It’s October and the land is thirsty. Shasta Big Springs Ranch is nestled below hillsides studded with scrubby stunted juniper trees. Snow-capped Mount Shasta towers above, dominating the skyline from nearly anywhere here in Northern California’s Siskiyou County. An ice-cold creek gurgles up from lava tube springs deep underground and cuts through the pastures of what was once a verdant ranch.
Now, Shasta Big Springs Ranch is dry, except for a ribbon of silvery thistles along the riverbank. Big Springs used to be a source of water for salmon habitat and agricultural irrigation. Today, it’s a source and symbol of the polarizing divide between farmers and conservationists facing an increasingly water-scarce future...Water is what makes this land so special. Hundreds of thousands of threatened red coho and hook-jawed chinook salmon used to swim here, nearly 200 miles from where the Klamath River meets the Pacific Ocean, to clear tributaries in Siskiyou County fed by icy springs and thawing snow.
Fish in this mineral-rich oasis grow nearly twice as fast and gain three times as much weight as those in nearby streams. But by the 2000s, their numbers had dwindled to just a few dozen adults each year. Since size largely determines whether juvenile fish survive, conservation organizations have been interested in this particular property, which includes the entire 2.2-mile length of the Big Springs Creek and 7.5-miles of the Shasta River, for decades.
This is the “Holy Grail for salmon, the cradle for coho,” said Chris Babcock, a biologist at The Nature Conservancy. Local farmers have long eyed the ranch too, drawn to the area for its abundant water, at least compared to the rest of California. Unlike neighboring properties, Shasta Big Springs comes with “senior” water rights – the right to use water even during droughts, when other farms with more junior rights go dry. In California, agriculture needs irrigation to be productive through the dry growing season — summer and fall — and its primary source, mountain snowmelt, is rapidly decreasing. There is simply not enough water in California to go around for urban and rural communities, conservation, and irrigation-intensive farming.
So when the property was put up for sale in 2008, there was a lot of interest.
Chase saved up to buy the property, thinking that $3 million would be enough to acquire the 4,136-acre parcel from his neighbor. For 25 years, he had farmed hay and a couple hundred cows next to the Shasta Big Springs Ranch, and he hoped to expand his business.
But when the land hit the market, The Nature Conservancy, an international environmental nonprofit, offered over $14 million for the 4,136-acre parcel, a price Chase couldn’t match and his aging neighbor couldn’t refuse. The Nature Conservancy’s goal for the project was to prove that conservation and agriculture could coexist. “We will retain agriculture and ranch production,” an employee of the organization assured community members who feared that outsiders like the government and environmentalists were trying to force farmers off their land. The Nature Conservancy did continue to lease its irrigated pastures, which Babcock described as “green as Ireland,” to local ranchers. Cattle could graze on the Shasta Big Springs as before, though now with several stipulations, like fencing off the river from cows, the organization said...
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It’s October and the land is thirsty. Shasta Big Springs Ranch is nestled below hillsides studded with scrubby stunted juniper trees. Snow-capped Mount Shasta towers above, dominating the skyline from nearly anywhere here in Northern California’s Siskiyou County. An ice-cold creek gurgles up from lava tube springs deep underground and cuts through the pastures of what was once a verdant ranch.
Now, Shasta Big Springs Ranch is dry, except for a ribbon of silvery thistles along the riverbank. Big Springs used to be a source of water for salmon habitat and agricultural irrigation. Today, it’s a source and symbol of the polarizing divide between farmers and conservationists facing an increasingly water-scarce future...Water is what makes this land so special. Hundreds of thousands of threatened red coho and hook-jawed chinook salmon used to swim here, nearly 200 miles from where the Klamath River meets the Pacific Ocean, to clear tributaries in Siskiyou County fed by icy springs and thawing snow.
Fish in this mineral-rich oasis grow nearly twice as fast and gain three times as much weight as those in nearby streams. But by the 2000s, their numbers had dwindled to just a few dozen adults each year. Since size largely determines whether juvenile fish survive, conservation organizations have been interested in this particular property, which includes the entire 2.2-mile length of the Big Springs Creek and 7.5-miles of the Shasta River, for decades.
This is the “Holy Grail for salmon, the cradle for coho,” said Chris Babcock, a biologist at The Nature Conservancy. Local farmers have long eyed the ranch too, drawn to the area for its abundant water, at least compared to the rest of California. Unlike neighboring properties, Shasta Big Springs comes with “senior” water rights – the right to use water even during droughts, when other farms with more junior rights go dry. In California, agriculture needs irrigation to be productive through the dry growing season — summer and fall — and its primary source, mountain snowmelt, is rapidly decreasing. There is simply not enough water in California to go around for urban and rural communities, conservation, and irrigation-intensive farming.
So when the property was put up for sale in 2008, there was a lot of interest.
1 comment:
Californians are always crying about not having enough water, but they let huge quantities run into the ocean because they don't build more lakes to store water. Their reason, as stated in Victor Hanson's latest article about California, was that the no knowing global warmer activists proclaimed that snow and rain were going to diminish and therefore no more storage for water was needed. Looking at the weather in California just now we see too much water and snow.....all of it flowing to the ocean after flooding towns. Go figure! The global warming crowd would bet on a three legged horse to win. Billions of dollars for a railroad to nowhere, never laid any track but sure spent the money.
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