Host Joel sits down with John Vradenburg, of the USFWS and Jeff Adams, of Delta Waterfowl to discuss a very timely habitat/drought problem at the Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuge Complex, which has seen hunting season closures in recent memory. They discuss the complex dynamics of habitat and the animals that use it to get a clearer picture of the situation and the impact on hunters across the region.
https://deltawaterfowl.org/drought-forces-hunting-closure-on-lower-klamath-and-tule-lake-refuges/
Host Joel sits down with John Vradenburg, of the USFWS and Jeff Adams, of Delta Waterfowl to discuss a very timely habitat/drought problem at the Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuge Complex, which has seen hunting season closures in recent memory. They discuss the complex dynamics of habitat and the animals that use it to get a clearer picture of the situation and the impact on hunters across the region.
https://deltawaterfowl.org/drought-forces-hunting-closure-on-lower-klamath-and-tule-lake-refuges/
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Delta Waterfowl, the Voice of the Duck Hunter podcast. On today's podcast, we shine a spotlight on the Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuge complex in southern Oregon and Northern California. In case you haven't heard, this part of the world has been under the grip of a long term drought that has resulted in habitat management struggles and even hunting season closures on two of the most storied hunting properties in the region. To help me cover today's topic, I'm joined by John Vradenburg of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Jeff Adams, regional event director for Delta Waterfowl. With that introduction, let's bring in today's guests, John Vradenburg and Jeff Adams. Welcome to the Delta Waterfowl Podcast. Thanks for having me. Thanks very much. Yes, sir. Yes, sirs, I have to say yes, sirs. So, John Vradenburg, you are with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. I'm going to read your title. I'm a cheater. Supervisory biologist for the Klamath Basin complex for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. As I understand it, your territory spans, I'm going to say it right like a local Oregon and California, is that right? Yes. Okay. And Jeff Adams why dont you to tell everybody what's your role here at Delta Waterfowl is. Okay. So I'm the regional director for what I call the Intermountain states, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and Nevada, and then also our beautiful golden state of California. That's a big turf. That's a really big turf. You must put a lot of miles on your truck, Jeff. A handful, sir. Yeah. John When? When you call someone like Jeff at Delta, I don't know about you. If you ever chat with them, but you usually hear tires humming in the background when you call him. He generally. Yeah. The mobile office. Yeah. I have to back up there. Oregon. I have a friend who grew up in Oregon, and I'm from Wisconsin. And in Wisconsin we say Oregon. And he just he would always correct me and say it's when you when you're from there, it's Oregon, right? I have it right. You have it right? Yeah. So he'll be proud of me. He'll be proud of me. So, guys, we're, you know, just to not bury the lead. We're going to push it back a little bit. But just for the listeners sake. The reason, John, we asked you to come on here and Jeff, obviously this is an area that professionally you're very interested in. But but, John, the the the West, the Pacific Northwest has been experiencing severe drought that has led to, I guess, a very negative impact on hunting at at least a couple of the national wildlife refuges in the complex that you are, I guess a biologist for supervisory biologist for and we thought it was a good opportunity, one for those that aren't from that part of the world, just to share the challenges that both managers and hunters are facing are going to face. But, but then also for those local to have a better understanding of the situation and just for them to learn how difficult and how challenging this can be. So I appreciate that. But before we get into the to the meat of it, John Vradenburg, can you give us just a little personal background, just a couple of minutes into, you know, where are you from? You know, what, what led you to to be a biologist? Sure. So, yeah, I was actually born in Minnesota and spent a lot of my early life with my grandparents up in northern Minnesota, up by Grand Rapids. We have a cabin up there. So I guess I learned got my love of the outdoors from stomping around in the woods there and walking with my grandpa, chasing grouse and looking at ducks on the lake and fishing and all those things you do as a kid. And then about in third grade, my parents moved to Colorado Springs, Colorado, so I spent my early years loving the woods and then spent the rest of my life stuck in a big city wanting to be outdoors every weekend. And it was hard to get out. So I. I spent a lot of time looking over magazines and reading everything I could about duck hunting and writing down goals of what I wanted to be in my life. And the first goal I wrote down was I wanted to be a waterfowl biologist and I spent, you know, I went through school, got lucky enough to go to the University of Missouri, where I got picked up by Lee Fredrickson as a graduate student doing a wetland project, looking at forested bottomland in southeast Missouri, and then got lucky enough to move back to Colorado with the southern Colorado and the San Luis Valley, which is, you know, kind of Colorado's iconic wetland complexes to do wetland management and from there I was picked up by the Fish and Wildlife Service at Basket El Apache in southern New Mexico, where I sort of specialized in arid wetland systems and and got to travel all over the Western United States and a couple of places internationally to talk about arrid wetland systems. And when the opportunity came up to work in the Klamath Basin, it was one of those once in a lifetime opportunities. I mean, the Klamath Basin is for the Fish and Wildlife Service. It's just sort of a story complex on Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge was the first refuge in the Fish and Wildlife Service established specifically for migratory waterfowl in 1908. There were a couple of other refuges before that, but it was the first, you know, be specifically designated for the purpose of migratory waterbirds and, you know, if you think about it from the context of continental Water bird management that set the template for establishing this amazing refuge system we have across the continent. And so the opportunity to work here and be part of the climate basin was just something I couldn't pass up. And my predecessor, Dave Mouser, had really set a nice template for me to come in and start to do good stuff. And so that's how I got here. And then it's not my background, just a kid. I love ducks and I still love ducks I ike banding them more than chasing them I guess. But yeah, I have to be careful here. Sometimes I get on these tangents, I bite on to some flashy subject and I want to learn more about it. But I arid wetland systems. That sounds like an oxymoron. Tell me a little bit more about that. Yeah, that's what I get from everybody. Arrid systems are those areas that, you know, evaporation and transfer transpiration exceed your annual precipitation. So these are systems that have, you know, really high rates of they eat. And so they tend to, you know, they just they function differently. We have different salinity issues, different water budget challenges. But for a lot of them, you know, they tend to be in these big intermountain basins where you get this like massive snowfall that happens off site and then you get this delivery of water to these basins. And they're really you know, they're really cool systems. So they're either a lot of them are either basins or riparian systems like I was working at New Mexico was on along the Rio Grande. But for these Mid-Continent areas, they're just really essential for getting birds, you know, from the breeding grounds to the wintering grounds and back and forth. But, you know, the basin, the Klamath Basin, just like the Samples Valley or even the Salt Lake system where