Protecting Land on the West's Outstanding Rivers

With backing from GlobalGiving donors, Western Rivers Conservancy is permanently protecting land along outstanding rivers across the western United States. Your gift supports the core costs of purchasing and conserving land for the benefit of fish, wildlife and people. Your contribution is dedicated to such efforts as preserving salmon and wildlife habitat, and creating new hiking trails, boating access and recreational opportunities.             

Thanks to your support, Western Rivers Conservancy is:   

• Creating a new refuge for fish, wildlife and people in Colorado’s San Luis Valley

• Returning water to vital Salmon River tributaries in Idaho’s Sawtooth valley

Colorado’s Upper Rio Grande:   

We are excited to announce that Colorado’s San Luis Valley has a new state wildlife area, thanks to WRC’s purchase of 17,019 acres along the upper Rio Grande. This month, we transferred those lands to Costilla County, reconnecting a community to a river that has been off-limits to the public here for generations. In the process, we conserved thousands of acres of outstanding natural habitat, a major boon to the fish, birds and other wildlife of southern Colorado.

With the property now under county ownership, the lands will be managed by Colorado Parks and Wildlife as the new San Luis Hills State Wildlife Area and forever protected through a conservation easement held by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The wide-open, rolling hills and shrublands of the property are a special place and were one of the last large, intact tracts of private land within the Rio Grande Natural Area. The river and surrounding uplands are crucial for imperiled animals like the endangered southwestern willow flycatcher and for mule deer, pronghorn and Rocky Mountain elk.

For the local community, this is an exciting accomplishment. In Costilla County, 99 percent of all land is private. Until now, public river access was virtually nonexistent. With the completion of this project, more than 4.5 miles of the Rio Grande and thousands of acres of spectacular uplands are now protected and open to the public.

This is one of several WRC projects in the San Luis Valley, including the 1,180-acre Olguin Ranch, directly across the river from the new state wildlife area. Through these acquisitions, WRC is reconnecting communities to the valley’s rivers and conserving habitat for the area’s fish and wildlife. Our partners in this effort are the LOR Foundation, Colorado Open Lands and The Rio Grande Headwaters Land Trust. Together, and with funding from the LOR Foundation, we created the San Luis Valley Conservation Fund to conserve land and bolster local conservation efforts throughout the valley.

Creation of the San Luis Hills State Wildlife Area was made possible through a loan from the LOR Foundation and funding from Great Outdoors Colorado, the Gates Family Foundation and USFWS. Through this broad collaboration with funders and our on-the-ground partners, we are having an impact that will improve people’s lives—and the health of the upper Rio Grande—for generations.

Idaho’s Goat and Meadow Creeks:

Early this spring, Western Rivers Conservancy celebrated a major success in Idaho’s Sawtooth Valley when we conserved the 369-acre Goat Falls Ranch and transferred the ranch’s water rights to the state to keep them permanently in-stream. The effort will improve flows in two critical headwater tributaries of the Salmon River and add 369 acres to the spectacular Sawtooth National Recreation Area. This marks the first time the Idaho Water Resources Board has acquired water rights for the purpose of dedicating them permanently in-stream, an approach we hope serves as a model for balancing agricultural needs with native species recovery.

Goat and Meadow Creeks, the streams that flow through the ranch, are both crucial, ice-cold creeks that tumble from the Sawtooth Mountains and provide salmon and steelhead with reliable, cold water—the homecoming they need after their epic, 900-mile journey from the Pacific Ocean.

WRC is focusing on these headwater streams because they are a key to sustaining the Salmon River’s native fish in the face of rising water temperatures, low flows and earlier spring runoff. Goat and Meadow Creeks once contained some of the highest densities of rearing salmon in the Columbia Basin, but water withdraws and grazing have undermined their health. Despite this, the streams are still among the best nurseries for salmon and steelhead on the upper Salmon River.

In 2017, WRC purchased the ranch, along with its 12.08 CFS of water rights, providing the rare opportunity to protect habitat and enhance stream-flows for fish. While WRC owned the ranch, we spearheaded creative solutions with adjoining landowners to meet local water needs while placing significant flows back in-stream.

As part of the Sawtooth National Recreation Area, the ranch will be protected from development and allowed to recover from grazing. Additionally, the Forest Service and other partners will implement priority habitat restoration and monitoring projects for the benefit of fish and wildlife. The ranch also hosts important winter range for elk and habitat for 18 sensitive species, including gray wolf, sage grouse, bald eagle, peregrine falcon and Columbia spotted frog.

With cold water, restored habitat and improved flows, Goat Falls Ranch has a far greater chance at again becoming a haven for salmon, steelhead and wildlife, with benefits extending across the vast Snake and Columbia basins.

Conclusion

The Upper Rio Grande and Goat and Meadow Creeks projects are just some of our recent successes. WRC currently has over two dozen active projects in six states. With the support of GlobalGiving donors, Western Rivers Conservancy is expanding our efforts to protect riverlands for fish, wildlife and people.

We love to hear from our supporters. Please contact Anne Tattam at 503-241-0151, ext. 219 (or atattam@westernrivers.org) for further information. Thank you.

