"They will find another place to feed"

Comments on the discussion at FLOD-milfoil

Well, I didn't read this thread until last night, probably a good thing. I tend to shy away from online discussions about this--I'm a bat researcher, I'm long-winded, and some contributors' fact-checking seems to be terribly poor in these debates about Capitol Lake vs. an intertidal mudflat. A couple of the previous posters have clearly done research... Guglielmo, Thad, 'emmettoconnell' and others are seeking out, and presenting, credible information. Some others have made comments that are just baffling to me. We can read the CLAMP committee minutes and reports that have come out of the CLAMP process, but the facts and back-story, much of which has not been presented in the newspapers or on OlyBlog require some digging beyond the official Estuary website. I've done some linking to custom site searches at Capitollake.com. The one report not to miss is the 'ITR' or Independent Technical Review completed last November, a comissioned review and critique of the 4 prior 'technical reports.' My opinion is that it tore soem of those studies to shreds, but you wouldn't know that from the Executive Summary. The text of the ITR points out many examples of inappropriate analysis methods or study design, constrained RFP guidelines (I believe code for 'here's what we want to hear'), uncertain results, the RFP not asking the right questions... Its a can of worms, not all that long to read, and can be found here:
www.ga.wa.gov/CLAMP/Deschutes_ITR_Report_Oct23_2007-Out_300dpi.pdf

I have radio-tracked bats from the Woodard Bay nursery colony to Capitol Lake, starting in summer 2003. The vast majority of these bats feed at Captiol Lake every night, April/May through Aug/Sept.

They are all adult females, until the pups are born in June. Prior to this study, Little Brown Bats and Yuma Bats were believed to have a maximum 'commute range' of about 2 to 4 miles, not 7-9 miles each way. They go this distance because of the quality of the feeding area: midge larvae of 10 or 12 species are found in the lake bottom, and emerge at various times to provide a rather seamless hatch for the bats to harvest at the surface. CIAGuy was on the right track about this, but there is fresh water along the way, in ponds and creeks. However these small features don't have anywhere near the mass of insects required for the 3,000-plus (adult) bats at the Woodard Bay colony, the 600-1000 more adults from a colony near Evergreen College, and another 1,000 (+/-) that come in from Cooper Pt and Steamboat Is. areas. There easily could be other groups coming in to Capitol Lake that we've not noticed, but I'll stick to what has been documented. Some folks would consider their community to be fortunate to have Yuma bat colonies locally, they are very selective critters! And it is the lake, this lake, that allows them to use this area for their form of regional hatchery, the 'maternity colony.' The bats from these local colonies disperse and regenerate the Yuma Bat population for a much wider area than this local nursery zone. Please note that my comments here are about the two species at these large colonies, not the smaller sized breeding colonies of Big Brown bats and Silver-haired bats which also appear at the lake, but probably only in the many hundreds, not in the many thousands like the smaller bats.

I don't claim to be an expert on bat behavior. I can make some predictions based upon very gross cause and effect cases, like 'remove major habitat = bats disappear,' but many of their life-history strategies remain a mystery, to me and other researchers. They are echolocating nocturnal mammals that bear up to one young per year, nurse them to independence (~6 weeks), and live a very long time (for a wild animal that weighs equal to a nickle, 6 -7 grams),and ours are 'lake skimmers.' Their long lifespans, energetic cycles, hibernation abilities, flight, echolocation ability, etc, put them way off the charts in comarison to other mammals. Yet, very few research dollars are spent trying to unravel the processes behind these abilities (okay, the Navy thinks bat sonar is cool...).

"They will find another place to feed" A few of the radio-tracked bats have visited Black Lake, especially the ones from Evergreen, but even those ended up at Capitol Lake for long stretches. They are doing this record-distance commute for some reason, and in the wildlife biology world the answer would be something like 'because they have to.' Every mile they fly enroute to a food source uses energy that won't be in mom's milk for 'junior' back at the roost. So, yes, 'perish' is the more likely scenerio. Bats have great echolocation... for about 30 feet. And night vision a bit better than our own. But they are stricltly nocturnal, so saying that they will be able to investigate their landscape in search of a new lake that will meet their special requirements is about as reasonable as telling me to go develop my own fuel source when I can't affort to buy gas at the pump. During surveys in June we captured a female Little Brown bat near Roy that had a numbered plastic wrist band put on it in 1992... a few feet from where she was netted 16 years ago. They are extremely habitual animals, again, because they have to.