where Jeff is up by, you know, these were really unique systems because they could meet the they could meet the annual lifecycle requirements across all annual life cycles. So we tend to have the abundance of species across abundance of life cycle cycles across the year. I mean, they're just super productive, super reliable. Well, ecosystems. And you know, to put into context, we don't have many of them. You know, there's just not many of these big Intermountain basins. And for the Pacific Flyway, you have three of them. You have the Salt Lake Klamath or Sonet in the Klamath Basin in the Central Valley. That's what we have. And all of those are seeing the same pressures that we're seeing here in the Klamath. I mean, water, water scarcity is definitely compromising wetland habitat across the western United States. So so you're work in New Mexico transferred directly, more or less to the situation you're in right now? Somewhat. I mean, a little different. I mean, that was a riparian system and we didn't have organic soils like we do here. I mean, the these basins tend to have really rich, abundant organic soils, a big peat layers. And so different wetland processes, different, you know, everything responds differently in organic system. So the Middle Rio Grande was a little different, a lot flashier and much more of a staging area than, you know, it was just available during that, you know, fall winter, spring migration period. Then it would dry more here we have wetlands across season than most years. Okay. Now, that's a really good introduction. I do want to learn a little bit more about the complex, but just to be balanced here. And Jeff, I want to ask you real fast here. So, Jeff, you are a regional director. So you're you have a territory that you described and you manage, recruit volunteers both for fundraising. But then also one of the awesome things about Delta is that our chapters are allowed to do local projects with a portion of the funds that they raise. And so you're a real boots on the ground guy. What is the interest, Jeff, for this Northern California, southern Oregon, what's that? What is the interest from our, I guess, our constituent in that part of the world? It is massive for our volunteers and for the guests who go to our banquets and other hunters. It is a huge destination for early season hunters to go to. In fact, I heard from several committee members and I'm say mostly in the Central Valley who are planning on going up and hunting Tulelake for the early season this year. And you know, when the news come out, it's just, holy cow, now what do we do? Where do we go? You know, we mentioned Steve DeBerry, Steve DeBerry and and other volunteers we have in the Eagle Point, Medford area of Southern Oregon. They've they rely on this area for the bulk of their hunting without traveling great distances. And so these these refuges that John is fortunate enough to take care of are not only absolute critical stopovers for migratory birds going north and south a couple of times a year, they're critical for the hunting public on the Pacific coast. I've heard it said that as things have gradually gotten worse and worse with the drought and other factors over the last 10 to 12 years, I hear of hunters talk about how the birds, when they cannot stop and molt and spend that pre staging time, if you will, at the Klamath Falls marshes. Their next stop, very honestly, is the Butte sinks and the rice fields of Northern California and then even working a little bit further south into the beautiful refuges and state owned complexes that they have in California from the Sacramento, Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge to so many others all the way down to YOLO. And the problem that happens, guys, when it comes to hunters and even for ducks in the fall migration. And John, you guys are both biologists. I am not. So you can correct me if I'm way off base here, but my understand from our volunteers is the problem is that as soon as triggers start getting pulled in, the butte sinks and what we used to have for flooded rice fields, but we don't even have those now, the ducks then move on and head on down towards Sacramento and YOLO. If there's water there, which there won't even be water there when the season starts this year. So ultimately what this does is it puts more pressure on the ultimate wintering grounds for the Pacific Flyway, which is the Central Valley. John Does that make sense? Yeah. I mean, what we're seeing is, you know, it's it's a challenging situation when you look at, you know, waterbird ecology and cumulative effects and all that stuff that happen, you know, as as birds can't stage, they're in poor body condition when they get to the wintering grounds. If they can't overwinter good, they're in poor condition going back north. If they can't get good resources going back north, it's just put in birds. Birds are constantly in an energetic deficit at this point. And when you look at a year like this where, you know, we're going to have a relatively good fall flight, they're going to hit the Mid-Continent. We don't have any of the historic staging areas in line ready for those birds. And then we look at the Central Valley being in such bad condition, this in this year. I mean, they're they're talking in places where, you know, 80% reduction in rice availability. Those birds are more than likely going to end up in Mexico. And that's a we're excited that monsoons have been good in Mexico, but we don't know, you know, what that energetic demand is going to be on birds just having to make these bigger hops that all the grocery stores have been shut down from Canada to Mexico. So it's it's a little bit rougher year for those guys this year. Yeah, it's a it's a it's it's a tale of many problems from the sound of it. John, let's go back up the flyway, let's say to where you are and I'd like to learn and share with the listener. Had the listener learn a little bit more about this Klamath Basin complex. But let's look at more a little bit more of the structure of the US Fish and Wildlife Service. There are different regions, so the United States has broken into regions the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service regions, and then inside you have complexes, you have wetland management districts. How is California that that that Northern California, southern Oregon area divided? What region is do you just have refuges in that complex? Are there other types of federal property or interest in in the complex? Yeah, we do. So California sort of that the boundary between Region one and Region eight, Region one being the Pacific Northwest and we're the Southern Pacific Office, but the Klamath Basin, because of the watershed and the, you know, several of the species that are linked to the Klamath watershed region, it comes a little bit up into the Klamath Basin and compasses most of the Klamath River watershed. And so outside of the refuges there is strong interest. You know, we have a we have a endangered Species office based out of the Klamath Falls and Region eight, and then we also have a a newly developed fish hatchery getting established for endangered species recovery. So yeah, we do have other interests in the climate basins for sure. You know, water birds are a big issue and fish are a big issue. Some of our endemic desert fish species are an issue here for the Fish and Wildlife Service. So there's a lot a lot going on related to resource management in the Klamath Basin. And then we we work really collaboratively with the refuges in the Central Valley. So I animals look at as we're we're certainly northern extension of the Central Valley. And you know, by the way, we were sort of established and developed. I mean we one of our management objectives is to stage as many birds as possible in the Central Valley to delay that migration into the Central Valley to help prevent depredation issues. And as the basin has become drier and drier, we're staging fewer and fewer birds. You know, pre pre 2000, I would say. I mean, we were staging 80% of the migratory population of waterfowl coming down and before they would get into the Central Valley and that would help offset, you know, that early migration and really the depredation in the rice production areas in Central Valley, and