This month we had a break from the suckers and helped do a survey for Applegate’s milkvetch for a week. Applegate’s milkvetch is a plant in the pea family that grows low to the ground. It is listed as endangered and there are only nine known populations in Klamath County. The largest of those locations is the Klamath Falls Airport. The airport is looking to build a new taxiway, so the plants that will be in the construction zone were completely censused and flagged. The flagging was so that seeds can later be collected and also so that plants that are in the construction imprint can potentially be avoided. We also did random belt transects throughout the entire airport so that ten percent of the total acreage was surveyed. To census the construction zone we would walk in a line and just flag all of the plants we could see. This was much more difficult than it sounds because milkvetch grows very low to the ground with small flowers. There were also a couple of look a likes growing on the airport, which complicated things.

Flagging Milkcetch

Applegate’s Milkvetch

Working at an airport takes a lot of coordination.  While there are no longer commercial flights, there is a military operation still in Klamath. That meant a lot of safety concerns and a lot of coordination. For a lot of the project we had to be with airport employees, who had radios and could communicate with air and ground control.

The milkvetch project gave us a nice introduction to the Endangered Species Act and the role of Fish and Wildlife Service. The project on the airport was done partly with federal money and had to be signed off by a federal entity, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). For these two reasons the airport was required to consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service about the endangered species occurring on their airport. The FWS had to determine if the project would cause jeopardy for the species.  While jeopardy was not found, the FWS still put stipulations on the airport’s development. They required a full census of the construction area and seed collections. In addition the rest of the airport was sampled randomly. We completed the construction project but will be working on the inventory of the airport next week.

The other focus this month was the ponds at Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge. I have been going down to monitor the ponds before we put any fish in them. We have been setting traps in the various ponds baited with cat food to try and see if we can catch anything.  So far, no fish, which is good.  The two smaller ponds should not have fish, so we are glad to see that no fish were brought in with the water supply. The larger pond, however, does have fish, so it’s a little confusing that we haven’t found any. We also have been looking for evidence of mammalian predators around the ponds. So far we have found evidence of both otters and raccoons. The next phase of the project involves designing artificial structure. Structure is really important for young fish, as it provides protection from predators and numerous other functions; because of the time frame it’s not possible to do things like plant native plants. We are going to add aquarium plants and decorative rocks attached to tiles to the ponds to provide structure. I’ll be spending the next couple of weeks coming up with arrangement of artificial plants for the ponds, stay tuned!

Ponds at LKNWR

Baited Minnow Traps

My internship is with US Fish and Wildlife in Klamath Falls Oregon, I have been here about a month. Klamath Falls is just east of the Cascade Mountain range and very close to the border of California. While in Klamath Falls, I will be working on a number of different projects, but right now I have been working primarily with endangered lake suckers. There are two main species in the Klamath Basin.  (Klamath Falls is located in the northern portion of this watershed.)  These are the Lost River Sucker and the Short Nose Sucker. Both of these species are listed as endangered by both the state of Oregon and the federal government. There are several agencies working together to rehabilitate the suckers, including US Geological Survey, the Klamath Tribes, the Bureau of Reclamation (they deal with water and irrigation) and of course US Fish and Wildlife. It has been fun getting to work with different government agencies and seeing how they coordinate their efforts and pull resources.

Short Nosed Sucker

Lost River Sucker

Both species of the listed sucker live primarily in lakes but spawn in the rivers…right now is spawning season! I have spent most of the past two or three weeks working on either trying to catch adult suckers or trying to catch larval suckers. We are attempting to catch adult suckers to get genetic samples. One of the main goals of the season is to establish a captive breeding for the suckers.  Our mentor Josh wants to get an idea of the genetic diversity present in populations so that an appropriate level of genetic diversity can be represented in our captive breeding program. To get these samples, we would snorkel behind a group of fish and try and grab one. This was tiring and difficult, but so much fun! 

Another task we have worked on the past couple of weeks is catching larvae in the streams that we will rear in net pens in Upper Klamath Lake. This involved some night work. We would drop a trammel net with a cod attached (basically a cylinder with really small mess) from a bridge and wait twenty minutes. Most nights we would repeat this procedure two or three times at two different sites.  Mostly what you get in the sample are sucker larvae.  They are less than a millimeter when we catch them. But you also get a variety of bugs, some of which are predators on the larvae and need to be removed. We also got some lamprey when we went out this week.

Associated with this sampling our mentor gave us a problem to solve. We needed to try and prevent algae from getting into the nets. The algae can make it difficult to find the larvae, as well as crush some of the larvae and kill them. To solve this, we zip tied snow fence to the front of the trammel net to try and strain out some of the algae.  It worked really well and it was fun to think about. One part of field work that I find really enjoyable is the problem solving that goes on. It is a chance to stretch your brain and be creative. So far there have been several chances to be creative and I can’t wait for more opportunities.

In addition to the larvae that will be raised in the lake, there is a  project going on to try and salvage fish that end up in the irrigation canals coming off of the lake. There are several  small ponds set up on the Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge and salvage fish will be placed in these ponds and reared for two years before being put back into the system. This is a brand new program that we get to help set up.   One of the first problems that had to be solved here was that juvenile fish like structure. They like to hide in the roots of emergent plants and rocky substrate. These ponds are newly constructed so there is no structure to speak of.  So we are going to create some structure mostly with PVC pipe, decorative rocks and fake aquarium plants. It is going to be fun! There are some exciting projects coming up in Klamath so stay tuned.