Mike Young, fisheries biologist at the Rocky Mountain Research Station in Missoula, was the guest speaker at the Bitterroot Water Forum in Hamilton last week. Young gave the audience an overview of changing fish populations in the Bitterroot River and tributaries and discussed the effects of hybridization, loss of connectivity and wildfire on the fisheries as well as the potential effect of rising water temperatures on trout populations due to climate change.

When Lewis and Clark passed through the Bitterroot Valley at the turn of the century, the river and streams were full of native fish including Bull trout, Westslope Cutthroat trout and Brook trout. But in the years since, other non-native species have been introduced into the fisheries here, including Rainbow trout and Brown trout.

These non-native trout not only compete with the native species for habitat, but also threaten to reduce the populations due to the low survival rate of hybridized offspring. Young said that population surveys show that non-native species have made major incursions into vast stretches of the Bitterroot River watershed and that hybridization with native species is steadily progressing.

Hybridization not only compromises the genetic integrity of native species, it can also reduce their population through “wasted re-production” due to infertile offspring. Brook trout and Bull trout that breed with Rainbows are infertile. And while hybridization between Rainbows and Westslope Cutthroat trout may produce a fertile offspring, the next generation does not fare so well, with notably lower survival rates.

Another factor affecting the survival and distribution of native trout species is the development of roads and the installation of culverts that can block fish migration. When Bull trout migrate from the higher elevation streams to the river, they may be able to pass through culverts on their way down, but on the return the culvert may present an impassable barrier. Young said that the Bull trout population up Skalkaho Creek was decimated by such development.

Wildfire can also wreak havoc on fisheries and drastically reduce fish populations over the short term. A lot of fish may be immediately killed by high water temperatures as the fire passes through. Fires can also turn the forest soils hydrophobic. Instead of absorbing rainfall, the water is shed and drags a lot of dirt along with it into the streams. It reduces riparian cover, allowing more sunlight to hit the water surface, heating it up which can also affect fish survivability. On top of this are the added effects of debris torrents that can be devastating to fish populations.

Not all species respond in the same manner to these traumatic events, however. A study of fish populations on the North Fork of Rye Creek with data preceding and following the fires of 2000, for instance, shows that native Cutthroat trout populations were able to rebound amazingly well, while Brook trout did not.

Fish are ectotherms, that is, cold blooded creatures, and are highly sensitive to changes in the surrounding water temperatures. This makes rising water temperatures related to climactic change a concern, according to Young. Other effects of climate warming may also have significant effects upon the fishery, such as a decline in overall water flows as well as the change in the timing of spring runoff and high water flows. Spring runoff has already advanced in the season by one to two and a half weeks over the last 50 years. In the Bitterroot the wettest years are forecast to be just as wet but the driest years will be getting drier. This phenomena, along with a shift in the timing of peak flows, could have major impacts upon irrigators and fish in the dry years.

Non-native fish, including Rainbow, Brown and Brook trout, appear to be favored over native species when it comes to steadily rising water temperatures. Another newcomer, smallmouth bass, a fish which has already established itself in the warmer waters flowing out of Flathead Lake into the lower Flathead and Clark Fork rivers, may move into other river systems in the state, like the Bitterroot River, as those waters become warmer.

Young emphasizes that he is not a climate scientist. But he states that regardless of the debate about the cause of climate warming the fact that it is occurring has been well established by many studies.

“Confronted with the data they provide,” said Young, “I look at the potential impact on the fisheries.”

The potential impacts don’t bode well for the native fish populations in the Bitterroot or in the region. If current trends continue, as established by data collected over the last 50 years, the average water temperature in the Bitterroot could rise by about 1.6 degrees Celsius. That would reduce Bull trout habitat in the northwest region of the U.S. by 40 percent in aerial extent and reduce the number of large patches of habitat by 60 percent.

An increase of 5 degrees Celsius in water temperature would be decimating to the Bull trout populations, reducing their overall habitat in the northwest region by 92 percent and reducing the number of large patches by 99 percent.

These effects may be mitigated by increasing shade along the streams to lower temperatures and by removing manmade fish barriers to establish connectivity.

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Turk continues extraordinary journeys

New book is “The Raven’s Gift - A Scientist, a Shaman and Their Remarkable Journey Through the Siberian Wilderness”

By Michael Howell

Longtime Darby resident Jon Turk is a scientist, an environmental educator, an adventurer and a very good writer. He is author of 25 environmental textbooks over the last forty years, but he has also authored a few books based upon some amazing kayak expeditions that make not only very interesting reading, but exciting reading as well. It’s hard not to grit your teeth at times. For instance, when he hauls you along in his small kayak in a mad attempt to propel the vessel beyond the storm driven breakers where the icy waters of the Bering Sea pound upon the cold Siberian shores.

Turk calls his first book, “Cold Oceans,” “a litany of failures on dangerous expeditions through some of the world’s most exotic and inhospitable regions.” From being shipwrecked off Cape Horn, to being stopped by ice in his attempt to kayak the Northwest Passage, and being beaten back by Arctic blizzards, Turk was in some sense always being stopped short of his goals. But, while failing to meet those goals, he was able to glean some very valuable lessons from those short-circuited expeditions. For instance, that the real meaning of any journey, like one’s journey through life, is not found in the end, but in the journeying itself.