that's just getting harder and harder to do. And you know, most of the white fronts just pass over the planet. Bass Now the majority of early Pintos, early green lines all bypassed the Klamath Basin. But yeah, there's a lot going on in terms of resource management in the climate Basin for sure. Okay. So you had said we talked about this before I hit the record button, but the Klamath Basin complex, six National wildlife refuges, three of them in Oregon, three in California. So. Right. Yep. Yep. And then for you as the supervisory biologist for that entire complex, those entire six refuges you had mentioned before, that you have other staff, are there other biologists that you manage to work with? Can you share with the listener a little bit about that situation? Yep. So I have a wildlife biologist and then I have an integrated pest management specialist that does all of our invasive work and helps oversee our farming program. And then we have a biotech that helps with water management and invasive species as well as we try to get several seasonal employees during the summer to help support primarily the invasive species problems. And then if we get lucky enough and can get funding, they try to have at least one or two graduate students on the complex in any one year just helping us. You know, I'm always trying to keep science at the forefront of what we do and try to keep on the edge of science and and keep pushing that forward. And the best way to do that is collaborating with universities or USGS and bringing graduate students in. So right now we actually we have one graduate student finishing up a sage grouse study. We have another graduate student working on a seed bank study and another one that's just getting started on a yellow rail, sort of a perennial wetland graduate study. So we just try to keep our hands in science all the time. But it it gets harder, harder with conditions changing. It's harder to come up with a graduate study that, you know, you have assurance of resources throughout their period of study. For example, the one student we have doing the seed bank, she was originally funded to do an overwater nesting waterbird study and with the loss of habitat, we just didn't have any habitat for her to do that. So we switched to a seed bank study just trying to get, you know, keep her going and and get some new, new data for science. Okay. So most complexes or refuges in certainly do they have a goal, a mission, a purpose. And you had mentioned before that staging, you know, basically staging, meaning kind of holding migratory ducks and geese. I've heard of this area having a good reputation as as a breeding as a breeding ground as well. Is that do you have a do you manage any of these individual refuges or the complex for, for breeding waterfowl as well. We do. And you know, I guess that that probably deserves a little bit of history on the climate, just to put that into perspective. So I mean, it's important to recognize that, you know, prior to 1900s this was a huge wetland basin. I mean, wetlands defined this landscape. There were six really big wetland complexes you could call a wetlands last lake complexes that covered southern Oregon and northern California was roughly 350,000 acres of semi-permanent wetland and about 140,000 acres of seasonal wet meadow habitat. And so the lower Klamath, specifically, like I described when when it was established, it was an 80,000 acre lake, perennial wetland lake. And that establishment really came about because of the naturalist named William Findley that was sent down to the Klamath to sort of document, you know, the extent of wetlands and the bird diversity and what really stuck in Findlay's mind was the abundance of colonial waterbirds. It wasn't even waterfowl that he was intrigued by. There were millions of waterfowl, but it was this colonial over water nesting waterbird population that was here. So lots of grebes, ibis pelicans, cormorants, terns, things like that. And so as as the landscape changed and you know, wetlands were slowly converted over to two different land uses to the lake and Lower Klamath especially became critical because they were the last big remnant that that once massive wetland footprint. And so our purpose is really revolve around all of those. Yes. Staging is what we're known for because it was such, you know, in the 1950s we were staging 7 million birds in the climate basin. It had only one peak during the migration. But the way these wetlands function, they're perennial wetlands for the most part. And so breeding has always been a huge part of this refuge complex. I mean, we produce a lot of water birds, a lot of waterfowl specifically. And I would say even more importantly than the production that happened, we are the primary molting location for all of those birds that breed in the Central Valley, especially California mallards, garhwal and cinnamon teal as well as birds that are breeding throughout the southern Oregon, northeastern California area. You know, when I first got here at any one time and we could have 2 to 300000 molting birds on the Tully Lake complex. And we are a huge, huge molting area. And that for for California specifically, that's just such a critically limiting period of time for those those nesting birds in California. So they come up here, we have really abundant, submerged aquatic vegetation. So that means a lot of invertebrates. So for those birds that are just going through molt, it's really a protein rich system. They can get up here, they can molt fast. We have a lot of tolerance and habitat so they can get out of the sun. So it's it's critical for that. So, you know, I, I would say, you know, when you read the establishing purposes of the refuge, it's for nesting and migrating waterbirds. And that's really if we can have perennial wetlands, we're going to produce a lot of birds, but we're going to support a lot of birds during the migration period as well. It's quite a multipurpose complex. It serves a guess based on the time of the year, very critical support mechanism for for birds in the Pacific Flyway. It's interesting you had mentioned you said at one point it would hold the complex would hold 80% of was it the Pacific Flyway ducks and geese migrating? That's incredible. Yeah. They all they all kind of come through here. I mean, we're one of those. We're like the plant. I mean, we're one of those energetic bottlenecks on the landscape where you you have these birds coming out of the really wetland abundant northern breeding grounds, and then there's just not much wetland habitat. So they come out of Salt Lake, they go through Malheur Lake and they all pinch right here going through the Klamath Basin and then they spread out. You know, it's just like that neck of the hourglass. We are we are the neck right here we are. We are generally really abundant and very energetically lacking requirements on the landscape. And and so we're we're critical to helping birds make it from the north end of the the flyway to the south and then back up. Okay. So some of the self-study I did before getting on this conversation was that complex is about a quarter million acres in size. Is that right? Yep. That's that's impressive. So obviously things have changed. We're going to focus in on that change here in just a second. But what is the complex relationship to hunting? Has hunting been, of course, on refuges? There are areas that hunting by definition is not allowed, but most refuges that I'm familiar with at least allow hunting in certain locations are certain conditions. Can you describe the relationship to hunting inside this complex? Yeah, I mean, I don't think it would be an understatement to say that the refuges in the Climate Basin are an iconic destination location for waterfowl from a, you know, I mean, as a kid, like I said, I got interested in the Klamath when I was a kid because you couldn't pick up, you know, field and stream Outdoor Life Ducks Unlimited, any of those magazines without an article on hunting in the Climate Basin. And for hunters in California, like Jeff had said, this was the place everybody came to start their season and people traveled from they came from all over the place to hunt the climate basin historically. And I mentioned to you guys before the podcast started, the