Yuma Bats, especially, form large nursery groups. The Woodard Bay pier appears to be an excellent shelter for these bats during the most demanding months of their reproductive cycle, and yes, it will eventually rot away. The DNR has installed one large alternate 'bat condo' near the pier roost, and is talking about other alternate structures. Yuma bats appear to have a few scttered nursery colonies with thousands of bats rather than a lot of colonies with a more typical 50 to 200 bats for other species. These thousands of female bats will typically have one offspring per year, and when the pup is able to fend for itself, mother and pup will move out and go to a new location, maybe in Mason Co, or Lake St. Claire, and my guess is that they then fill the gaps for many miles from the nursery, going to 'lower quality' foraging areas, since their greatest energy demands (pregnancy and lactation) have passed. I don't know why these other lakes are not favored by these 2 large colonies, some are apparently within reach, and are occasionally visited by the bats. On my list of reasons they are less desireable are:

* Urban delelopment around the lakes (Long, Hicks, Ward) come with yard chemicals, pesticides, etc that probably prevent good midge hatches.
* Lights, dogs, cats, boats
* Size -- Yuma Bats in particular appear to be drawn to large lakes, not the smaller ones.
* Natural edges and habitat variety. Captiol Lake has more than one feature, for instance the creeks, and woodland canopy around much of the edges, may provide a diverity needed that isn't found at most of the local lakes with developed or urbanized shorelines.

Estuary... mud flats... dredging... new bridges... how about 'restore the river?' The Deschutes River is poor habitat for salmon production, maybe alway has been. Read about it in the scientific literature. Its too warm, too turbid, high levels of orthophosphates, and a dumping ground for surface runoff. Sure, the lake has those problems, too, because it is full of this Deschutes River Water. The first salmon above the Tumwater Falls were placed there by the state after the fish ladder and hatchery was constructed in the early 1950s. We all know that, right? The river above the falls was free of salmonid fish for many, many thousands of years before we messed with it. I don't see it on anyone's agenda to free the Deschutes River from that biological bomb. But salmon are the WDF&W's cash crop, hands down. Salmon fishing licenses represent many, many $$millions$$ in income to the department, and hence the Deschutes hatchery. Why would they the 'dual personality agency' advocate for the existing wildife at the lake (and there's a lot more than the bats!).

Guglielmo discussed the cost benefit analysis issues for intertidal mudflat vs. lake. In addition, there has been no analysis done to determine how much bang for the buck they would get with a project like this massively expensive project. A point that has been w-h-i-s-p-e-r-e-d among the braver regional nearshore-restoration advocates (and funders) has been "how much productive estuary would this amount of money get us if spent at another site? The intertidal mudflat conversion would require (see CLAMP linked at end) :

1) A new 5th Ave bridge as big or bigger than the new 4th Ave bridge.
2) Major dredging of the current lake basin to create a much larger 'bathtub' to prevent downtown flooding at high tides/high river flows since the lack of tide gate would eliminate the current practice of using lake level management for flood control at high river flows.
3) Reinforce the shoreline along Deschutes Pkwy (& Percival Crk bridge) and the I-5 bridge supports to withstand tidal forces they were not designed for. The shoreline along the parkway would have to become *more* hardened, not 'softer.'(info from CLAMP website, engr. report summary)
4) Massive earth removal and disposal to create the 500 ft opening at 5th Ave.
5) Another batch of costly studies and engineering contracts to actually get to ground-breaking ceremonies.