All of Turk’s books are ‘expeditionary’ in some double sense as he adroitly intertwines his inner and outer journeys in the telling, always moving deeper into himself as he moves deeper into the awesome landscapes that surround him.

His latest book, “The Raven’s Gift,” is no different. This adventure actually began as a little side trip on another grand expedition that Turk chronicles in his second work, entitled “In the Wake of the Jomon.”

Turk tells us on his web site (www.jonturk.net) how, in 1999 and 2000, he and partners sailed a small trimaran and paddled a sea kayak from Japan to Alaska. “In the Wake of the Jomon” tells the story of the modern expedition and, at the same time, looks backward in awe at Stone Age mariners who paddled these waters over 10,000 years ago. It combines a modern adventure with an anthropological quest into Stone Age migration, skeletal remains, archaeological mysteries, and the eternal urge to explore. The book asks, “Why did people with primitive stone tools leave their homes in the lush temperate bamboo forests, with salmon in the rivers, seals in the bays, and deer in the forests, to paddle into the frozen Arctic during the Ice Age?”

Turk argues that to understand our ancestors, we must appreciate their spirituality as well as their pragmatism. Perhaps some ancient migrations were motivated by shamanism or a romantic sense of adventure rather than a search for new hunting grounds, he muses.

It was during this trip that a strange encounter occurred that was to lead Turk into an inner adventure that would not only change his view of ancient magic and the workings of primitive shamanism, but change his life forever.

As Turk tells it, he and his companion were sailing their kayaks along the coast of Siberia under pure blue, perfectly clear skies when all of a sudden a raging squall came out of nowhere and drove them to shore. When they pulled their kayaks up onto the beach a woman came up and said in halting English that she had been expecting them.

“I didn’t make much of the remark at the time,” said Turk, “but I wondered what she meant.”

She said that there was an old lady at her village that wanted to see them. She asked them to accompany her back to her village. So they did. On the way the young woman said that the old lady had conjured up a storm to bring them to her.

The old lady turned out to be Moolynaut, a Koryak shaman. At the time, Moolynaut was 96 years old. She was born in a skin tent on the Siberian tundra during the reign of Czar Nicholas IV. Turk states, “She not only survived, but maintained her spirituality through the Bolshevik revolution, the entire rise and fall of the Soviet Empire, and the bandito capitalism of Perestroika. She asked me to tell her story, which is the story of all indigenous people, from the jungles of the Amazon and Melanesia to the high Arctic.”

The story is that after being rounded up and forced to live in hastily constructed concrete buildings, stripped of their language, their names, and their ancient ties to the reindeer herds, her people were now seeking to reconnect with their ancient ways. Moolynaut asked Turk to help bring the reindeer back to her people. Turk decided to do what he could and helped arrange an expedition to seek out the few remaining Korayak clans that were still traveling with the herds to see if they could acquire enough for Moolynaut and her people to start their own herd.

Although Turk returned to Moolynaut’s Siberian camp to help her out, he found the tables turned rather quickly when it was really Moolynaut who helped him out. Moolynaut and Kutcha, The Raven, that is.

Turk had fractured his pelvis in a mountaineering accident and suffered from chronic pain related to the injury. While Turk stood naked on one leg, Moolynaut sang in the ancient tongue and asked Kutcha to heal him. The Raven Spirit saw fit, apparently, to heed the call and Turk was healed.

But, being a scientist, Turk could find no rational explanation for the healing and the experience changed his life, irrevocably altering his view of the connectivity between the natural and spiritual worlds.

“Searching for the Raven Spirit, he traversed the frozen tundra where Moolynaut was born, camping with bands of reindeer herders, and recording stories of their lives and spirituality. Framed by high adventure across the vast and forbidding Siberian landscape, ‘The Raven's Gift’ is a life-altering vision of the ties between the natural and spiritual realms, informed by one man’s awakening and guided by the ancient Spirit Bird with wide black wings and the power to heal,” states the book jacket cover.

Turk returned to visit with Moolynaut over a number of years.

“Each time I returned she led me deeper and deeper into an ancient wisdom that is rooted in the landscape. Each time I left with a renewed mystery,” said Turk. He now credits her with giving him “the words that I should have had in the beginning.” He means in the beginning of his career as an environmental educator. The words to express a very magical and very deep relationship between the human spirit and the landscape in which it is rooted.

Turk is still a scientist and believes that science and technology can and have produced many technological solutions for environmental problems but the solutions, though available, are often not implemented.

“We have the technology, we have some very smart people, but we don’t have the spiritual and emotional will to do what needs to be done,” said Turk.

“Environmentalism has to start with this ancient wisdom,” said Turk, “the recognition that all our spirituality, all our strength, comes from the landscape.”