little town of Tully Lake here was said to be the biggest depot for Winchester Ammunition south of the Mississippi River, mean they would bring it in by the railcar loads because there were so many hunters coming into the basin and there's old videos and stuff that you can find on YouTube where there's a highway that, you know, we call it state line Highway, it splits Oregon and California. I mean, there would be hundreds of people in campers and trailers camping along that highway throughout the season just to hunt these refuges. And it was a huge economic input to our community. You know, it drove a lot of, you know, agriculture was the big driver in the community, but outside of the agricultural period, that was a tremendous economic input for the small businesses, restaurants, sporting goods stores, hardware stores, hotels, you know, any lodging. And there was even there were so many hunters here that there was a a down industry in Tully like they had I think it was seven or eight plucking plants that hunters would bring their their ducks in and they would harvest them and use that down to feed the down industry. And the last one just went out of business just a few years ago. It was actually on an episode of Dirty Jobs with Mike Rhoades. They were they were talking ducks on that. That place. So it was it was just huge. It was a huge economic part of our community. It's it's it's part of the fabric of the Klamath Basin. You you don't meet somebody in the climate basin that's not about color or isn't attached to duck hunting in some way. You know, it is it's just it's part of everybody's DNA in this basin. Well well, despite the sad story, that sounds like it's my kind of place, right? It's a cold place. Yeah. What is it? So he said, So a destination hunting location. What is it that drew people? Was it access? Was it a diversity of duck species? The just the sheer size of the of of the fall flight coming through that location. What is it that people would find of interest? I think it was all of those things. I mean, it was massive numbers of birds. It was an incredible amount of access. I mean, we have so much public land. I mean, just on the refuges alone, when we were at so capacity, I mean between Lower Klamath and to the lake, when you're talking about mentally lake alone is 15,000 acres of wetlands and lower Klamath when it was, you know, in its heyday was another 15 to 20000 acres of perennial wetlands. And then you start throwing on the flooding of agriculture and the flooding of seasonal wetlands, and you could be looking at, you know, 45, 50,000 acres of wetland habitat available, you know, for the most part available to hunters. It was early in the season, so it's generally two or three weeks before the Southern California season started. So guys could get a jump on their hunting. It's just a spectacular landscape on top of that. I mean, we're surrounded by by mountains to the south. We have, you know, Shasta Mountain, which, you know, was 14,000 feet and has a glacier on it. So it's always these like capped mountains around there. And it's just an amazing landscape. And, you know, when you layer in, you know, four or 5 million birds buzzing around the basin all morning long, you know, the stories that the old timers talk about of of this place, you know, they nobody even went out to hunt until 8:00 in the morning because the birds would disperse out of the refuge and feed in all the grain fields around the refuge. And then the mallards would start coming back in nine or ten and guys would boat out to these big holes in the Tula Marshes and have these, you know, amazing mallard hunts, you know. So I think it was I think it was a lot of that. I think there's there's something to be said about traditional locations. You know, we were you know, you could argue we were kind of like Stuttgart to Pacific Flyway Hunters. We were just one of those places that was reliable. It was known for waterfowl hunting. There was tradition and outfitters and resources to partake in it. And it's just like I said, it's part of the DNA of this place. You can't go into a building and there's not ducks mounted and guns hanging from people's doors and pitchers of, you know, pitchers that people got at some banquet somewhere just on every restaurant, every insurance store. It's just it's I mean that the truly like high school mascot is The Hunger Games. It's not about the about the community. So yeah, you know it's a part of the community when when it kind of becomes the school mascot. Yeah. For the local school. Now that's interesting. So John and Jeff, one of the I've always known that I wanted to be a biologist or a wildlife manager and waterfowl as a person always struck my interest simply because of just how dynamic wetland systems are. And one of the things that I've been known to say is I've always grown up in the north where there's winter and wetlands freeze and you know, it becomes a pretty scarce landscape when you're talking about, well, birds in particular. But but also, you know, most forms of of wildlife. And so so waterfowl have always had that that I guess that attraction. But as a manager I was drawn to waterfowl one as an opportunity to give back to that resource that I cared so much about. But the other one, try as you might, you'll never figure out waterfowl, you'll never figure out waterfowl, waterfowl populations, wetland systems, and mostly because things are always changing just when you think you might have it figured out. Mother Nature throws some something your way, you know, and, and changes your understanding changes the way I guess waterfowl populations interact with the landscape. And it sounds like your part of the world is no stranger to that. In that try as you might, the world is changing around you. Jeff I heard you say, John, I heard you say that, you know, you're talking about things changing for the worse, what, ten, 15, 20 years ago. What is the time, you know, for this modern day story of of lack of water, drought, I guess, pressures on these water systems? When did things, I guess, in modern times start to take a turn for the worse? JOHN Yeah. So, you know, like I said, the 1950s kind of the kind of that target area when things were we're still working, you know, the, the basin had went through most of its, most of its big, you know, human caused modifications that, that altered the landscape. But it was still working. There was a lot of water on the landscape. It was flowing, you know, through the through the basin, through the refuges. And it's important to recognize the two refuges we're talking about sit at the bottom end of of a really big irrigation system. And so they're really reliant on any of that return flow that comes through the system. And you know, I started out saying these were these big peat systems and these big peat systems are super, you know, I like to say they're super resilient to climatic and hydrological change because they have the capacity to store a ton of water and get you through really dry periods. And so as long as there was water flowing across the landscape, the peat soils were, you know, storing a lot of water and there was always an abundance of water coming back out of the system, flowing through the refuges and then flowing back out to to the Klamath River. And that was really working up until about the 2000. And, you know, 2000 is kind of 2000 once the Amazon, the Climate Basin, because that's when we had the first, you know, really big watershed off in the Klamath Basin due to a lot of concerns with an atmosphere and water just wasn't making it to the climate that was changing the water quality. The water temperatures and in Adams fish were really getting hit hard by a lot of those. Those changes in the ecology of the system, you know, so there was a lot of things started to change in terms of of water management. And at that time, you know, I mean, 2000 is also when we started to recognize the climate was starting to change pretty dramatically in the Pacific Northwest, we were really you know, it's interesting, in the Pacific Northwest, we have historically a very consistent wet, dry cycle that spans about 20 years. It's, you know, multi-decadal cycle. We go in through this kind of big drought and deluge cycle, really similar to