Water for Waterfowl in the Arid West
Jordan Rash for SPLIT REED
Cover Photo Courtesy of Travis Smith
My grandparents’ ranch outside Macdoel in Siskiyou County in Northern California was a place of wonder for a suburban kid from the Willamette Valley: full of sagebrush and Western juniper; twisted split rail posts and dilapidated corrals; pronghorn and California quail. But lush it was not. I never remember their ranch being green, though there are photos of me as a toddler in front of their center pivots and hand lines when they irrigated hundreds of acres of alfalfa, sugar beets, and other crops before they started leasing their land for grazing. But I do remember seeing sand come out of the faucet, and my grandmother explaining that their well was running dry that summer. What’s a “well,” I wondered. Doesn’t everyone just turn on a faucet to get their water?
The Western US has become increasingly challenged by water resources in recent decades, leaving many folks like my grandparents with dry wells and dry irrigation lines, and duck hunters without places to set out their decoys. The water shortages may continue to get worse as we grapple with the effects of climate change, thus it is imperative duck hunters be a part of creative solutions to conserve water for communities, agriculture, fish, and fowl.
As arid as my grandparents’ ranch was and is, it is a mere fourteen miles as a Tule goose flies from Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge. Created by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1908, the Refuge was the first established specifically for waterfowl. The Refuge - along with Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge just a few miles to the southeast - provides habitat for hundreds of thousands of migratory birds, mammals, amphibians, fish, and other species while also providing recreational opportunities for waterfowl hunters among other outdoor enthusiasts.
Unfortunately, many of these benefits will not be provided this year because it, like my grandparents’ well back in Macdoel, was dry at the start of the waterfowl season - dry as the sun-bleached bones my younger brother and I would find while running through the sagebrush on their ranch. Even with recent rains, the long-term effects of drought in California and the SW mean no water in the refuges for waterfowl and no hunting opportunities for waterfowl hunters.
What I’ve learned in the nearly 35 years since seeing sand come out of the faucet at my grandparents’ house is that water is scarce, particularly out west. While my childhood home in the Willamette Valley seemed to get more than its fair share of rain, many places are experiencing prolonged droughts like those impacting Northern California and Southern Oregon.
As a waterfowler and a conservationist, this is highly concerning. But, what can we do?
First, we all need to understand where our water comes from and what it is needed for. Second, what are water resource managers doing to conserve water resources for these uses, and how does it benefit waterfowl habitat and production? Finally, what can we do as a waterfowling community to further these efforts, and potentially replicate them in other areas?
Glass Half-full
After graduating from college, my wife and I moved to Washington State. Washington has similar water challenges to my home state of Oregon: wet on the west side of the Cascade Mountains and dry on the east. Snow in the Cascades provides a water resource that is released gradually to supply farmers and communities with much of the spring and summer water they need for their crops and to recharge aquifers, while also providing a critical source of cold, clean water for salmon making their way up the Columbia River and its tributaries.
In recent years, even the wetter Western Washington has experienced droughts, desperately-low river flows, tree die-offs, and the infamous “heat dome” bringing temperatures over 110 in areas that rarely see prolonged 90-degree-plus temperatures. But, the drier Eastern Washington has sometimes had it worse: salmon runs dying from infection in rivers with swimming-pool-like temperatures; croplands left fallow due to insufficient water for irrigation; and, communities cutting back on water usage to keep the taps flowing.
Washington is in a better situation than Northern California; we get a fair bit more rain here, and some places are temperate rainforests. However, we cannot ignore what we’re seeing at Lower Klamath and Tule Lake refuges and wonder if our area is next. We have more water here today, but with changing climate and increasing demand, it could all change within a generation.
How is Washington Managing its Water Resources - and its Benefits to Duck Hunters
So, what are water resource managers doing to deliver water to those who need it, and how are those resources being conserved in the face of a changing climate?
The Columbia River Basin in the Pacific Northwest is one of the largest rivers in North America by volume. The River is the lifeblood of the PNW and Washington State, providing electricity through hydroelectric dams, hundreds of thousands of salmon, and water for farmers, communities, and duck hunters. To better utilize this resource cutting through the arid scablands of the eastern half of Washington, the federal government through the Bureau of Reclamation (Bureau) created the Columbia Basin Project (Project) in 1943, which developed extensive water conveyance and storage systems for agricultural use. Like the Bureau project that created the water resource at Tule Lake NWR, the Project transformed hundreds of thousands of acres into some of the most productive farmlands in the country. This provided hundreds of millions of dollars in economic output as well as food - apples, pears, winter wheat, lentils, and other crops - for tables across the country.