The book “The Raven’s Gift: A Scientist, A Shaman, and Their Remarkable Journey Through the Siberian Wilderness,” is set to be released January 19 by St. Martin’s Press. Turk will be speaking in Missoula at Fact and Fiction on January 27 and at Chapter One Bookstore in Hamilton on Thursday, January 28 at 7 p.m.

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Fair Board sets up tree re-placement committee

The Ravalli County Fair Board was sympathetic to the pleas of the Hamilton High School Class of 1956 to replace the large “Daly Cottonwoods” that were recently cut down along Fairgrounds Road by replanting another round of the stately giants.

The County Commissioners recently ordered the trees to be cut down following two accidents involving falling limbs that damaged cars. One of those accidents came close to a fatality as a large limb plunged like a lance thorough the vehicle’s front windshield, narrowly missing the driver by inches.

The Board heard from over a dozen citizens about the historical and aesthetic significance of the old trees and their desire to see the Daly legacy renewed with a replanting.

Fairgrounds Manager Deborah Rogala emphasized the fact that replanting was not enough. She stressed the need for a watering system and management plan for the care of the trees. She thought that the idea of a volunteer ‘caretaker’, presented by one member of the public, who could oversee the planting and maintenance of the trees, was a good idea.

The Board decided to establish a committee to investigate the possibilities and make a recommendation to the Board about how to proceed. Darrell Binkerd, President of the Hamilton High School class of 1956, was appointed to chair the committee.

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Animal shelter weathers criticism

By Michael Howell

The County Commissioners and the Bitterroot Star have received a few letters lately from citizens concerned, even appalled, at the conditions at the Bitterroot Animal Shelter.

Hamilton resident Judi Press, in a letter to the Commissioners written in December, complains about feces and vomit in the cat section and some sick kittens that were not being properly cared for. She demanded that things be changed at the shelter.

She also does not believe that cats should be kept in a common cage.

“Cats are not gregarious animals. They don’t like being put into a place with others they are not used to,” wrote Press.

Commission Chair Greg Chilcott said that he had read a few letters complaining about the animal shelter.

“But people don’t seem to understand that the County Commission doesn’t have anything to do with the animal shelter, except that we use it,” said Chilcott. He said the county contracts to use the shelter when the sheriff’s office picks up stray dogs.

“We don’t have any control over the Animal Shelter,” he said.

The Animal Shelter is in fact a private non-profit company run by the Bitterroot Humane Association with a board and a managing director, Vicki Dawson.

The Bitterroot Star made an unannounced visit to the shelter last Thursday, January 7. Contacted on her off time, on the spur of the moment, Shelter manager Dawson agreed to go to the shelter and be interviewed.

The cat room, that day at any rate, gets a thumbs up from this reporter. It was clean. And it was full of cats. As we loitered there the cats seemed mostly content. For the most part each seemed to have found its own spot on a shelf, on a counter top, in a wash tub, most of them cushioned in some fashion with a towel or a little blanket or rug. Four or five of the cats were eating and drinking from the row of water and feed bowls along the wall. There were plenty of bowls if a cat got hungry or thirsty. None of the cats seemed uptight. The most interaction was with the visiting reporter. On another surprise visit Bitterroot Star photographer Aubrey Howell reported pretty much the same. We also both visited the dog section and found the cages clean, with clean water and small cots for resting on. It was a lot noisier than the cat section.

Dawson said that the shelter’s infrastructure was old and that they worked continually trying to make it a better, cleaner place. She was proud of the volunteer effort that went into removing the old radiant heating system along the base of the wall.

“It was a place to harbor bacteria,” she said. She said that subsequently six veterinarians came in and examined the place and made recommendations for improvement.

“They said take the pictures off the wall and raise the trash cans off the floor onto legs. They said that both could be conducive to bacteria. But that was all they could recommend.” Dawson said that the floors and walls are cleaned so often with bleach that the doorways have had to be repaired where they meet the floor.

“We are slowly modernizing in every way we can,” said Dawson.

She said that the shelter follows the protocol advocated by the UC Davis Shelter Medicine Division in dealing with the animals and the hygienics. The shelter also follows the “open colony theory.” Dawson claims that the open colony theory is based on studies that show cats are less prone to illness and stress in a group environment.

Dawson said that the shelter was an open shelter meaning that no animal was refused. She said that new cats were kept in quarantine for seven days and given live virus immunizations.

There are two separate cat sections at the shelter, each can hold a maximum of about 50. In warm weather there is access to an outdoor cage area. The indoor area has fresh air pumped in via a ventilation system. One indoor room was to be designated for kittens, but Dawson says the number of kittens coming into the shelter is way down. But the average number of days that each animal stays at the shelter is growing. She said the average now is about 25 days.

Because the shelter is an open one, she said, and will not refuse animals, there are times when the shelter is pushed to the brink overnight, like when 53 cats came in on one day from a county action.

“It can be a lot for the volunteers to keep up with at times,” said Dawson.

Dawson said that one reason the average stay has increased is that the shelter no longer practices arbitrary euthanasia, so any animal that comes in is kept until it is adopted.

“There is no time limit,” she said. “We keep them as long as we have to. We keep them until they are adopted.”

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