the prairie potholes, where we got really extreme on one end and really extreme wet on the other end. But with climate change that is becoming prolonged, the periods between wet and the periods between dry are becoming longer and they're becoming much more variable. And so if snowpack starts to change in in the Cascades and around the climate basin, that really affects the amount of water coming into the system. And in a modern system, water is allocated to a lot of different users, refuges being one. And so as that that becomes tighter, it's harder to have, you know, that reliability of water in the landscape. So as the landscape starts to dry, that resiliency starts to shift. And that's what we're, you know, and what I'm seeing on the refuge is that's what we're really starting to see. There's there's less water being spread across the landscape and you're taking that resilience, that nature really built into the system. Can you removing that resilience. And so that's where we're at right now with what the what the drought has done. You know, when we we try to characterize the impacts of drought right now, these really extreme drought conditions have really compromised the availability of water to be spread out amongst all of those uses that that have a right to use the water and need for that water. And as you you know, you take that supply down, there's less going to those environmental benefits, you know, like storage in the ground or return flows that come back to the rivers and make it to the refuges. And that's where we're at right now. So what you know, what we need is we need water back in the system. We need you know, we need that climate to shift back to that that wet cycle. And, and put the abundance back in that helps keep the resilience on the landscape. And and that's a lot harder to plan for because we are so dry and I really classify it as the Klamath Basin as a whole is getting pushed towards desert ification right now because, you know, similar to the prairies, as you start to you start to squeeze all that moisture out of those organic soils, you know, they, they compress, they mineralized, they start to, you know, put off carbon, put off phosphorous, they they become less productive and you squeeze out those natural processes that made them really available to store, have that water storage capacity. And you know so it's it's a lot harder to see what the future is going to look like until we get a better prediction or what water availability is going to look like in the future. It's the world that you live in. Is is really foreign to me. You know, I think that not to get political, but I you know, I grew up watching a lot of westerns. I think I've watched every John Wayne movie and water or I guess competing for water. That's a centuries old discussion. And so kind of what you're saying, there's yes, the landscape has changed. Land convert, you know, converted wetlands over time, cropland, whatever it may be. So so on one hand, so it's competing interests for the water, a growing competition for for I guess the access to water coupled with with drought and then like you said, think sounds like if you're in a drought, the current trend is to stay in it longer. Yeah. Would that be okay to back up just for the sake of the listener? Give listener an example. When you say an address is fish, what are what different types of fish species are you referring to? So we're talking about, you know, any of those fish that, you know, use fresh and saltwater environment. So the salmon species, steelhead, some of the lampreys and you know, there's several other smaller fish species that they use the climate that are natural as fish species, you know, and they come out of the Pacific and make a big run up, big spawning run up the Klamath into its tributaries, and then in the upper basin we also have endemic desert fish species that that use these wetlands and lake systems as well. That's really complicated. I think it's kind of one of those remember learning when if you're going to if you're going to tinker with an engine, you kind of need to save all the parts, you know. So for thinking of kind of a mechanic analogy and I think as a as a biologist or manager, wow, there's just so many competing interests for both human and and I guess natural systems interests that, you know, I don't know. That's just amazing to think of, You know, more of the desert fish species, the salmon. Now the salmon, the concern there is is just flows of, I guess, of the rivers that they're that they're using for travel and breeding, I suppose, Right? Yeah, It's a it's a lot of things. I mean, it's water temperature, it's water quality, it's flow. You know, there's there's a lot of things tied to those riverine systems that the fish coming out of the Pacific require. And so there's a lot going on. And I'm definitely not a fish biologist, so I don't want to dabble in there. Are there? I just like to catch them. John Yeah, but it you know, it's an important resource culturally and economically and just similar to our, you know, what we have going on up here in the basin, there's there's cultural and economic needs related, all this stuff. Okay, So water is managed. It's not managed in my part of the world. I think I know of one person, maybe two, that pumps water in either of North Dakota or South Dakota, one, maybe two. But in other parts of the world, the Deep South, your part of the world, it's it's commonplace. So it is super, super foreign to me. But so in your part of the world, people can buy water rights. They can buy water allocations. How how what is the the complexes relationship to water and you said were supplied, but do you have any guaranteed access to water or receipts of water at the complex? At this point? We we do have water rights, but that word guaranteed is not necessarily the best word for our water rights, you know, primarily due to supply and other demands. We you know, so we do have access to some water rights. We do have some water that's allocated to us in the winter. And we do have options for water purchases that we're we are looking into. California Waterfowl Association recently just purchased a water rights for us. It's a it's a small water, right, but an important water right in terms of where it can go to and the habitat it can provide. But the word guaranteed is definitely not, not a word we use for water when it comes to the refuges. And it's, you know, it's, it's really complicated and probably something we can't get into and podcast, but yeah, at this point, I mean, and I would say we're not the only ones, I mean I would say every water user tied to water in the Klamath would say the same thing. The guarantee of water is, is not better. And that's, you know, primarily driven to that shift that we're seeing and, you know, precipitation patterns at this time right now, we can't guarantee what doesn't exist. I would imagine, as is probably the case when when many feed at the trough, somebody has to feed last. Yeah. And someone might run out. So. So this is extreme drought. How long has this recent drought period been in existence? Yeah. So we've been in sort of a prolonged drought for, you know, arguably the past 20 years, but the past three years has been by far the most extreme we've seen. I mean, we we've went you know, we've we've had one average year of precipitation last year was kind of sub average. But the previous two years, I mean, we were sub 50% snowpack in the mountains. And combined with that, we're getting warmer in the spring. And so the release of that water is happening much earlier. And so when you get that release earlier, some of those natural processes that we're talking about are really hard to engage because you may have frost in the soil, so you're not getting that that bank storage that you would get in your riparian corridors. The flows may be low enough that you're not getting flood events that are inundating floodplains, and so you're not getting that kind of storage. And those are really important. You know, you want those flood plains to inundate so they get saturated and then they help that flow maintain longer through the year. And so, you know, the earlier things happen, it just changes how the system processes water and that that makes a big difference in what's