Out of bounds

The Kootenai River descends through a gauntlet of dams that endanger the wild sturgeon and threaten the fishing culture of Idaho's Kootenai Tribe.

J.M. Neil
Idaho Historian

Rivers refuse to stay put. By their nature they are restless flows of energy, perennially threatening to overrun our efforts to capture their energy while keeping them within bounds by way of dams, dikes, and other material and conceptual barriers. In our efforts to control rivers for our benefit, we all too often forget there are many other players in the drama, some of which gain powerful human advocates, thereby greatly increasing the complexity of the whole business. Placing dams in rivers can make a great deal of sense in terms of such functions as power generation and flood control. But the complex reality of a river and the lives it sustains forces policy makers to move far beyond simple cost/benefit calculations pertaining to hydroelectric power and agricultural production. The Kootenai River provides a

	White sturgeon, Idaho. On the Kootenai River, the sturgeon popolation has declined to less than 1,000 fish.

striking example of this multi-faceted conflict.

          Originating in the Canadian Rockies, it flows for 485 miles through British Columbia, across northwestern Montana and the northern tip of Idaho, and back into British Columbia, merging with the Columbia River at Castlegar. The Kootenai ends as it began, a stream isolated from any major population center and little known to the metropolitan areas of either Canada or the U.S. The International Joint Commission, established by treaty in 1909 to resolve trans-boundary water disputes between the two countries, has 19 separate boards dealing with specific areas, including one for the Columbia River and another for Kootenay Lake, but nothing for the Kootenai River.

Libby Dam

          Until the late 1940s there seemed to be little reason for the IJC to concern itself with the Kootenai River. Then regional political leaders and development advocates hit upon what seemed like a bright idea: building a dam near Libby, Montana. This would add a major additional source of electricity to the Bonneville Power Administration’s burgeoning network while putting a definitive stop to the periodic flooding of the Kootenai Valley between Bonners Ferry, Idaho, and Creston, B.C. The long reservoir reaching up into Canada, eventually named Lake Koocanusa, displaced no towns or major industries and promised to provide a large new recreational facility. Furthermore, locating the dam above Kootenai Falls (where the river drops 300 feet over just a few hundred yards) would guarantee that the dam had no impact on the salmon harvest, already a matter of growing concern in the Pacific Northwest. As for any other fisheries, a Corps of Engineers official belatedly conceded in 1998: “In the old days, we didn’t pay a lot of attention to fisheries. The dam was operated for years and years for flood control and power, because it goes hand in hand.” Within that sharply circumscribed context, Libby Dam struck its many proponents as virtually flawless. “This is not just another dam,” Idaho’s Compton White assured his colleagues as he introduced a bill into the House of Representatives authorizing construction of Libby Dam, “but in all probability, the most perfect example of a multi-purpose project in the entire world.”

          Roger McWhorter, a member of the IJC, agreed, dubbing the dam “one of the finest and most attractive multiple purpose projects in the whole country.” After extended but relatively amicable negotiations regarding Canadian compensation for the land covered by Lake Koocanusa, the IJC approved the project in late 1959 as part of a complex deal involving the whole Columbia Basin. Morrison-Knudsen of Boise began pouring concrete on June 1, 1968; 3.7 million cubic yards and 61 months later, Libby Dam reached completion in July 1973.
          It soon became evident that not all downstream inhabitants thought of the dam as a benign presence. Although Boundary County residents welcomed the end of spring flooding and tourists thought the river still looked natural enough, the dam radically changed the river as a fish habitat.
          Biologists eventually determined it harmed all fish species, acting as a “nutrient trap,” to quote Vaughn Paragamian of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. For two species—the white sturgeon and the burbot—Libby Dam threatened extinction. Both species are anomalies, well known by locals but lacking any respect. Even today, years after both have been accorded protection under the Endangered Species Act, their standing is reflected in the interpretive center at Libby Dam. Sturgeon and burbot are included in a diorama illustrating Kootenai River fish, but without any accompanying text. In sharp contrast, the display proudly notes the adjustment of the dam’s design at “the last minute” to render the water temperature safe for trout. Both sturgeon and burbot are still viewed by locals as, in effect, highly edible trash fish.

