Posted August 22, 2014
Due to the drought, California almond farmers are competing with wild fish for water rights, according to The Daily Caller article by Rachel Stolzfoos available here. Yahoo News also published the article hereand NPR Blog published an article available here.
Because the rivers are running too low and too warm, thousands of salmon are fighting for their lives in the Klamath River of northern California.
If the water level does not rise soon, the migrating salmon could die to gill rot disease, according to NPR Blog.
Gill rot flourishes in warm water, and about 1,000 salmon have already died this summer in a 100-mile stretch of river. The remaining salmon are “clustering in dense schools around the mouths of cold tributary streams, seeking relief from the sun-warmed river.”
Members of the Yurok tribe, a Native American group that lives in the Klamath River basin, depends on the salmon for livelihood. They are pleading with officials to save the salmon by releasing cold water from the federally managed Trinity Lake, according to The Daily Caller.
“For us, salmon is life,” tribesman Chook-Chook Hillman said. “Without salmon, we’d might as well just pack it up as a people.”
The regional director of the U.S Bureau of Reclamation promised Hillman the agency would decide on Thursday whether to give the Klamath salmon more water.
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