Water flows as part of a massive habitat restoration in the Upper Klamath Basin

It’s a long, bumpy ride in a mud-crusted ATV to the western shore of Agency Lake and frost is still clinging to the marsh grasses on this cold, sunny January day. Even so, a small crowd has made the trip to watch excavators punch a hole in the levee separating the lake from the Upper Klamath Wildlife Refuge.

Biologists, engineers, contractors, and cultural monitors with the Klamath Tribes watch as two large machines remove scoops of wet mud in a coordinated dance, while a mini-excavator grabs bucketfuls of brush.

Agency Lake is the uppermost portion of Upper Klamath Lake, a massive, shallow freshwater lake just northwest of Klamath Falls, Oregon. It’s about to get a lot bigger.

“This is the largest inland restoration project on the West Coast, maybe ever. I’m really excited to be a part of it,” says Amelia Raquel, regional biologist for Ducks Unlimited, a conservation nonprofit based in Memphis, Tennessee.

The large excavators are supported on a narrow strip of native soil and rip-rap. The water level on the lake side of the strip is about three feet higher than the level on the other side. As they expand the opening, the operators will back up, removing the strip material as they go.

“It’s a little tricky, a little messy, but it should work,” says Dan Porter, co-owner at BCI Contracting.

Breaching this levee is like pulling a drain plug on a massive bathtub, allowing some 14,000 acres of refuge land — specifically, the Barnes and Agency Units — to be inundated.

The reconnection with Upper Klamath Lake will transform this vast area into diverse wetlands that support native fish, spotted frogs, and thousands of birds that breed and migrate through the Klamath Basin.

“Originally this was fringe wetland habitat and would experience those natural fluctuations and create that mosaic of habitats,” says Raquel. “Now we’re reconnecting and restoring the original hydrological function.”

Ducks Unlimited, the Klamath Tribes, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are major partners on the project, as are conservation nonprofit Trout Unlimited and private landowners. BCI Contracting, a Portland-based company co-owned by three brothers, is implementing it.

Crews have been working day and night since last April to complete the groundwork leading to the breach. They’ve removed 20 miles of barbed-wire fence and used an enormous amphibious excavator, built especially for the project, to sculpt a three-and-a-half-mile berm called a “wave attenuator.” This feature, which builds off of an existing dike running east to west, will help break up wave action across the shallow body of water.

“We created a berm, and then pumped that water out, and then dug up material to build the wave attenuator,” says Porter. “By the time we flipped it and processed it, I think we moved close to a million yards of material.”

The massive berm will help prevent erosion, allowing marsh vegetation to establish and keeping the water clear. Clear water can hold more oxygen, which is better for aquatic creatures.

Right before the breach is completed, the excavators power down so that Charley Switzler, an operator and Klamath Tribes member, can sing a prayer. Then the machines rev back up and resume scooping mud.

The trickle of water expands into a gush that nearly drowns out the sounds of the machines. Soon, it is roaring like a river. It will take a week to 10 days for the levels on either side of the breach to equalize. (A second breach on another portion of external levee is also scheduled.)

Klamath Tribes member Wicoona Weiser stands with Ivan and We Hawk Jackson, watching the water rush past to fill the wetlands. She says serving as a cultural monitor has given her a window into parts of her homeland she’s never known.

“You can just feel the power, it just connects with you,” she says. “You carry a lot more respect when you’re here to witness it.”

Vital functions restored

Upper Klamath Lake is a massive, shallow freshwater lake in Klamath County, just north of Klamath Falls. Historically, it was fringed in wetlands.

“Half our diet we relied on was our fisheries,” says Klamath Tribes Chairman William Ray, who has lived on the lake all his life. “All our culture was tied to that way of living. To have [these wetlands] come online is very important to our healing.”

The wetlands of the Upper Klamath Wildlife Refuge were drained and diked starting in the mid-20th century, and a grid of canals divided the land into pastures and fields. Once the land started sinking — a phenomenon called subsidence — it could no longer be farmed. The Bureau of Reclamation used the land for pump storage in the early 2000s before transferring it to the refuge.

Habitat loss and impaired water quality have taken a toll on c’waam and koptu, two species of sucker fish that are of deep cultural significance to the Klamath Tribes. Young fish take shelter in wetland vegetation, where they find plentiful food and protection from predators. Now, very few c’waam and koptu are surviving to breed themselves; populations are aging with not enough fish to replace them. Both species are federally listed as endangered.

Reconnecting the refuge wetlands will double the available habitat for those fish. Native trout will also have access to this area, as will salmon and steelhead, now that four dams have been removed from the main stem of the Klamath River downstream.

The project will also add 73,000 acre feet of storage to Upper Klamath Lake. This increased capacity is especially important as droughts and warming temperatures decrease the amount of water stored as snowpack in the surrounding mountains.

“It also improves wetland function, and that’s going to improve water quality, which is good news for all species, as well as the communities that rely on Upper Klamath Lake,” says Adam Johnson, assistant regional director at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The enlarged capacity also comes with challenges: just as the larger lake will take longer to drain, so will it take longer to fill. The Klamath Tribes in particular are concerned about maintaining adequate lake levels to ensure c’waam and koptu can access their spawning and nursery grounds.

“We need it at a certain level for survival,” says Ray. “Once it drops below that, the fish can become imperiled.”

Despite this concern, the Tribes and other groups with a stake in the Klamath Basin recognize the project as a win-win-win for the region, especially when considered in tandem with dam removal and other ongoing and planned restoration projects in the watershed.

“This is a huge piece of an ecosystem restoration puzzle that we believe is going to benefit species, it’s going to benefit our tribal partners, it’s going to benefit farms and ranches, and it’s going to benefit the communities in the upper basin,” says Johnson.

Taking time to celebrate

The day after the breach, people gather at the Klamath Tribes community center in Chiloquin to celebrate the milestone. Several speakers address the key role of collaboration.

“Partnership means it’s a give and take relationship,” says Chairman Ray. “We may have disagreements, but that doesn’t mean the partnership will fold.”

Guests include members of the Tribes and the Klamath Water Users Association, representatives from state and federal agencies and government, and nonprofits. These groups have often been at odds over how water is managed in the Klamath Basin, but the severity of the recent drought and infusion of investment have sparked a renewed sense of cooperation.

“I hope this success will encourage more large-scale ecosystem restoration in the Upper Basin,” says Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior Matt Strickler, who has joined the celebration virtually from Washington, D.C. “There’s a lot of momentum here, and as you all know, momentum brings money.”

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, passed in 2021, has funneled $162 million over five years to the Klamath Basin to restore the ecosystem and repair local economies. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has allocated $23 million for the Barnes-Agency restoration, much of it from this pot of funding.

The project is broken into phases. The inundation of the Barnes and Agency units is taking place on federal refuge lands; Phases 2 and 3, set to break ground in 2026, will restore upland habitat and return Fourmile and Sevenmile Creeks to their historic channels. Much of that work will take place on private land.

Other large-scale projects are in the works. One of the most ambitious, called the “Big Swing,” would restore portions of the Sprague River by removing levees built by the Army Corps of Engineers and returning the river to a more natural shape. This tributary flows into Upper Klamath Lake and is a major source of phosphorus, a nutrient that feeds algae blooms in the lake.

The Barnes-Agency reconnection is just the beginning, says Strickler. “I can see a future in which many more of the wetlands around Upper Klamath Lake are restored and reconnected to benefit water quality and fish habitat.”

This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.

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