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 here
and 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.
