Number range CHAPTER© 2005 by Leo Poppoff

August 4, 2005

Basin Watch

by

Leo Poppoff

HELLO AGAIN

As some of you might've noticed, I've been playing hooky and Basin Watch
has languished for about four months. Most of that time was spent
traveling from one corner of the country to the other, visiting family.
Then, instead of getting back to work, I topped it off with a wonderful
visit to a Nature Conservancy ranch in Wyoming, managed by old friends.

My journeys took me to the Berkshires in western Massachusetts, the
Oregon side of the Columbia River Basin, Lake Chelan in Central
Washington, San Diego, Cody, Yellowstone, and the Grand Tetons. These
spots are all unique and different from the Tahoe Basin. Still, I
noticed some striking similarities.

For example, black bears are also common around towns in the Berkshires.
They might wander down the road and through backyards. But, for some
reason, they don't seem to cause the ruckus that they do here in the
Basin. Bears seem to be accepted as part of the neighborhood.

Folks are cautioned not to put bird feeders and pet food outside, and I
noticed that homeowners keep their trash cans in their garages. All of
that probably helps.

Bears in Yellowstone National Park, on the other hand, are a different
matter. They do cause a ruckus. Automobiles jam the roadways whenever
there's a bear sighting. Tourists, armed with cameras and camcorders try
to capture the moment, later explaining to friends and family that the
small black blurs on their photos are really wild bears -- and might
even be grizzlies. The way some tourists chase after grizzlies with
cameras in hand and kids trailing behind, it's surprising that there
aren't more serious bear incidents.

The snow dappled Teton Range looming over Jackson Lake is an impressive
sight that rivals the Sierra backdrop of Lake Tahoe. And Jackson Lake
shares a problem with Lake Tahoe. The top part of the lake belongs to
downstream farmers.

Farmers want their water to produce food, while folks around the lake
want it for recreation. A 39-foot dam at the outlet of Jackson Lake
impounds water for potato farmers in Idaho, just as the six-foot dam at
Tahoe City impounds water for farmers in Nevada. And during droughts, as
Wyoming has had recently, and Tahoe has every few years, competing
interests remind us of Mark Twain's observation about the West. "Whiskey
is for drinking and water is for fighting" -- or something like that.

Farther downstream, the Columbia River Gorge has also experienced a
drought last winter. Local papers reported on the serious competition
between electrical power production and salmon migrations. The dams on
the Columbia were built, mainly, to supply electrical power. And the
Northwest (including California) depends heavily on that power source.

On the other hand, salmon have to get up the river to spawn and their
young (smolts) must go back down the river to spend their lives in the
ocean. Because the drought was so bad in the Northwest, there is just
enough water to run the hydroelectric generators or to flush the smolts
downstream, but not enough for both. The Fish and Wildlife Service is
stuck in the cross fire between salmon fishermen and electrical power
consumers. A while back, a federal court favored the salmon. Very
recently, a federal appeals court agreed.

A couple of hundred miles north of the Columbia River, Lake Chelan fills
a long, narrow trench, hard up against the eastern base of the Cascade
mountain range. The lake is 51- miles long. It's less than a mile wide
in spots, and not much more than a couple of miles across at its widest.
Lake Chelan is almost as deep as Lake Tahoe, making it the third deepest
lake in the continental United States.

The southern end of Lake Chelan, like Tahoe, is developed with houses,
commercial buildings and resorts. The southeastern part also has a lot
of apple orchards that are giving way to vineyards and very nice
wineries. The northern end of the lake is sparsely populated and
accessible only by boat, which carries tourists, residents and supplies
daily, weather permitting. With the urbanization along the shoreline in
the south, and agriculture on the hillsides, I would've expected to see
algae coating the rocks along the shoreline, as we see in Lake Tahoe.
But, I didn't. It's puzzling, and maybe one day I'll find out why.

And, finally, Tahoe has a land bank, while the Nature Conservancy ranch
in Wyoming has a grass bank. Our land bank is to help restore the lake,
while their grass bank is used to help restore the range.

Well, so much for "what I did on my summer vacation." In a couple of
weeks, we'll get back to environmental topics and my attempts to explain
them.

Questions or comments? Send them to
[basinwatch@sbcglobal.net]{.underline}