available to be used. You know, if it all comes out early, it's gone. And you really want that snowpack to stay in the mountains as long as possible. You want it to melt really slow, you want it to release for as long a period of time as possible and you want it to come down in a volume that engages those floodplains and and stores the water where nature intended it to be stored so it can, you know, leak out throughout the summer and help maintain those conditions. And you know what I mean? I didn't think that's where the wetlands were really critical in the climate basin because they had such water storage capacity during the flood period. But because they were so big and their wetland footprint was so large, they had tremendous capacity to get us through those drought periods. And so a lot of times you hear, you know, like you'll hear wetlands talked about as like the kidney of the landscape because they help clean water when the climate they were the heart of the landscape. You know, they they were the heart, they were the kidneys and they were the lungs of this landscape. And so when you you know, you start to remove critical parts of your body, you know, that things start to happen. You know, you you don't have kidneys. You don't have a heart, you don't have a lung. You're not going to be around a whole lot longer. And so that's that's where we, you know, we we kind of have to get back to that recognition of of the importance of wetlands in a lot of times that gets hard to do because, you know, everywhere wetlands have been on the landscape has as we marched forward and progress marched forward, wetlands were always looked at these as these impediments to progress, you know, these kind of wastelands on the landscape. And we just didn't have the nuance of understanding the role wetlands played to all of our health and well-being. And we really got to get that back into the conversation if we want to see these values that, you know, we're talking about here on this podcast. I mean, if we want waterfowl back on the landscape, we've got to get wetlands back on the landscape first. Then, you know, you talked about, you know, being interested in waterfowl, you know, as a waterfowl manager, and I would say that's what kind of pushed me into wetlands. I wanted to be a waterfowl biologist so bad and I realized early on that my statistical prowess was not going to be strong enough to be a very good waterfowl biologist, and I really got interested in wetlands early on and that was what I saw as my way of giving back. You know, if I can, if I can produce really productive, really abundant wetlands that are available at the right time, I can do a lot of good for migratory water birds. And so that's where I found my niche as well as I really like paring what I know about wetlands with with the waterfowl. And in the West that's a lot more challenging conversation because, you know, like, like we talked about arid systems, we have this high evapotranspiration rate and so a lot of times when you start packing water on the landscape, it's viewed as sort of a waste of water because of the evaporative loss. But we got to remember all of the ecological processes that come back with that water sitting on the landscape from water quality, water storage, groundwater, recharge, you know, attenuating the stream flows, providing habitat for fish to spawn, a lot of things that are tied to wetlands in these Western systems that that are easily overlooked when we're dealing with challenging times. Okay. It's a really fascinating situation, a fascinating location, fascinating back story. And you've done a fantastic job of kind of painting that picture for us. It's September 26. I understand that hunting waterfowl hunting will open up. I guess the youth season already came and went the Youth Weekend here last weekend. Yes, we have. California was two weeks ago, California was this past weekend. Oregon was Oregon this past weekend. Yeah. Okay. So I guess kind of bringing this all maybe to an end, Not to an end. We're not done yet. Is that you said that hunting seasons for everyone else will start here right around that 1st of October. Yeah, but I guess what caught the news, which we talked about early on, is that two of the refuges, two of the storied hunting locations in this complex, will not have waterfowl hunting this fall. Lack of water. What is the obvious? Probably the obvious is that one, the lack of water. What is it that led to the to the closure of waterfowl hunting at those two refuges? Yeah. So at this point in time, both those refuges are 100% dry, There's no water on either of those refuges. And so, you know, for us to manage these systems properly and to manage waterfowl populations, you know, one we need water on the landscape and to have a hunting program we have to have an equitable distribution of sacred habitat and hunting habitat. So those, those two things in combination sort of, you know, were the nail in the coffin for waterfowl sitting on the refuge this year, you know, So we, we need to start getting water back on there, We need to get it, you know, enough of it that we can provide that sanctuary to honeybee habitat. And it wasn't just waterfowl. I mean, I think that's important. We had to shut down our upland game hunting as well because the habitat quality for our pheasant population isn't there either. I mean with this drought we've lost most of our, our upland habitat and so you know those, those birds have had a tough time as well. So they're very low. You know, we did have a little bit of water this spring, so there was a little bit of waterfowl production and a little bit of as a production that both refuges were were completely dry by middle of August. So we didn't, you know, we didn't have malting, we didn't have we're not going to have any staging. There is still some water in the basin. Upper Klamath Lake, this is a large lake and it does have some wetland habitat associated with it and where the refuges are out of there, we we are still providing hunting access to those, those refuges as well as Klamath Mar Marsh, which is just upstream of the refuge. But it is, it's about 80% dry at this point as well. So it's had a big impact on, you know, hunter access and you know, it's going to affect other birds migrate, you know, because now we're going to take the way we were able to spread hunters out on the landscape with the refuges. They're all going to concentrate in those areas that do have habitat now and those birds are going to see, you know, a lot heavier hunting pressure in places that they haven't experienced that kind of hunting pressure. So, you know, the likelihood of any kind of big staging numbers is is probably pretty low at this point, just due to habitat availability and pressure that it's a it's a pretty simple discussion. It's quite cut and dry. If you don't have water, you really can't offer waterfowl hunting, particularly in a refuge situation like that. It that's that's amazing. You had mentioned you said that that the birds that the other refuges might experience or will will or might experience higher hunting pressure. I would imagine that that pressure must be managed though only certain areas certain day, certain numbers of people. Is that the case. Yeah. On the that refuges we have on the Upper Lake which, which you know they're large but by you know, measurement of the lake area they're relatively small and we do have sanctuary built within those, but a big chunk of some of those refuges are dry, but most of our sanctuary area of those refuges is dry. So, so the habitat that is available right now is open to hunting. And then most of the lake itself is open to hunting. And so there's very little sanctuary area around the lake. And so, you know, guys do have access there. They're going to be able to hunt up there. And so the pressure will be higher than it has been. You know, one of the mitigating factors on the lake has always been, you know, one, it was a lot easier access on the refuge, just a lot of walk in hunting. You don't necessarily need a boat or a big blind and stuff. So there's going to be some limitations to guys that can run on the lake just because it's a lot more gear intensive hunting program up there. But it's still going to shift. You know, some of those