Living dinosaur

          The sturgeon is a living dinosaur. It evolved 220 million years ago, remaining unchanged for the past 175 million years. Sturgeon can grow to massive size—the record catch in Idaho weighed 675 pounds—but despite the fact that its taste and texture approaches that of halibut, it has never caught the fancy of sports fishermen. Perhaps it’s just too big; hooking one, according to a fishing guide, is “kind of like putting your hook in the bumper of a truck.” Heaven knows it’s not pretty, a striking example of a non-charismatic “mega-species.” And it is a bottom feeder—“essentially vacuum cleaners with fins” according to High Country News—the lowliest of the low in marine life status rankings. The Kootenai River sturgeon has been isolated from other sturgeon populations for 10,000 years, long enough for it to become genetically distinct. For all of its ancient lineage, Fish and Game biologists knew almost nothing about it when they started studying it in 1979. It took them several years to determine even such basic facts as when and where it spawned.

	Burbot, the only species of fresh-water cod in the world, lives in northern fresh waters, including the Kootenai River.

          Gaining an understanding of Kootenai River sturgeon has also been hampered by its being effectively out of bounds both culturally and geographically. Not only have people in the area refused to show any great concern for the fish, its dual citizenship has also greatly complicated biologists’ study. Since it spends much of its time in Kootenay Lake, north of Creston, swimming upstream to the Bonners Ferry area mainly for spawning, meaningful research depends on international cooperation, and that has been very slow in coming. Not that Canadians have been obstructionists, although they showed no early signs of concern about sturgeon. Americans tend to disregard people and policies north of the border. Typically, when the Sandpoint paper in June 1990 urged the need for cooperative efforts to save the sturgeon, it mentioned the Kootenai Tribe, Fish and Game, and Eastern Washington University, but said absolutely nothing about any agency in British Columbia. Nor did Fish and Game biologists studying the fish find it easy to hook up with their counterparts north of the border. Unlike the practice in Idaho where state agencies frequently have offices in each county, British Columbia arranges its bureaucracy quite differently, generally placing local offices in larger cities. Consequently, while Fish and Game has an office in Bonners Ferry, there is no equivalent office in Creston. Located on the margin between the West Kootenai District (headquartered in Nelson) and the East Kootenai District (in Cranbrook), it is not entirely clear which handles fish management in the Creston area. In either case the district centers are more than 100 miles from Bonners Ferry, in contrast to the short 20-mile drive to Creston. Given such ambiguities, it should not surprise us to learn that only in the 1990s, well over a decade after Fish and Game launched its study of Kootenai River sturgeon, did state officials and the Kootenai Tribe finally initiate a cooperative study with the B.C. Ministry of Environment.

Unique cod

         Concern for the burbot developed even later than for the white sturgeon. In some ways the burbot is even more anomalous than the sturgeon. Although lacking dinosaur status, burbot is unique in that it is the only species of fresh-water cod in the world. It looks enough like the salt-water ling cod for Kootenai Valley people to call it a “ling,” but it lives only in very northern fresh waters—in northern Canada, Alaska, and Siberia as well as in the Kootenai River. For thousands of years, the local population has been separated by Kootenai Falls, so the burbot downstream are genetically distinct from those living in Lake Koocanusa. Strangely enough, even though it had long been a significant food source for Native Americans (First Nations in Canada) and with commercial harvests of 20,000-30,000 per year as late as the 1950s, the crash in its numbers provoked no local cries for an investigation. Not until 1993 did Fish and Game launch a study to determine why the number of burbot below Libby Dam had declined almost to the point of extinction.
          Different as sturgeon and burbot are from one another (adult burbot generally weigh only 5–10 pounds), both are dependent on natural flows in the Kootenai River. Neither has successfully spawned since the completion of Libby Dam in 1973. Burbot are extremely weak swimmers, evolving to spawn in the winter with a low river flow. Sturgeon, on the other hand, need flows approaching flood level, and thus spawn during the height of spring runoff. Since the Corps of Engineers operates the dam to maximize power generation and minimize flooding, it sharply reduces spring flows and pushes up winter flows when there is a seasonal high in power demands. To complicate the matter even further, flood control also limits the ability of sturgeon larvae (as the offspring are called) to survive, since they traditionally hide out in the sloughs and other wetlands created by the spring floods.

