U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
The USFWS Trinity Field Office in Weaverville has provided critical staff support for the Trinity River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program. The program is slated to end in 1995 which does not provide long term job security for USFWS personnel. Consequently, many staff biologists have transferred to other jobs within USFWS that offer better career opportunities. While USFWS continues to hire quality personnel, it is difficult for new employees to write reports or finish projects where the work was begun by others. The employees leaving are sometimes asked to complete tasks after transfer to other positions while adjusting to new job situation which is also difficult.
Soil Conservation Service
All services delivered to the agricultural community and rural America through the USDA are currently undergoing reorganization. Employees within SCS, ASCS, and FHA all are uncertain of how the changes will effect their offices. In the recent past some SCS branch offices have experienced cutbacks. The Yreka office of SCS was unable to use $60,000 in 319H money from the SWRCB to implement non-point source pollution control projects on the Shasta River. The office had experienced staff cuts and claimed that it did not have the man power to administer the grants.
In the Trinity River basin the SCS has taken a much more active and positive role. SCS provides staff support and technical expertise for the Trinity County Resource Conservation District. The agency has now taken the lead in restoration of the Grass Valley Creek watershed, using state-of-the-art erosion control and prevention techniques. SCS is also providing staff support for the newly emerging Cooperative Resource Management Planning effort that is unfolding in the South Fork Trinity River watershed.
U.S. Forest Service
Because the USFS controls 80% of the land base in the South Fork Trinity River, its internal policies and effectiveness have great bearing on protecting and restoring fisheries resources. A great deal of the funding for fish habitat improvement in the past has come from timber harvest revenue under the Knudsen-Vandenberg Act. These "KV" monies are now expected to be in short supply due to decreased timber harvest. Other major sources of revenue for watershed work have been related to rehabilitation after fires which is unpredictable. There needs to be a significantly larger core budget for resource management funding, including fisheries and watershed work that is not tied to timber receipts.
Resource improvement, research and monitoring programs have been plagued by inconsistent and temporary funding levels. High rates of funding often follow immediately after emergencies (ie. fires) but are not sustained in the following years as other needs arise. Programs need more long term commitment of funding levels and staffing so that projects which are designed as long-term have the support of management for long term funding.
Funds for restoration and watershed work are largely directed to specific work and often cannot be utilized for other non-traditional applications as identified from studies or monitoring. For example, fire rehabilitation funds or stream habitat improvement money can only be used for limited, approved types of projects such as check dams or instream structures. Year-end budget surpluses are often ear marked for specific work items, such as structures in stream channels. Monitoring and evaluation of past work should be the basis for identifying work tasks and locations. The Trinity River Task Force guidelines for planning instream structures are available to the USFS, but are not always used to prioritize internally funded projects.
There is significant under-staffing of professional and trained technical positions in fisheries and watershed sciences on the Hayfork and Yolla Bolla Ranger Districts, given the magnitude and urgency of fishery related problems in the South Fork Trinity River watershed. The transition to Ecosystem Management will require the conversion of staff positions trained in ecological and physical sciences. Without concurrent reductions in engineering and forestry related positions, or substantially increased funding levels, this may not be possible. While retraining may be possible in some cases, additional professional and technical positions in fishery and watershed sciences must be filled with qualified people.
The success of some watershed and fishery programs appear to be tied to individuals rather than to the organization at the District level. That is, once a professional transfers or leaves, important programs have been largely dropped or abandoned for one or more years. This has come about through administrative delays in prompt replacement, or replacement with staff with other interests or expertise. This is also the result of having only one or a very few professionals in a particular discipline that are responsible for developing and running the resource program. To provide continuity of research, monitoring and restoration programs, professionals in the fisheries and watershed sciences need to be promptly replaced.
Part of the problem with staffing has been related to the recent USFS system-wide hiring freeze. Positions within the USFS are to be filled primarily by transfers from other districts or forests. The number of qualified fisheries and watershed scientists inside the USFS is insufficient to fill the growing demand. A recent memo from the Chief of the USFS informed administrative officers to requests exemptions from the hiring freeze to help carry out the USFS mission of improving fisheries (Robertson, 1992).