folks that would have come up to the refuge, kind of like to the lake, have the equipment, and they may just move north of the upper Klamath and the lake instead. But a lot of it's unknown right now. It could be self-limiting and a lot of people don't hunt and the birds do fine. But the habitat quality is the other issue up there. You know, we just don't have the abundance of seasonal wetland habitat, you know, So the food resources are relatively low and it's much more of a permanent type wetland setting. And so we do have some submerged aquatics, but because they don't experience the same kind of drought on some of these other more perennial systems do, it's a different type of real submerged aquatic. So we don't have a lot of sight or watching grass up there, which the birds prefer. So it's going to be hard to say. I mean, we're I still expect we'll see, you know, significant birds trying to stage on Upper Klamath Lake, but I don't think they're going to stay very long. I think it will be a pretty rapid outmigration, you know, one or two days and then they're they're on their way. But we will see. But I mean, just to put things into perspective, I mean, like like I said, you know, in the 1950s, we were seeing 5 million to 7 million birds staging on, you know, Lower Klamath and to the lake. Last year's peak migration between Tully Lake and Lower Klamath was 1% of those historic numbers, and they were 4% of our long term mean, you know, so it's already even with some wetland habitat. I mean we still had one sump that had water on it until the lake and that one wetland on lower. And then there was some flooded agricultural that happened associated with Lower Klamath and we were able to hold some birds. But you know, 1% and with limited water, I can only expect it's going to be, you know, minimal to no birds this year. Staging in the Klamath Basin. Well, John, out of respect for your time, I have but two more things that I'd like to cover. Jeff, thanks for being sitting there. So patient Jeff, I won't let you speak for the duck hunters in that area that that you know so for those Steve to berries a guy that we both know, you know way better than I do but I know Steve also. Hi, Steve. Where will hunters in that area go? Duck hunt. Is there somewhere else they can go or what are their other options? You know, hunters in California are really hunting Idaho more and more. They're beginning to explore our state. There's not a whole lot that there is left due to the drought in the upper Sacramento area unless you are a part of an exclusive club that has a will and you can pump your own water right onto your landscape. But then it's it's expensive, you know, it's super expensive. Hunters are going further north up into the Columbia River, trying to find opportunities up there and even further up into the Puget Sound and whatnot. But this is a this is a Western wide drought that affects everywhere up here. You know, hunters have a store historically come to Utah with the idea of hunting the marshes along the Great Salt Lake and the Great Salt Lake itself. And this isn't even a destination they can do that with anymore because of the hardly any water we have left in the great Salt Lake. There's only two marinas on the Great Salt Lake, and they're both 100% closed because they are bone dry. All of the slips are sitting on the ground. You can I don't even know how airboats, the airboats that historically access the Great Salt Lake. There's no way for them to get to the Great Salt Lake until it snows. We have ice on the ground and they can run on snow and ice to eventually find water. So hunters in California and southern Oregon, the western part of Oregon and and Washington, you know, they're just traveling further to find those hunting experiences they have in the past. The Snake River in Idaho is just clogged with hunters from everywhere. And so sadly, it's it's just getting fewer and far between where you can find those hunts that you relied on, especially in the early season. And I'll say here in Utah, we're fortunate because some of the monsoons this summer have in the month of August have trickled up here to the north part of the state. And with those agriculture returns to the Bear River and other small rivers have been able to bless some of the some of the freshwater complexes we have. So there's a little bit more water in those than would have been expected as our season starts this coming Saturday. And our new season happened a couple of weeks ago. But, you know, Joel, and unfortunately, hunters are just having to go further and farther to find those hunting experiences and it's costing them more to do so. And sadly, we have a super terrible economy that is costing them more on top of it. So here in the West, I told you this before and John, I don't know if it's this way where you folks live, but I told John or I've told Joel a couple of years ago that here in my neck of the woods, our irrigation companies still hire people that are referred to as Detroiters. There are people literally employed driving the canals in Detroit, banks of our counties making sure farmers are only using the water for the allotted time that they've been allowed for those certain days. It is that drastic here and it's just crazy. It is crazy. It's nuts for me to drive through the upper Sacramento Valley. And again, this is just two weeks ago and see rice fields that were never even planted this year because farmers are only allowed to burn 10% of their acreage out there because of environmental concerns with the smoke. And so if they can't float their rice, this hatch from those rice fields is so thick that, you know, they they have no choice but to not plant and just collect from crop insurance. So I'm probably going on way too much. But this is a topic that's near and dear to each one of us here in the Pacific Flyway. And it truly has an effect on every one of us, regardless of the way that you pursue the ducks that we all enjoy so much. So it sounds like there's no way to avoid the pain. You're just going to feel it. And and that's unfortunate. It's my hope that people will this out, you know. But but I understand. I understand. That's you know, here in North Dakota it's 3.79 cent gas, which is down from where it was. But that's still pretty darn expensive. It costs me over $90 to fill up my truck the other day. And yeah, it does make me think about, you know, how far I'm going to drive, where I'm going to go and pursue things more locally. And so it it does. We all have decisions to make. And unfortunately for some it made me not to duck Hunt this year, which would be pretty sad but so John it sounds like some for if we're looking to the future there's part of that that helpless we just need to wait and you just said it's you know hopefully the water comes back. There's more snowpack in the mountains and there's nothing you can do about that. That is literally the wait and see approach and hopefully it's sooner than later. But you did say that CWA bought some water allocations for the complex and you did say, I guess before the podcast conversation started it is that maybe the one thing that you can do is maybe pursue a funding source that would allow the complex to to purchase additional water allocations. Is that something that that you can speak to? Yeah. I mean, word we're definitely interested in that option. You know, any water we can get is valuable to the refuge. And you know, if there were people willing to sell water to the refuge, we would definitely be open to that. And I think there's there's that's in the works. You know, I think people are talking about that and discussing definitely at a higher level than I work at. But it is a reality that people see or a solution that people see and, you know, I think it's important, you know, it's it's easy to write a depressing story about the climate right now. And if you're in the wetland and waterfowl business. But, you know, I do like I want to make sure recognize that, you know, the Klamath lacking a water right now, is full of a lot of really creative, energetic, innovative people that want to make a difference, and that's across all the stakeholder groups. And, you know, we have on the Refuge, we've had really cool programs where we work with agricultural producers to