And this will just get us to a wimpy 1950 channelized mudflat, not the actual river delta that probably existed pre-Olympia. Downtown Olympia, below around 5th Ave (and higher) is a human-made filled-in interdital zone. So, why if we are restoring to an arbirary, relatively recent (1950) pre-condition, wouldn't the appropriate description be more like 'establish' or 'create,' or 'restore to the 1950 conditions?' And we are talking restore the last 1 or 2 miles, not the whole stinking river, to 1950. For an interesting historical perspecitce, I'd recommend talking with old timers who fished the Deschutes River as kids, you know, fished for the trout that made that place home. Its always been enlighteneing hear that side, and time is running short to hear those stories.
Don't get me wrong, the lake, the fish ladder and hatchery at Tumw. Falls, etc, was an idea driven by politics, and no doubt money... just like today's process. I don't believe it was the way things should have developed--maybe they should have eliminated the land bridge (isthmus), made the Westside a separate town, etc. But they did what they did, and in the past 50 years, an invisible wildlife group which has lost significant amounts of habitat elsewhere, has eeked out a living here--without our permission. They are competing against a well-heeled industry that has spends many, many millions $$ to get enough (non native) fish to return to the release site to get us to buy those licenses, boats, tackle and gear... have I said 'cash crop' yet? Not a single salmon above Tumwater Falls prior to 1952... I wonder how that will be addressed in the salmon education center at the proposed new Pioneer Park hatchery? And how they will explain why it was necessary to pump water up from the aquafir to get water clean and cool enough to raise the fish that were never biologically destined to be in that river system?

Howard Fuss, WDFW fish biologist, wrote an excellent paper covering biological issues for the Deschutes Reiver Hatchery program, and I wouldn't be able to even talk about this if I had not read it: HATCHERY REFORM: WHAT NEEDS TO BE REFORMED, THE OBJECTIVES, THE TECHNOLOGY, OR THE FISH?

A seemingly successful PR campaign has convinced a number of people to not question the current Capitol Lake planning process. But the political-economic forces (and I don't mean our elected officials) have carelully sifted through the information to present a series of 2-page glossies that omit major technical and scientific points that need to be reviewed. For instance, in 2004, Wa Dept of Ecology reported that one of Capitol Lake's big water quality problems was periodic (and episodic) low dissolved oxygen levels, from the algae blooms. At the June 2008 CLAMP meeting, the scientist in charge of DOE's TMDL study said "Ms. Roberts replied that because Capitol Lake is so shallow, the oxygen from the atmosphere reaches the bottom with the level of DO never decreasing." See page 8, www.trpc.org/resources/CLAMPSC060508min.pdf.
They now report that the levels are normal and sometimes higher than normal... not at all what they expected. However, the CLAMP process is still full of documents referring to the adverse effects of low D.O. levels, based on the earlier, faulty predictions about the eutraphication of Capitol Lake. Why not get going on cleaning up the river, and seeing how it changes the lake? The polluted river water will be just as bad for an estuary, intertidal mudflat, or what-have-you! We don't have to wait for 10 years of consideration and 1.4 million+ dollars spent in studies to start cleaning up the Deschutes River.

Cows and horses in upstream creeks, home and forest fertilizers in the watershed, and failing septic systems are all very real contributors to the river's failing health, even if it was never destined to be a salmon bearing river.
As several have already said, we are stuck with the sediment, and we will pay for its removal, be it in Budd Inlet or Capitol Lake. We know that dioxins and other nasties are buried in the sediments in Budd Inlet (see DOE's recent report) and that you can't dredge the new silt that would dump out of an opened Captiol lake basin without stirring up the dioxins, pcbs, etc.

Oh, as for the original post, Mindy Roberts (in the above June '08 CLAMP minutes) said all of the lakes in this area have algae blooms right now. The high orthophosphate levels coming down the river encourage more algae growth in Captiol Lake, but it is a 'normal' lake process, and would be shifted into Budd Inlet waters if the dam is removed (algae blooms from high nitrates/nitrites). The algae may not be as visible in Budd Inlet, as it is more mixed throughout the water column, but may have greater biological consequences.