Seasonal staff for fisheries and watershed positions may not always be adequately trained in the discipline for which they are expected to perform. Problems in the quality of watershed assessment work were one outcome of this deficiency.
As various agencies have worked together cooperatively under the Trinity River Basin Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program, many former problems related to lack of communication have been resolved. The Model Steelhead Stream Demonstration Program has also helped improve the working relationship between the USFS and CDFG, particularly in the South Fork Trinity River basin. Some serious institutional impediments to restoration in the South Fork Trinity River basin remain, such as the inability of CDF to substantively deal with cumulative effects, particularly on South Fork Mountain, and the failure of fisheries harvest management entities to protect weak stocks, such as those returning to the South Fork Trinity River, in mixed stock fisheries. Unless substantial and fundamental reform occurs in these areas, restoring salmon in the South Fork Trinity River basin will be an up hill battle.
Government agencies are caught in the bind of decreasing budgets but undiminished or even increasing work loads. More sophisticated line staff now must be able to use computer skills for storing and retrieving information and for report writing. Highly productive workers who have these skills can find work as private consultants, with other agencies, or elsewhere within their agency. If government agencies are to become more efficient in accomplishing their mission, then they need to recognize the importance of staff development. Appropriate tools for resource management, such as geographic information systems (GIS), must also be provided so that staff can expediently aid in sound resource management decisions.
Monitoring of the South Fork and its tributaries needs to be continued to determine the effects of continued and past management and past fires. Long term monitoring of key, index streams must continue to determine if fish populations are responding to improving watershed conditions. (Haskins and Irizarry, 1988)
The South Fork Trinity River and its watershed has been the focus of considerable past research and monitoring. Yet, in spite of the relatively large amount of information that has been collected, much of which as been summarized in this report, a great deal about the river's physical and ecological processes still remains unknown. Only through redoubled efforts, and additional, long-term monitoring of conditions and processes, will we begin to understand the complex changes and causes-and-effects that continue to occur in the South Fork Trinity River basin.
Monitoring and applied research are both needed if we are to undertake an intelligent, cost-effective fisheries and watershed restoration program. By selecting appropriate monitoring tools, and by focusing the direction of necessary applied research, the South Fork Trinity River restoration program can develop a prioritized plan for recovery, and dynamically adjust its strategy over time. Adjustments in focus, priority and direction will be provided by new study findings, and by monitoring the success of completed restoration projects. Without gathering further scientific information, there will be no mechanism by which the success or failure of a watershed and fisheries restoration program can be gauged.
This scientific approach to resource management of "learning by doing" is known as adaptive management, and has been widely applied in other large scale river restoration programs (USFWS, 1991). It is not a process of "learning by mistake," but rather one of assembling well tested restoration techniques and strategies, and applying them in a new or different context than where they have been developed or successfully employed. In this way, continuing practical research and monitoring, combined with adaptive restoration and management, will provide direction to the long term South Fork Trinity River restoration program.
More than any other individual action, restoration of the South Fork Trinity River fish populations will require a serious commitment of funds and personnel by agencies with management or jurisdictional responsibilities in the basin. There must be a continuing, uninterrupted commitment to conduct long term monitoring and to perform applied research needed to better understand the watershed and its biological resources. Without the collection of valid scientific information and observations, we cannot develop a clear understanding of important processes and conditions which have depressed fish populations and are currently limiting the recovery of fisheries in the South Fork Trinity River.
Finally, if the collection of information and results is coordinated and standardized, it will be possible, and desirable, to share this information between all agencies and interested parties. A standardized, computerized geographic information system (GIS), database and reporting format can be developed to house and present the results of continuing monitoring and research. Delegating specific monitoring and study tasks to various agencies, and involving capable volunteers, will make pursuit of a comprehensive monitoring program affordable.
