Obispo County and Region. 'In trying to get more fire on the ground for wildfire prevention, it's important that we make sure that we have practitioners who are actually able to practice.' The new law, aimed at forming government-to-government relationships with Native tribes, can only allow federally recognized tribes to enter these new agreements. However, Thompson said it will not stop the agency from forming strong relationships with unrecognized tribes and respecting their sovereignty. 'Cal Fire has provided a lot of technical assistance and resources and support for those non-federally recognized tribes to implement these burns,' said Thompson, 'and we are all in and fully committed to continuing that work in partnership with the non-federally-recognized tribes.' Cal Fire has helped Lucas Thomas navigate the state's imposed burn permit process to the point that she can now comfortably navigate the system on her own, and she said Cal Fire handles the tribe's smoke permits. Last year, the tribe completed its first four cultural burns in over 150 years. 'Cal Fire, their unit here, has been truly invested in the relationship and has really dedicated their resources to supporting us,' said Lucas Thomas, 'with their stated intention of, 'we want you guys to be able to burn whenever you want, and you just give us a call and let us know what's going on.'' This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
27-02-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
California tribe enters first-of-its-kind agreement with the state to practice cultural burns
Northern California's Karuk Tribe has for more than a century faced significant restrictions on cultural burning — the setting of intentional fires for both ceremonial and practical purposes, such as reducing brush to limit the risk of wildfires. That changed this week, thanks to legislation championed by the tribe and passed by the state last year that allows federally recognized tribes in California to burn freely once they reach agreements with the California Natural Resources Agency and local air quality officials. The tribe announced Thursday that it was the first to reach such an agreement with the agency. 'Karuk has been a national thought leader on cultural fire,' said Geneva E.B. Thompson, Natural Resources' deputy secretary for tribal affairs. 'So, it makes sense that they would be a natural first partner in this space because they have a really clear mission and core commitment to get this work done.' In the past, cultural burn practitioners first needed to get a burn permit from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, a department within the Natural Resources Agency, and a smoke permit from the local air district. The law passed in September 2024, SB 310, allows the state government to, respectfully, 'get out of the way' of tribes practicing cultural burns, said Thompson. For the Karuk Tribe, Cal Fire will no longer hold regulatory or oversight authority over the burns and will instead act as a partner and consultant. The previous arrangement, tribal leaders say, essentially amounted to one nation telling another nation what to do on its land — a violation of sovereignty. Now, collaboration can happen through a proper government-to-government relationship. The Karuk Tribe estimates that, conservatively, its more than 120 villages would complete at least 7,000 burns each year before contact with European settlers. Some may have been as small as an individual pine tree or patch of tanoak trees. Other burns may have spanned dozens of acres. 'When it comes to that ability to get out there and do frequent burning to basically survive as an indigenous community,' said Bill Tripp, director for the Karuk Tribe Natural Resource Department, 'one: you don't have major wildfire threats because everything around you is burned regularly. Two: Most of the plants and animals that we depend on in the ecosystem are actually fire-dependent species.' The Karuk Tribe's ancestral territory extends along much of the Klamath River in what is now the Klamath National Forest, where its members have fished for salmon, hunted for deer and collected tanoak acorns for food for thousands of years. The tribe, whose language is distinct from that of all other California tribes, is currently the second largest in the state, having more than 3,600 members. The history of the government's suppression of cultural burning is long and violent. In 1850, California passed a law that inflicted any fines or punishments a court found 'proper' on cultural burn practitioners. In a 1918 letter to a forest supervisor, a district ranger in the Klamath National Forest — in the Karuk Tribe's homeland — suggested that to stifle cultural burns, 'the only sure way is to kill them off, every time you catch one sneaking around in the brush like a coyote, take a shot at him.' For Thompson, the new law is a step toward righting those wrongs. 'I think SB 310 is part of that broader effort to correct those older laws that have caused harm, and really think through: How do we respect and support tribal sovereignty, respect and support traditional ecological knowledge, but also meet the climate and wildfire resiliency goals that we have as a state?' she said. The devastating 2020 fire year triggered a flurry of fire-related laws that aimed to increase the use of intentional fire on the landscape, including — for the first time — cultural burns. The laws granted cultural burns exemptions from the state's environmental impact review process and created liability protections and funds for use in the rare event that an intentional burn grows out of control. 'The generous interpretation of it is recognizing cultural burn practitioner knowledge,' said Becca Lucas Thomas, an ethnic studies lecturer at Cal Poly and cultural burn practitioner with the yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini Northern Chumash Tribe of San Luis Obispo County and Region. 'In trying to get more fire on the ground for wildfire prevention, it's important that we make sure that we have practitioners who are actually able to practice.' The new law, aimed at forming government-to-government relationships with Native tribes, can only allow federally recognized tribes to enter these new agreements. However, Thompson said it will not stop the agency from forming strong relationships with unrecognized tribes and respecting their sovereignty. 'Cal Fire has provided a lot of technical assistance and resources and support for those non-federally recognized tribes to implement these burns,' said Thompson, 'and we are all in and fully committed to continuing that work in partnership with the non-federally-recognized tribes.' Cal Fire has helped Lucas Thomas navigate the state's imposed burn permit process to the point that she can now comfortably navigate the system on her own, and she said Cal Fire handles the tribe's smoke permits. Last year, the tribe completed its first four cultural burns in over 150 years. 'Cal Fire, their unit here, has been truly invested in the relationship and has really dedicated their resources to supporting us,' said Lucas Thomas, 'with their stated intention of, 'we want you guys to be able to burn whenever you want, and you just give us a call and let us know what's going on.''