• Western Rivers Conservancy: Project Photos (PDF)
  

With backing from GlobalGiving donors, Western Rivers Conservancy is permanently protecting land along outstanding rivers across the western United States. Your gift supports the core costs of purchasing and conserving land for the benefit of fish, wildlife and people. Your contribution is dedicated to such efforts as preserving salmon and wildlife habitat, and creating new hiking trails, boating access and recreational opportunities.                                      

Thanks to your support, Western Rivers Conservancy is:   

• Successfully creating a salmon sanctuary on Blue Creek, and protecting a cold-water lifeline of the Klamath River

California’s Klamath River:   

The Yurok Tribe and Western Rivers Conservancy have succeeded in creating a major salmon sanctuary within the Yurok Reservation to protect Blue Creek, the most important source of cold water for the lower Klamath River and a lifeline for some of the largest runs of salmon and steelhead remaining on the West Coast.

The project is part of the Yurok Tribe’s and WRC’s larger effort to return over 47,000 acres of ancestral lands to the tribe by purchasing them from Green Diamond Resource Company, which owned all the land along Blue Creek between the Siskiyou Wilderness Area and the Klamath River. The land was controlled by the tribe until the late-1800s, when it was appropriated by the federal government. As a result, the tribe lost all but a small percentage of its reservation lands, including Blue Creek, the Yurok spiritual centerpiece since time immemorial.

“For the Yurok Tribe, Blue Creek is equally a salmon stronghold, a sacred place and an integral component of our cultural identity. Today, we are celebrating the completion of a vital piece of our long-term plan to restore the Klamath River from its headwaters to the Pacific, but tomorrow we will begin work on the next phase of this project because our people and our salmon depend on it. The salmon are a big part of who we are as Yurok people,” said Thomas P. O’Rourke Sr, the Chairman of the Yurok Tribe. “We would like to express our sincere appreciation to Western Rivers Conservancy for assisting us in the reacquisition of our ancestral homeland.”

The project is unprecedented and will create a salmon sanctuary unmatched by any in the United States. By conserving the lower 25 miles of Blue Creek and converting what was formerly a vast, industrial tree farm into a biologically robust forest preserve, it will provide new hope to salmon and to one of the most important river fisheries in the West.

“This is a historic and joyous moment,” said WRC President, Sue Doroff. “The Yurok Tribe has at last been reunited with its ancestral lands, and Western Rivers Conservancy has finally ensured that Blue Creek, the lifeline of the Klamath River, will always be a source of cold, clean water and a refuge for the fish and wildlife that depend on it.”

Now that the sanctuary exists, the tribe will be reunited with Blue Creek and can steward the forests for the sake of fish and wildlife and to keep Blue Creek clean and cold. Under a management plan approved by the State of California, the Yurok Tribe will manage the lands to heal decades of aggressive timber harvest, restore the richness of the forest and create tribal jobs in sustainable forestry and restoration.

Conservation of Blue Creek comes at a critical moment. Last year, the fall Chinook return was at a historic low. With plans in place to remove four dams on the upper Klamath River, extensive salmon habitat will be reopened in the upper basin. But if salmon are to reach the upper river, they must have the cold-water refuge that Blue Creek provides.

In 2008, WRC helped the Yurok Tribe acquire 22,237 acres of land in the first phase of the project. WRC then worked for a decade to raise the tens of millions of dollars needed to acquire the remaining 24,860 acres. The tribe also secured over $10 million to acquire the lands, including settlement money from the federal government. Last year, WRC purchased the last of the project lands from Green Diamond and has been working to transfer them in phases to the tribe.

In February, 2018, WRC moved the first major holdings along Blue Creek into Yurok ownership, finally making the salmon sanctuary a reality. Yurok acquisition of these lands was made possible through the federal New Markets Tax Credits program, which was designed to spur revitalization in low-income communities through private investment. Through the program, Opportunity Fund; U.S. Bancorp Community Development Corporation (a division of U.S. Bank); and the Yurok Tribe invested $16.25 million in this phase of the project.

“Helping to return these ancestral lands to the Yurok Tribe, including the beautiful Blue Creek, will create or retain over 500 jobs for Yurok Tribe members,” said Luz Urrutia, Opportunity Fund’s Chief Executive Officer. “Opportunity Fund seeks to advance the economic well-being of working people. The chance to do so on a project that also benefits our natural environment is a triple bottom-line win: the social, economic, and environment returns make this effort one our biggest New Markets investments to date.”

WRC is a pioneer in both conservation and New Markets Tax Credits and, working in partnership with Opportunity Fund and U.S. Bancorp, helped the Yurok secure more than $40 million in all for this project. New Markets Tax Credits were critical to the project’s success, allowing the partners to bring needed private capital to the table in the face of waning federal funding for land conservation. “We are delighted to be a trusted partner to help the Yurok Tribe reclaim its ancestral lands so that it can continue to nurture the Klamath River and the wildlife that depend on it,” said Maria Bustria-Glickman, vice president of U.S. Bancorp Community Development Corporation, a division of U.S. Bank.

In the coming decade, the Yurok and WRC will manage the lands together until WRC is able to transfer the remaining land to the Yurok for permanent stewardship.

The Klamath was once the third largest producer of salmon on the West Coast. Its salmon are the keystone species of the Klamath-Siskiyou ecoregion, one of the most biologically diverse places on Earth. They are central to both Yurok and regional economies and are the backbone of Yurok culture.

Conclusion

The Blue Creek project is just one of our recent successes. WRC currently has over two dozen active projects in six states. With the support of GlobalGiving donors, Western Rivers Conservancy is expanding our efforts to protect riverlands for fish, wildlife and people.

We love to hear from our supporters. Please contact Anne Tattam at 503-241-0151, ext. 219 (or atattam@westernrivers.org) for further information. Thank you.