Past Watershed Monitoring and Applied Research has Provided Needed Insight and Baseline Data
In 1915, the first ranger of the Yolla Bolla Ranger District, Will Patton, invited University of California scientists to examine a snow field at the headwaters of the South Fork Trinity River. The scientists took cores and estimated the age of the snow pack at 200 years (Albert Bramlet, personal communication). This study represented the first formal scientific assessment of any conditions in the South Fork Trinity River watershed. There have been no perennial snow fields in the Yolla Bolla Mountains in recent decades and from this baseline of information collected in 1915, we recognize that one of the hurdles facing fisheries restoration may be a short term change in climate.
Watershed studies
Intensive study of the watershed began in the 1960's with plans for a dam on the South Fork Trinity River (CDWR, 1967), and then in response to the 1964 flood (CDWR, 1979). Studies of sediment sources, terrain erodibility and stability, and the effects of land use practices on erosion and stream sedimentation have been undertaken by both State and Federal Agencies (MacCleery, 1974; Haskins et al., 1980; Haskins, 1981; 1983; 1986; Haskins and Irizarry, 1988; CDWR, 1979; 1982; 1992; Raines and Kelsey, 1991).
Studies on the effects of land management on various terrain types found throughout the South Fork Trinity River basin have been largely based on employment of observational studies, visual cause-and-effect relationships, and qualitative analysis of the relationship between land disturbance intensity and observed stream channel conditions (eg., Kojan, 1972; MacCleery, 1974). Stream health, as inferred from stream survey data and habitat typing information, has been used as an indicator of watershed sensitivity to disturbance (Irizarry, et. al., 1985). In recognition of the sensitivity of the certain soils and bedrock types in the watershed, cumulative effects analyses have then been used to set limits to the rate and degree of land management on Forest Service lands (Haskins, 1983; Haskins and Irizarry, 1988).
These land use related studies have provided invaluable information on the nature and degree of erosion and sedimentation from managed lands throughout the South Fork Trinity River basin. These early studies are responsible for the identification of terrains with differing levels of sensitivity to management. Perhaps more importantly, federal land managers have used these findings to develop needed, fundamental changes in land use techniques that are now employed on these differing terrain types. As stated by Haskins (1983, p. 33).
"... defining sensitive lands, their relative hazard and appropriate management level is of supreme importance in watershed management."
Early and continuing studies have been used to significantly alter and guide the conduct of timber harvesting and road building practices employed on public lands in the watershed. Private land management practices have not similarly benefitted from studies undertaken in the South Fork Trinity River basin.
These older studies have also provided the justification needed to support further changes in federal management techniques which have been prepared and are to be implemented under the newly developed riparian standards and guides and principles of ecosystem management. For fisheries protection and recovery, it has been recognized that such "diligent and conscientious management in key watersheds...is required to maintain fish health and viability in the South Fork Trinity River" (Haskins and Irizarry, 1988).
More recent hazard mapping is being conducted by Shasta-Trinity National Forest (Haskins, personal communication), and will be integrated with other resource information, to guide future management of ecosystem units throughout the South Fork Trinity River watershed. The new emphasis is directed towards maintaining ecosystem productivity and viability, without focusing on timber production to the detriment of other natural resources and values.
By 1993, most public forest lands in the South Fork Trinity River basin had been inventoried and assessed for future erosion problems and sediment sources caused by past land management (see Chapter XI and Plate 1). These studies, undertaken as a part of the Trinity River Restoration Program, have been completed to identify treatment sites for prevention of future sediment delivery to the South Fork Trinity River and its tributaries.
More recent watershed studies have also been conducted by Raines and Kelsey (1991) in Grouse Creek, as a part of watershed studies conducted by Six Rivers National Forest in the lower South Fork Trinity River basin. These investigations have also been aimed at identifying future sediment sources and the susceptibility of lower basin areas to additional and continuing cumulative watershed effects from management of public and private forest lands. Chapter 13 continued