Surely it’s been a wonderful Godwit Days so far — rare larkspur sightings, perhaps a Scroobius Pip spotted lurking in the marsh. But there’s been grave talk, as well, among the bird folk. Did you hear? As many as 20,000 waterfowl may have died in the Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuge since February, victims of avian cholera.
The tragedy has been in the news for weeks. Most reports note how the bird deaths heighten the already contentious atmosphere surrounding negotiations between farmers, fishermen, tribes and environmentalists over Klamath River water rights and plans to take out four dams to restore the river. As the Capitol Press put it, the bird deaths “have fueled the latest round of posturing over a landmark water-sharing agreement.”
Today’s S.F. Chronicle continues the narrative, quoting U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman Matt Braun as saying that more birds than normal migrated through this spring at a time when only about half the refuge had water, much of it having been consumed already by those in line ahead of them — fish, tribes, farms. The birds crowded into the wet places where they more easily spread the disease.
This article appears in The Wine Maker.
Please explain how fish consumed so much water? If there were more birds than normal, a die off is a natural reaction..
Did you even read the article?
Outbreaks of avian cholera are an annual occurrence in the Klamath Basin refuges, one of a handful of hot spots in the country, biologists say. This year’s numbers are considerably higher than the fewer than 600 dead birds that biologists picked up last year but slightly less than the last large outbreak in 2008, refuge biologist John Beckstrand said.
“It’s fairly common,” he said of the disease. “For me it’s hard to attribute it to any one thing. Generally you see it in snow geese … They’ll spread it aerially.”
The dead birds represent a miniscule fraction of the roughly 6 million migratory birds that use the more than 100-year-old Klamath refuge complex as a stop-off point each year, according to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service statistics.
How about the record salmon runs this year? Maybe the dams are a good thing and should be left in place?
The only dam beneficial for salmon is a beaver dam!