Major support for Oregon Field Guide is provided by... [ ♪♪♪ ] MAN: My rappel!

MAN: Oh, my gosh, it's beautiful.

MAN: Good morning, everybody.

Woo!

Let's do it again!

MAN: Nicely done!

MAN: Oh, yeah!

Fourteen and a half.

Yes, that was awesome!

[ people cheering ] There you go, up, up... ED JAHN: Tonight on Oregon Field Guide: These fish are central to the history and traditions of the Klamath Tribes.

They're in trouble now, but Jimmy Jackson is doing everything he can to save them.

If they're gone, they're gone.

Nobody's gonna get to catch 'em, nobody's gonna get to eat 'em.

I just -- I can't.

It's not gonna happen.

Then, embrace the rhythms of autumn at the Cedar Creek Grist Mill.

But first, it's an up-close experience with Oregon's birds of prey.

[ cries ] It's a rare person who isn't at least somewhat captivated by birds of prey, otherwise known as raptors, but the modern world has taken a toll on them, which is where the Cascade Raptor Center comes in.

They give people a chance to get up close with these magnificent birds while working behind the scenes to save them.

[ owl hooting ] My name is Kit Lacy.

I'm the bird curator here at the Cascades Raptor Center.

Good morning, Dmitri.

Our mission is to connect people with wildlife.

Good morning, Guapo.

Hi!

[ screeches ] I'm a biologist by training, but not with birds.

I had no idea how much I could love raptors.

Right now it's my job to go around and look at each and every bird.

Little morning football, Dante?

Look at their aviary, you know, is everything okay?

Did something happen overnight?

But it's also kind of my good-morning time.

I have relationships with a lot of these birds, and so it's not me just saying good morning.

A lot of the birds actually say good morning back in their own way.

[ screeches ] Bald eagles are a very dramatic bunch.

Most people, when they hear Atticus, they don't realize that's what bald eagles sound like, because when Hollywood shows a bald eagle, they always play a red-tailed hawk call... [ hawk cries ] ...over that visual of the bald eagle.

[ screeches ] Other staff are just getting ready, starting to get food, make sure everything's in order in the kitchen.

[ birds screeching ] Zach, do you want a rabbit leg for Dante?

Yes, please.

WOMAN: Each bird has a label.

Some birds are very picky, so they get a specific piece of food or type of food.

AARON SCOTT: Did you ever expect you were going to be a short-order cook for a large number of raptors?

No, and a lot of people, you know, they say, "Oh, how can you touch that food," and the benefits way outweigh the perceived nastiness of cutting up dead food or prepping dead food.

Plus, you know, I grew up in food service.

[ screeching ] KIT: We'll talk about what programs we have going on.

Zach was going to do a training session with Guapo, and, Laura, you're cool with that Dmitri practice session out in the forest?

Now, as we're moving through 2021, we might be starting to do off-site programs, so we're going to have to up our game and get birds back into training.

This is Dmitri.

He is a Eurasian eagle-owl.

Eagle-owls are some of the largest owl species.

"Eagle" just meaning "large."

They're not related to eagles.

KIT: The training methodology that we use is positive reinforcement.

Okay, D. They learn very quickly.

Nice work.

You can kind of give a signal or a cue that lets them know what to do, and you just say, "Thank you."

And with the raptors, the best way to say thank you is with a tasty treat.

We're really fortunate at our facility that all of our ambassadors are also on public exhibit.

[ hooting ] What does an owl say?

Hoo-hoo.

Hoo-hoo, Jack!

That's right, hoo!

KIT: These raptors all have different backstories.

Some of these birds were conservation-bred and kind of raised to be educators.

Other birds were wild-hatched and then deemed non-releasable, and they were very unique in that they were able to transition into this life.

This handsome guy is Leafy the turkey vulture.

Last summer we started doing walkabouts on the site, so today we're gonna walk around.

Come on.

Leafy's nest was destroyed.

He got taken into a rehab facility down in California, which is where he was found.

And they did everything they could, and unfortunately, he still imprinted onto humans.

So they went to go release him, and he flew up into the air and flew right back down and started pulling on pant legs and landing on arms and pulling on shoelaces.

Come here.

You've got shoelaces.

Come here.

And that doesn't make for a good wild turkey vulture.

Leafy's been a great ambassador here.

He definitely has a fan club.

Hi, everybody.

Can you hear me okay?

So happy that you guys invited us to come and visit your classroom.

One of the really big points that I like to teach is what individuals can do.

I see a hand up.

If I give the story that western screech owls, when they're babies, get caught by people's housecats, maybe people will start shifting their cats indoors.