In addition, the Project created some of the best easy-access duck hunting in the Pacific Flyway. According to Matt Wilson, Statewide Waterfowl Specialist for the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW), some water from irrigated lands in the Columbia Basin that seeps into groundwater, gets captured in drainage systems, or flows into ditches eventually makes its way into waterways that are then collected to be used by downstream irrigators.
The storage areas for these waters, such as Potholes Reservoir, offer duck hunters ample opportunities to fill their limits with a wide variety of duck and geese species. In fact, more ducks are harvested in Grant County in the heart of the Project area, than anywhere else in the state thanks to the water resources and hunting opportunities the Project created.
But Bureau projects alone are not enough to keep the faucets flowing in the face of a changing climate. And unfortunately, Bureau projects can at times exacerbate the impacts of droughts because we’ve oversubscribed the water resource. So that when droughts do happen - and they often do in Bureau project areas; that’s why the Bureau created these projects in the first place - we see interests come into conflict. And unfortunately, waterfowlers are often left high and dry.
Fortunately, Washington has created a template for collaboration that may be replicated elsewhere in the country. The Yakima River is fed by the snowfields of the Central Cascade Mountains of Washington State, flows into the dramatic Yakima River Canyon, and into the fertile farmlands of the Yakima Valley before joining with the Columbia River just north of the Oregon border. The river provides a critical water source for farmers growing Timothy hay, alfalfa, and pears, among other crops. In fact, approximately two-thirds of hops grown in the US are grown in the Yakima Valley. Cheers to that!
But the river’s water resources are finite. In the face of a changing climate, growing populations in Central Washington, and fish populations at risk of extinction, water resource managers are working diligently to protect this precious resource so that needs are met.
Blueprint for Water Resource Management
For decades, Washington governments, Native American tribes, farmers, and area stakeholders have been working collaboratively to prepare for and invest in infrastructure to mitigate the impacts of climate change as well as to accommodate the rising demand for limited water resources in the Yakima River Basin. Known as the Yakima Basin Integrated Plan (authorized by the Washington State Legislature in 2013), it “initiated a watershed-scale balanced approach to Yakima Basin water supply management” to protect water resources for agriculture, fish, and communities.
Water from the Yakima River system provides a critical water source for waterfowlers as well. According to WDFW, multiple water sources supply its wildlife areas along the Yakima River, including surface water used to fill ponds. While waterfowl habitat and production are not objectives of the Plan, the water conservation measures created and implemented through the Plan without question benefit waterfowl habitat and production, as well as offer waterfowl hunting opportunities.
However, with a changing climate, these water resources may become strained as the region gets less snow, longer stretches of dry weather, and higher temperatures. When combined with an increasing population and growing demand from industrial uses (e.g., server farms supporting the tech industry), the threat to water resources and the people and wildlife species that depend on them is significant. “Taken alone, the system can absorb those impacts,” says Matt Wilson at WDFW. “But taken together, it becomes dramatic very quickly.”
Where Waterfowlers Can Be Part of the Solution
What can waterfowlers do to support similar efforts to those laid out in the Yakima Basin Integrated Plan? First, engage in water resource conservation discussions and find common ground with other interests to preserve water to benefit waterfowl habitat. As we’ve seen with the Yakima Basin Integrated Plan, it is possible for seemingly disparate interests to come together to solve complex problems. In places like Tule Lake and Lower Klamath refuges, waterfowlers can play a part in bringing parties together to solve water resource challenges; they can also bring their political clout to bear to support the implementation of collaborative, creative solutions.
Second, we need to continue to demand investments in habitat conservation - particularly protecting senior water rights - to preserve hunting opportunities as well as provide waterfowl nesting habitat. As the climate changes, waterfowl migration patterns will change to take advantage of new habitats as well as to abandon those that no longer provide the right mix of habitats.
Finally, we must engage with elected officials from our county commissions up through our federal delegations in the House and Senate to bring resources to bear to solve complex water resource problems. Often, projects like the Yakima Basin Integrated Plan need federal resources to complete in addition to federal authorization (e.g., an Army Corps of Engineers permit) to construct. We need elected officials to hear from waterfowlers so that they keep our perspectives in mind when advancing water conservation and habitat restoration legislation.
The timing of climate change impacts is unknown, but in some ways, it is up to us to determine their severity. We have to be conservative by setting aside land and resources if we want to have a future in waterfowl hunting. We need to be part of the solution through listening, bringing our perspectives to identify collaborative solutions, and joining in to support the implementation of those solutions.
My grandparents sold their ranch in Macdoel more than 25 years ago now. I hope to take my two kids to see it someday, and perhaps we’ll be able to drive to the other side of Sheep Mountain so that we can see waterfowl in TR’s first waterfowl refuge. And even better, we’ll be able to make it a stop on a waterfowling road trip through some of America’s most storied waterfowl hunting locations.
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