The outbreak started in February. Migratory waterfowl heading south along the West Coast found the wetlands of northern California's Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge -- a major stopover point on the Pacific Flyway -- half dry. Nearly 2 million birds passed through the area as winter edged toward spring, many crowding into the remaining 15,000 marshy acres, reports the San Francisco Chronicle.
Such tight conditions are a playground for disease, and by March, an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 birds had died of avian cholera -- the worst such outbreak the complex of refuges on the Oregon-California border, of which the Lower Klamath is a part, has seen in 10 to 15 years, according to the Oregonian: Snow geese were the main species affected, ... along with Ross' and white-fronted geese and northern pintail ducks, which arrived in unusually large numbers this year. ... Avian cholera strikes the refuges every year. (But) normally, said (Ron Cole, project leader for the Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuge Complex), the deaths are in the hundreds or low thousands.
Why the low water? The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which controls the water sources for the Lower Klamath refuge, held it back in Upper Klamath Lake from December to mid-March, blaming the Klamath Basin's dry winter and what the Oregonian describes as "projections of dismal inflows." You see, the lake stores water for irrigators and endangered fish on the Klamath River, and in the pecking order for water in the Klamath River Basin, wildlife refuges are currently last in priority, behind fish, then tribes and then farmers.
It's a sad state of affairs for a basin that once contained 185,000 acres of shallow lakes and freshwater marshes. Thanks to BuRec, much of that was replumbed and drained over the last century to support agriculture and settlement; today, less than 25 percent the historic wetlands remain, and in dry years, they often go wanting.
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Such tight conditions are a playground for disease, and by March, an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 birds had died of avian cholera -- the worst such outbreak the complex of refuges on the Oregon-California border, of which the Lower Klamath is a part, has seen in 10 to 15 years, according to the Oregonian: Snow geese were the main species affected, ... along with Ross' and white-fronted geese and northern pintail ducks, which arrived in unusually large numbers this year. ... Avian cholera strikes the refuges every year. (But) normally, said (Ron Cole, project leader for the Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuge Complex), the deaths are in the hundreds or low thousands.
Why the low water? The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which controls the water sources for the Lower Klamath refuge, held it back in Upper Klamath Lake from December to mid-March, blaming the Klamath Basin's dry winter and what the Oregonian describes as "projections of dismal inflows." You see, the lake stores water for irrigators and endangered fish on the Klamath River, and in the pecking order for water in the Klamath River Basin, wildlife refuges are currently last in priority, behind fish, then tribes and then farmers.
It's a sad state of affairs for a basin that once contained 185,000 acres of shallow lakes and freshwater marshes. Thanks to BuRec, much of that was replumbed and drained over the last century to support agriculture and settlement; today, less than 25 percent the historic wetlands remain, and in dry years, they often go wanting.
Click the link below to read the rest of the article, use your back button to return to this page:
<http://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/last-in-line>