TWENTY-EIGHTH BIENNIAL REPORT. 



21 



sioners, forest officers and park rangers aided materially by trans- 

 planting fish from isolated pools to permanent streams. It will 

 doubtless take several years to recoup from the depletion due to the 

 past season. 



Low water in the streams in many instances made fishways 

 inetfective. "With water several feet below the crest of a dam no 

 water enters the fishway and migratory fishes are prevented from 

 reaching their spawning ground. Too often thought of the con- 

 servation of fish life is obscured by the demand for electric energy. A 

 whole stream is sometimes diverted from its course or the entire flow 

 utilized in a power plant, leaving a dry stream bed and complete 

 destruction of the fish life, a natural resource impossible to replace. 



Fig. 7. One version of "Over the top." Steelhead trout jumping a waterfall in 

 Trinity County. Photograph by C. O. Fisher. 



Heretofore, power development has taken pbicc bigh in tlic iiioiin- 

 tains with no serious loss of breeding grounds to migratory fish. The 

 proposed building of a 250-foot dam near the mouth of the Khimath 

 River with the conseciuent issuance of preliminary federal and state 

 permits presented a very fundamental conservation problem. Since 

 salmon have not been known to successfully negotiate more than a 

 40-foot fishway, it hardly seems probable that any method can hv 

 devised for carrying tliem over a 250-foot dam. It appears certain 

 that the construction of such a dam would mean the ultnuate 

 destruction of the last unspoiled run of king salmon and steel head 

 trout left in the state. Furthermore, the proposed (leveh)piuent on 

 the Lower Klamath would mean the destruction of th(> best source 

 of egg supply for the state's fish hatcheries. Almost the entire supply 

 of salmon eggs is secured at Klamathon. and the best supply of trout 

 eggs is secured at the four or five egg-collecting stations along this 

 river. Practically every stream in the state, and most of the lakes, 

 have been stocked with eggs secured from the Klamath River trout. 



