Chiloquin

Blog #11

Chiloquin

Today we met with Dr. Alex G, an environmental scientist for 23 years; a graduate from Oregon State University with a degree in wildlife and fisheries. He’s been working for the Klamath Tribes: Modoc, Klamath, and Yahooskin. We walked up to a small spring called Kirks Springs which is located in the middle of the Williamson River (Oregon). This river is sort of a strange one because there’s a top of the river where the river just pours out of the ground like a spring and then pours into a wetland, disappears, and reappears 30 miles south. There must be a lava tube that collects the water and restarts the river. During our hike, we stopped to talk about the ponderosa pine trees. The trees had these black marks on it, which means that they have grown big enough to become immune to fire. They auto prune themselves; literally drop the branches off that the fire can get to, biologically, so that the fire can’t get into the crown and cause what they call a crown fire, a tree-killing fire. The tree we observed was probably 400-500 years old based on the size and thickness of the bark. The second type of tree we observed was the Quaking Aspen tree Populus tremuloides. A fun fact is that there are 43 acres grow in Utah of this species of tree. DNA samples from that 43 acres grow stated that all of the trees are genetically identical. Meaning that it was one single organism that ended up being the largest organism on the planet. 68 hundred tons, worth of one single living thing. The reason they can do that, is because when this tree sends out a root, the root travels underground, and then a little bud comes out of the ground and forms another tree, which looks like a new different tree but it is one single root mass extending. The prefix “pando” is the Latin word for spread, which again is still the largest living thing on the planet. The unfortunate thing about this amazing organism is that it is dying, it is shrinking over time. The little trees are starting to die. The reason they think that is because this tree requires very cold winters called “chilling days.” They have to be particularly frozen for a certain number of days to survive and thrive. Because of what we think climate change, the planet gradually warming up over time prevents the plant from getting those chilly days. A direct observable impact of climate change, which some people say isn’t happening. Also, this tree would be of great importance to the tribes which they could make many things out of it. Our last stop for this small hike was the Williamson River canyon. What we were looking at was a single lava flow which closed up the canyon and began the formation of the upper Klamath Marsh. The body of water originates from a spring. Some fish that swim through it are the Redband Trout, hanging out for the summer until they can go back to the lake and grow. The primary game fish is the Klamath Basin Redband Trout, which is a subspecies of the rainbow trout. It used to have Chinook Salmon, but when they put up dams during the ages of 1920’s – the 1970s, they put four dams on the Klamath river to generate a small amount of electricity and caused incredible damage to resources in general, but in particular tribal resources. In 2021 they are supposed to take down all four dams, approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), to restore fish passing. The problem is that the water is lethal for salmon and trout for about 6 months in a year and they have to figure out a way to get through the lake and get to the good water while they can.