Hatching a plan

	The Kootenai River loops through Montana and Idaho before returning to Canada. Big Sky Fishing.

          It is theoretically possible, of course, for natural populations to be replaced by those reared in hatcheries. The Kootenai Tribe opened a sturgeon hatchery at Bonners Ferry in May 1991 and began releasing 2-year-old sturgeon in 1994. By 2003 it had released 30,000 and was studying the possibility of producing hatchery-reared burbot. Since sturgeon do not reach sexual maturity until the age of 30, it will be another 20 years or so before it is known if those released by the hatchery can spawn in the wild. In any case, neither game officials nor preservationists like the idea of relying on hatcheries. As Paragamian put it, Fish and Game “wants a self-sustained fishable population” and not something that must be housed in a “museum.” He made the comment in 2003 regarding burbot. Preservationists made a similar point a decade before by petitioning for Endangered Species Act (ESA) protection of the Kootenai sturgeon. In the summer of 1992, a coalition of environmental organizations led by the Idaho Conservation League filed the petition. In justification, Mike Medberry of ICL told the Associated Press, “like anything, they deserve to live. They’re also a really interesting fish.”
          Typical of such confrontations, both sides saw the issue of saving the sturgeon as having much broader ramifications. On the preservationist side, Medberry argued “when it comes to a river system, protecting the sturgeon will also protect the other fish and life in that ecosystem.” Dave Bodmer, representing Boundary Backpackers, pushed the issue much further: “We can’t continue to sacrifice other species and the environment just for the sake of humans.” On the other side, local authorities denied the merits of the petition and stressed the dire consequences listing would have on the local economy. In April 1993, the Boundary County commissioners wrote Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt questioning the scientific basis for the petition, arguing “scientific data indicates there are several identified problems, but only one problem is being addressed.” Far more importantly, the commissioners believed listing would devastate the county’s economy. “It would stop all logging and farming,” according to Commissioner Orrin Everhart.