For me, it's just really talking about those little things that people can do in their own world, in their own life to make a difference.

Hi, everybody!

This is Guapo, the Swainson's hawk.

So Guapo helps us out.

He is a professional teacher, goes into schools and into the community to teach programs all about raptors.

Raptor feet are amazing.

Do your feet have talons for catching mice?

[ boy laughs ] Oh, is that silly?

Our whole mission is to encourage conservation attitudes.

So helping people actually understand what's out there in the environment so that they can have something to care about.

How did you get started doing this, Zach?

I saw a raptor program when I was in second grade in Michigan, and I thought that was the coolest thing ever, and then I just fell in love with working with animals.

Want to step on the light there?

KIT: Behind the scenes, totally different population of birds in our wildlife hospital.

Not an easy ear to examine.

Members of the public find an injured raptor, bring it to our hospital.

The number one goal is always release into the wild.

The other day, a lady came up here with four barn owl eggs.

They moved a hay bale, the eggs were in the hay bale.

He was born last night, and he was born on Monday morning.

Summer is the busiest time of the year.

Babies fall out of nests, babies get abandoned.

[ screeching ] And for every species which comes here, we have to devise a different plan: how to raise babies, how to reintegrate them into the wild population.

With barn owls, we are extremely lucky, because we have a foster parent pair.

We have two former education birds, Nani and Soren.

And she does an amazing job.

And we get really much nicer young owls than we could raise in the clinic.

She grooms them, she feeds them exactly the right amount.

We have no problems with anything getting imprinted.

And the last stage of their time with us is live-prey training.

We set up an area where we feed them live mice every day.

So this way we assess if they're able to hunt.

Oh, look at that.

Perfection.

So ready to go.

Say goodbye to the free lodgings.

There's many mice.

From now on, it's do-it-yourself.

Then we have made arrangements at three farms where they will be placed.

We have so many barn owls this year.

You wouldn't believe it.

KIT: 2020, we saw a record number of birds into our hospital, close to 500.

We've never been anywhere near that number of cases.

[ Ulrike shushes, whispers indistinctly ] This year looks to be another really record year for our intakes.

Are these injuries human-caused?

I think the vast majority are.

It's your sibling.

It's okay.

All right.

We do see a conflict between that wildlife/human interface all the time.

Hi, Newton.

There's something about raptors.

And I think if you look across cultures, across the ages, you'll see raptors.

You see raptors represented as religious symbols and gods.

There's just this connection.

And then people gain empathy, they get interested, they engage, and it's much easier to get my message across to really care about all the wildlife that we share the world with.

Good morning.

Boop, boop, boop, boop.

You're so round and cute.

[ ♪♪♪ ] There are many complex environmental issues playing out in the Klamath Basin.

One of them centers on fish known as suckers.

They spawn like salmon but they get none of the attention.

And like salmon, they're in trouble.

But Jes Burns joined the Klamath Tribe and some others who are working on a project that just may help.

JES BURNS: Springtime in the Klamath Basin, and the evening comes easy.

But high on the bank, the smack talk comes hard.

Tonight I'm gonna teach you guys how to catch some fish.

[ laughs ] Spring is spawning season on the Sprague River for two of Oregon's most endangered fish, the shortnose and Lost River suckers.

Like salmon and trout, they seek out clean gravel in rivers to lay their eggs.

They're easier to sneak up on at night.

Easy, girl, easy.

Oh, Lost River.

Despite Endangered Species protections, the sucker populations have continued to crash.

We're going for shortnose because they're more endangered.

There's less of them in the wild than there is Lost Rivers.

You could walk up and grab a Lost River by hand.

Shortnose, you have to be pretty sneaky.

More than 80 percent of the shortnose that spawn in this area have disappeared in the past five years.

The fish are at the center of conflicts over water in the arid, agriculture-heavy Klamath Basin.

I think they're over here.

Klamath Tribes member Jimmy Jackson is part of a crew slipping and sliding in the dark water to protect the few suckers that are left.

They're collecting shortnose eggs and sperm from wild-spawning fish to raise in a conservation hatchery.

When I was a kid, there was thousands and thousands of suckers in the river.

Every -- every spring, you could go down there and see thousands.

Now that I'm an adult, you know, 20 years later, you go down there and there's only a few hundred of them.

I haven't seen one yet.

I don't know.

There's so few shortnose suckers that even unexpected wildlife seems easier to catch.

Whoa!

[ chuckles ] Hey, look, we caught a beaver.

Oh, it's like leather, huh?

I thought it was a log!