select fields for three or four years. We provide wetland habitat on those fields and then they dry them out and it becomes organically certified that year. And so they they can diversify their crop market and, you know, their commodity market. You know, that's a really cool program that sort of evolved off of the refuge. It helps get wetlands on the landscape. We're working with the climate tribes on restoration and upstream and some of our refuges upstream to try to help with, you know, putting resiliency back on the landscape to meet refuge and cultural needs. I mean, so there's a lot of people working for solutions. It's just we're in such a tough water situation right now. It's sometimes it's hard to sit around that collaborative table when everybody's really spread thin and you know that no matter how you go into collaboration, you always go into collaboration focused on what's most important to you. And you try to, you know, negotiate your way down to where you get to that, what's most beneficial to us. And I think the Klamath is moving that way. There's more and more people trying to get engaged, trying to talk about wetlands, trying to get some of the processes back on the system, because everybody everybody's hurting. And like I said, waterfowl and waterfowl hunting and wetlands are part of the DNA of the community, regardless of what stakeholder group you come from, we're just in a really difficult situation. But yeah, the right, the right funding, the right ideas, the right motivations. And you know, I keep saying this place could be the greatest conservation success story in recent times. If we could just start to get water back on the landscape. And that would be a really amazing thing to be part of yet. Thanks a lot, John. So, Jeff, I think what you and I are hearing, I think what we're all hearing here is that these are really tough times. It's really out of the hands of guys like John and other managers in your part of the world. And what I'm hearing is that the steps that you can take, you're trying to take them, but it's A, it's a big, complicated issue. And and I think the the the quickest path to to remedy is just to get that water back. So, again, that's a wait and see approach. Jeff, anything that you want to say, I guess maybe more in closing before I fully hand you the mic. John I would love to. You know, we've we've taken a really deep dive and we and we went really deep into this conversation. The history, the complexity, the current situation, history, the culture, the water fouling culture of this area in the future. Love to have you back on for a much quicker conversation. Just kind of talking about the update and how things are going. Would you be interested in something like that? Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I would. I would love to revisit it and say that there's 7 million ducks out on the refuge. Let's let's everybody cross your fingers and your toes. Jeff, anything for us here? Kind of in closing, if I may ask just one more question about the complexes themselves with with regards to the infrastructure, John. And I don't know and we don't need to go deep into this. And can you just comment on the condition of, say, the dikes, the water control structures, pipes, things of that nature? What kind of condition are those in and do you foresee that there'd be if we were to be blessed with just incredible snowfall for two or three years, five years, whatever it may be, to where you're able to get the water resources that you need to be able to care for. Staging birds and mulching birds is the complex in a condition to where it will be able to handle that water flow? Or is there a whole bunch that would need to be done to to be functional again, if you will? That's a really good question. Right now, we we are definitely starting to see a lot of deterioration of the infrastructure. And, you know, like I started out, I mean, all of these systems were built on organic soils. And so a lot of the levees and, you know, the foundation of those levees, organic soils. So as everything is drying out, we're starting to see really substantial cracking. The levees are, you know, splitting apart. And we're seeing pretty dramatic subsidence happening in the wetland basins as a result of all this drying. And we're seeing roads are splitting and cracking apart. I mean, you can't you can't drive a lot of our roads right now safely because if you if your tire those in it, you're not going to get out of the cracks. And so there is a lot of concern right now that if we don't start to get at least a minimal amount of water onto some of those basins, to let that organic soil start to slowly saturate up, we could be in a really dangerous situation if that water comes too fast and too much. So, yeah, I mean, time is sort of of the essence right now on a lot of the refuge infrastructure to get them starting to heal themselves so we can handle that big effect. The other thing that we're seeing is with the amount of drying and, you know, we haven't really been able to have an agricultural program for two years on the refuges. And so there's a lot of bare soil and that's starting to blow. Like I talked about, that organic soil starts to mineralized and as it mineralized, that's really subject to an erosion. And so we're seeing, you know, entire water delivery systems are are just filling with sediment and water control structures are, you know, underneath six, seven feet of sediment right now. So there's a lot of maintenance that needs to be done to get them cleared out and ready to handle that kind of water that would come. But, yeah, I mean, we're we're at a critical point right now. And I am worried that if we don't start to get water back on that soil soon, we could be in a situation that, you know, if if the big event does come, which, you know, nature's nature, it's going to come. And the infrastructure is not ready to handle that kind of flow and volume at this point. Well, thank you for coming in on that. Appreciate it. So as if it wasn't enough, you have to to try to deal with, I guess, devolving infrastructure in the meantime. Yeah, it's just never ending. It's always a surprise every day. Okay. Well, it's on your radar screen. So again, I think all the more reason for us to jump back on here. Let's fast forward. What is the next kind of season? You know, is there a wet season, a dry season? What's the next season ahead of us? Yeah, so we're we're trending into our wet season now. You know, fingers crossed we start to get precipitation in September. So, you know, we want those good September, October rains to start coming and get in the system. What we would like to see is get a good soaking precipitation. We get the soil nice and wet so it can freeze, get a good frost in it, and then get a lot of snow in the mountains. And so when that snow, you know, hopefully it stays cold, stays cold till June, we start to see that snow release. And yeah, June's kind of late May, early June is sort of our critical period. We want to see that water starting to come off and, you know, hopefully we get just a, you know, 150% of normal snowpack and there's too much water to handle and it all starts to trickle across the landscape. But yeah, the next six months are critical for us. Okay. Well, maybe we'll talk late winter, but at the very latest, let's get you back on here that April-May time period next year and see how things are shaking out. Sounds good. John Friedberg, thank you so much for your time. I, I apologize for the time zone debacle. It was kind of the funny thing is where the three of us are not each on a different time zone. And I don't think we ever had that discussion. So we, we, we, we, we weren't all on the call at the same time, but we, we regrouped and made it happen. So thank you both. Jeff, thanks for your time. Good to catch you. It looks like you're in in your home office, not on the road. So a rare moment at home. So thank you both. If anybody has questions listening, you can reach out to the podcast at podcast out Delta Waterfowl dot org. My email address. Jay Bryce at Delta Waterfowl dot org and I will pass the question on to, to John. Jeff Adams has the same email. Jay Adams at Delta Waterfowl dot org. But in the meantime, thanks everybody. Thank you both. Thank you.