Endangered species

          The story of ESA listing of the Kootenai River sturgeon, and the subsequent development of measures to enable its survival and perhaps even revival, would sound very familiar to anyone who has followed the protection of endangered species in the United States over the past generation. The same pattern of local resistance, search for less disturbing alternatives, persistent demands by activists for action, slow but unswerving movement of the Fish and Wildlife Service (the federal agency responsible for ESA decisions and enforcement) toward responding to activist pressure and court decisions, and escalating cries of distress from local leaders—this was all rather predictably recapitulated in the Kootenai Valley. Thus, in early 1993 a locally sponsored technical committee thought it had come up with a conservation agreement which could be implemented over 10 years, but the Biodiversity Legal Foundation, pointing to the “extreme peril” facing the fish, demanded federal authorities respond immediately. FWS refused to be bullied by protests such as that of Commissioner Everhart. “The bottom line,” declared Charles Lobdel, FWS’ Idaho field supervisor, “is there is going to be some disruption for farmers, but a lot less than what they used to have before the dam was put in.” Listing occurred on June 13, 1994. Six years later, FWS issued a Draft Biological Opinion requiring that Libby Dam adjust flows to enhance sturgeon spawning. Opponents feared the large spring flows would flood the whole valley. “This nonsensical and almost laughable suicide mission,” the local paper editorialized, “has got to go down in the record books as one of the most colossal acts of nuttiness this side of Goofyville.”
          That response came not just in reaction to the sturgeon question. Boundary County has been the vortex of numerous hot-button wildlife preservation issues ever since the 1950s rediscovery of America’s only caribou herd up in the Selkirk Mountains, which span the Canadian/American border. By 2002, with the proposed ESA listing of burbot, frustrations and fears prevalent in the county provoked a letter signed by all four members of the Idaho congressional delegation: “Boundary County is the most imperiled county in the U.S. with grizzly bears, caribou, sturgeon, bull trout, Canadian lynx, and the occasional wolf already listed with ESA.”
          The letter may have served therapeutic purposes in the Kootenai Valley, but it had no noticeable impact on the ongoing enforcement by FWS of rules and regulations to protect endangered species. Local fears remain unabated. A recent issue of the Bonners Ferry Herald contained a half-page story, “A look back at the Flood of ’48,” recalling the old days before Libby Dam. The opening lines express a bittersweet nostalgia mixed with heavy overtones of lingering fear: ”Spring’s high water conditions that threatened to flood the community of Bonners Ferry brought many older locals back to a time when Kootenai flooding was a way of life ... before the building of Libby Dam ....”
          One of the more predictable aspects of the sturgeon issue lay in the reluctance of one arm of the government to work with another. Larry LaRocco, representing Idaho’s First Congressional District, reacted angrily to the fish’s listing: “... we’ve known for years that this is a river flow problem, and yet the agencies involved acted as if the telephone had never been invented.” Slowly the “agencies involved”—FWS and the Corps of Engineers in this case—did begin to use the telephone and eventually hammered out a working agreement.

Reaching out

          Much less predictable, and virtually unnoticed by the press, was another, ultimately much more important broadening of communication lines. The need for fully effective responses to the sturgeon and burbot issues forced people in the area to reach across what had traditionally been virtually impassable cultural and geographic boundaries For more than a century the Kootenai Tribe had been living in the area as an ignored and spurned minority. Never a large tribe—it presently has only 120 enrolled members, 75 of them living in the Bonners Ferry area—and lacking anything like a reservation, the Kootenai barely survived in what amounted to a rural slum. In 1975, reaching the end of their

	Woodland caribou and endangered species range from Canada to Idaho's Selkirk Mountains. Cathy Hart, World Wilderness Congress.

endurance, they actually declared a brief, bloodless war on the United States, winning them recognition from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, what is now an 18-acre home three miles northwest of Bonners Ferry, and a series of grants which enabled them to climb out of the economic abyss they had previously occupied. The war did little to bridge the indifference and hostility of the dominant local population. In 1986, when the Tribe broke ground for the $3 million Kootenai River Inn, the most elegant motel in Bonners Ferry, the Herald published a photo showing Chief Ray Abraham with the shovel, but left unidentified the four men standing with him. The chief later voiced his hope that the inn would provide physical evidence the Tribe “had arrived,” but the local story covering its opening left the Tribe totally unmentioned. Two years later its extremely cursory report of the Tribe’s success in obtaining a grant to build a sturgeon hatchery failed to note either the source or the amount of the grant. Although the Herald did give front-page coverage to the opening of the hatchery in June 1991, along with a photo, the story was remarkably thin on detail, lacking any mention of cost, size, or operating budget.
          Local concerns over the possibility of ESA listing for the white sturgeon dramatically and decisively ended the Kootenai Tribe’s isolation from its neighbors. In May 1992 a public meeting at the Tribal Hall to discuss the issue drew a standing-room-only crowd of 200 people, most probably on tribal property for the very first time. Thereafter, the local paper frequently quoted tribal biologists in its stories on sturgeon. The Kootenais reciprocated by supporting local efforts to find alternatives to ESA listing. In 1995, Paul Anders, tribal fisheries biologist, was appointed to a panel of eight scientists representing state and federal agencies studying how to deal with the lack of sturgeon reproduction. The Herald approvingly quoted Anders on the positive role being played by the tribe’s hatchery.