Despite the distraction of the beaver, Jimmy is eager to get back in the water.

You guys wanna keep holding hands, or you wanna go catch some fish?

His drive comes from a love of his job but also a deep sense of responsibility to save these two species of fish called C'waam and Koptu in the Klamath Tribe's language that were a traditional food source for his people.

My neighbor behind me, he's an elder, and we talk a lot, and he's just got the highest hopes for me and he just loves what we're doing.

And then he tells another elder, and then they're always praying, hoping I'm successful.

And so it's a lot of weight on your shoulders.

But at the same time, they're all behind you.

They all got your back, they all want to see you successful.

And I just -- I just don't want to let them down, you know?

Hey, there's some in this side channel.

Back in the water, the crew manages to net a couple shortnose suckers.

This is about as big as they get.

These guys are probably close to 30 years old.

We're looking at two of maybe 8,000 total in the population left in the world.

But the problem for Lost River and especially the shortnose suckers is not the low number of adults remaining, it's the fact that the fish are all so old.

For the shortnose sucker, the oldest individual that we've ever aged was 33 years old.

Right now, most of the individuals we have in the lake were born in 1991, so that puts them at 30 years old.

So they're within three years of the maximum life span ever recorded for this species.

So especially for the shortnose suckers, we may expect a massive senescence event where they all either die or stop breeding because of their age.

The sucker population is so old because in their traditional stronghold of Upper Klamath Lake, there are practically no new suckers making it to spawning age.

Nearly all the juveniles disappear right around their first birthday.

This is where the Fish and Wildlife Service's conservation hatchery comes in.

The hatchery here is the place where we raise both Lost River and shortnose suckers in a hope to get them past the size where most of the mortality happens in Upper Klamath Lake.

More than 80 percent of adult suckers survive in the lake from year to year, but for young fish, that figure is close to zero.

Raising them in the protection of a hatchery could help.

Shortnose: 171, 57.

We wanted to get them to that stage because if they can become adults, then we think they could be out there for 20 to 30 years and provide some stability for us.

210, 85.

738.

If the two species of suckers are ever to recover, an influx of younger fish is vital.

It would give Jimmy a chance to eat the fish the tribes once relied on for sustenance.

The fish their tradition says was given to them directly as a gift from their Creator.

JIMMY: Every elder I've ever talked to were just like, "Oh, suckers, they're so good, they're so good."

And I'm just like, "Well, I can't try it yet, but that's the goal."

You know, one day that the tribe will be able to go out and harvest suckers every year and store your freezer up with some fresh sucker meat.

I will.

The goal for this hatchery is to expand to eventually release 60,000 shortnose and Lost River suckers every year.

But raising these suckers in this way is a relatively new endeavor in the efforts to bring back the fish.

JOSH: Inevitably there's going to be a learning curve: How do we do this, how's the best way to rear them, where's the best place to put them, what's the best time to put them?

The answers to these questions can only be found on Upper Klamath Lake.

WOMAN: Upper Klamath Lake is this amazing, spectacular lake when viewed from afar, and suckers, which happen to be very tough fish, if they can't survive there, then the whole ecosystem is in danger.

Summer Burdick has spent several years trying to figure out why young suckers in the lake don't survive.

Well, it's a little smoky today.

[ chuckles ] Science must go on!

It's kind of like being the detective in a murder mystery case in which you have many, many suspects.

And trying to figure out which of these suspects or if there's a combination of these suspects that are actually the ones causing the death of the fish.

Every few weeks during the summer, when the suckers are known to die off, her team goes out on the water.

They position submerged cages called mesocosms in different spots around the lake and fill them with suckers from the hatchery.

Wow, there's some good-sized ones in there.

Every three weeks, we catch the fish out of here, and then we weigh and measure them and look for signs of disease.

You good for fish?

SUMMER: I'm ready.

Okay.

Split left pec and right pec.

And damaged caudal.

Hey, Summer, do you want to look at this one?

Oh, yeah.

Carolyn Malecha has been heading up the mesocosm fieldwork all summer, tracking the health of the young suckers.

There's some blood vessels burst and some hemorrhaging, which is the red that you see.

SUMMER: Yeah, and that yellow infection right there might indicate bacteria.

Okay.

If they were in the hatchery, they'd probably give them some sort of antibiotic.

All you can do for wild fish is try to improve their environment.

After years of data, Summer has come to realize that the real problem for suckers isn't actually infections or parasites.

The first time we did this, we thought we had it figured out.

We had this parasite on the gills, and we were pretty excited about it.

When we went back the next year, the fish died from something else.

They died from a bacterial infection.

And then we went back another time and we found tail rot that was being caused by something completely different.

And so at first that was really frustrating to me, because I felt like we weren't figuring it out.

But then kind of the aha moment was, hey, it's not the thing that's getting them in the end.

It's some sort of stressor that's reducing their immune system to the point that it doesn't matter what the disease is, it matters what the stressor is, and that's really what we're looking for here is that stressor.

Though figuring out what in this massive lake is stressing the suckers is even more challenging.

But there are some probable culprits.

We know that air temperatures in the Klamath Basin have been increasing over the last hundred years and the temperatures in the lake right now, in the mid-summer, are in the range that are stressful for suckers and also in the range that are perfect for their parasites to thrive.

High temperatures and drought in the Klamath region have been intensifying because of human-caused climate change.

In addition, water levels in the lake affect water quality and the availability of sucker habitat.

And there's another factor.

What would it take for 30 years, those species, those larvae to die year after year after year after year after year, for 30 years?

In my mind, it has to be something that's consistent, widespread, and applicable across the entire population.

So to me, the thing that makes most sense is the algal blooms from year to year.

Scientists believe Upper Klamath Lake has always had algae blooms, but human development, ranching, and farming has increased the amount of phosphorus eroding from the soil into the lake.

This phosphorus feeds multiple algae blooms every summer, and when the algae die and decompose, oxygen levels in the lake crash.

We start to see very, very low oxygen levels, which is poor for the fish.

That's the same oxygen they need to breathe.

The algae blooms also spike the pH levels and some release toxins into the water.

The Klamath Tribes are working to reduce the amount of phosphorus getting into the lake, but progress is slow, and the older generation of suckers don't have that much time.

She is an old fish.

It's just sad to see them die.

On top of this, fighting for suckers can feel isolating in a community where fish are in competition with agriculture for water.

Why are the tribes the only one that seem to be really concerned, that really want to bring these fish back, you know?

It's... You kind of feel like it's the tribe against the world sometimes.

But sometimes offers of help come from unlikely places.

And sometimes desperate times call for unconventional measures.

You got some angled needle nose?

Professor Mason Terry and his students in the renewable energy program at the Oregon Institute of Technology are building solar-powered aerators to help improve water quality in Upper Klamath Lake.

Basically all you're doing is you're pumping air down into the water.

And in our case, we're achieving a mixing So you're getting oxygen moving throughout the water column instead of a stratification.

It's like a giant aquarium bubbler.

Each floating platform uses solar panels and batteries to power two air pumps.

It's a giant lake.

And of course there's no way we can treat the whole lake.

But all we're trying to do is create these little pockets.

If we can boost that oxygen down at the bottom layer -- and they're bottom fish, they're bottom feeders -- see if we can get them to survive through this algae die-off time that we have every late summer/fall.

All right!

As one solar aerator comes together, another that's been out on the lake for a year is towed back by a crew from the Klamath Tribes.

Dirty.

Definitely dirty.

[ laughs ] We got some bird poop going.

I wouldn't have thought it was that much.

It's all white.

OIT grad student Juan Villareal surveys the damage.

Once you shade out a row of the silicon wafers on the solar panels, you lose voltage.

And seeing how those are completely covered, they're not recharging the battery at all.

The new platform will include bird deterrents, but last year's models are going to need a bath before they can be redeployed.

And that thankless job falls to Jimmy, who's always willing to do whatever it takes to save the two species of suckers.

JIMMY: If they're gone, they're gone.

Nobody's gonna get to catch 'em, nobody's gonna get to eat 'em.

And I can't -- I'm not gonna allow that.

I just -- I can't.

It's not gonna happen.

I'll do whatever it takes.

Whatever it takes.

And just as tribal elders have told Jimmy about the time when the tribes were able to eat C'waam and Koptu, Jimmy hopes to one day share his own story.

It's gonna be a good story to tell my grandkids if we're successful.

If we're not successful, I don't think I'll tell them about it.

[ laughs ] That's the truth, you know?

You want to tell good stories, not bad stories.

[ ♪♪♪ ] And finally, Michael Bendixen leaves us with a photo essay that I think will leave you pining for a cold cup of cider on a crisp autumn day.

[ birds chirping ] [ rattling ] Cheers.

Cheers.

Cheers.

Cheers.

MAN: Mmm, 2017 was a very good year.

[ all laugh ] [ ♪♪♪ ] [ birds chirping ] Major support for Oregon Field Guide is provided by... Additional support provided by... And the following... and the contributing members of OPB and viewers like you.