A problem of geography

          The Canadian/American border stood as the primary geographic boundary hemming in responses to the sturgeon and burbot crises. Prior to the 1980s there had been virtually no ongoing cooperation between Idaho and B.C. wildlife agencies. Both the northern tip of Idaho and the southeastern corner of B.C. lay too far from their respective governmental centers (and prevailing wildlife concerns) to gain consistent attention.

	Sturgeon migrate freely from Kootenai Falls in Montana to Kootenay Lake in British Columbia.

That had begun to change by 1995—the committee that Anders joined included two Canadians. However, the cooperative thrust of the scientific committee was countered by the B.C. Ministry of the Environment withdrawing funding for Paragamian’s research on burbot movement between Kootenay Lake and the river near Bonners Ferry. Nevertheless, transnational activity continued to increase. In March 1999, the Tribe announced an agreement with B.C.; its hatchery would ship 100,000 sturgeon eggs to Fort Steele on the upper Kootenai River. This aimed to create a second population of white sturgeon to minimize the chances of a catastrophic die-off. “Sturgeon have been around a lot longer than international boundaries,” Tribal Council chair Velma Behe declared. “What we need now is a cross-border solution to prevent their extinction.” By the beginning of 2003, a conservation strategy had been developed by Fish and Game, Kootenai Tribe, and B.C.’s Ministry of Water, Land and Air Protection. Power-producing agencies on both sides of the border, the last to join the crowd, finally did so in June 2005. Herded along by Idaho’s Sen. Mike Crapo, an impressive array of agencies signed a memorandum of understanding in Bonners Ferry, including not only state and provincial authorities, but also federal and dominion officers, and—at long last—Bonneville Power Administration and B.C. Hydro.
          Memos and plans, needless to say, do not by themselves save endangered species. Both Kootenai River sturgeon and burbot remain threatened. On the other hand, the interagency and international cooperation symbolized by the Bonners Ferry ceremony in June 2005 bode well for a number of other species, especially caribou and grizzly bear, whose fate are also threatened at least partially by cultural and geographic boundaries. Consequently, while the building of Libby Dam originated in ecological blindness, responses to its impact on sturgeon and burbot have set the stage for wildlife preservation, possibly moving beyond what had previously been out of bounds.

For Further Reading

"Groundbreaking ceremony marks start of motel project," Bonners Ferry Herald (January 9, 1986), pp. 1, 13.

Leah Andrews, "Idaho's forgotten war," at www.uidaho.edu/idahonatives

Leah Ashton, "Montana dam threatens northern Idaho fish," Lewiston Morning Herald (July 27, 1992), pp. 5, 9.

Michael Becker, "A look back at the flood of ’48," Bonners Ferry Herald (July 17, 2006), p.13.

Biological Diversity Center, " Kootenai River White Sturgeon," at
www.biologicaldiversity.org

R.J. Cohn, "When pigs fly and sturgeon dance," Bonners Ferry Herald (April 18, 2001), p.,4.

Lucy Dukes, "Burbot MOU celebration scheduled," Ibid. (June 30, 2005), p.12.

Vaughn Paragamian, "The lifeblood of the Kootenai River, " Bonners Ferry Kootenai Valley Times (March 16, 2001), p.2.

Donald E. Spritzer, Waters of Wealth: The Story of the Kootenai River and Libby Dam (Boulder, CO: Pruett Publishing Company, 1979).

U.S Fish and Wildlife Service, "The Kootenai River Population of White Sturgeon: An Example of U.S./Canada Cooperation in the Protection of an Endangered Species,” at www.fws.gov/endangered