The 12 member committee, which included U.C. Davis professor and fishery scientist Peter Moyle, also recommended closing the Iron Gate Hatchery for one or two salmon life cycles and to monitor what happens. The report said that hatchery salmon may be competing with wild coho salmon for forage and habitat.

The Committee also noted that coho salmon depend more heavily than chinook, steelhead and other species on tributary habitat, "but that tributary habitat in the lower basin is in particularly bad shape and often totally dewatered," according to Glen Spain, Northwest Regional Director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations.

Other committee recommendations included reestablishing cool summer flows in the Shasta and Scott tributaries though programs for the "purchase, trading, or leasing of groundwater flows (including springs) for direct delivery" and by "increase of annual or seasonal low flows."

Most controversially, the report failed to point the finger at the Bush administration's change in the operation of the Klamath Project that led to low flows resulting in the biggest fish kill in U.S. history. The report's summary said that "no obvious explanation based on unique flow or temperature conditions is possible" to account for the fish kill of 2002.

The panel did allow that "low flow in the Klamath River main stem is the most obvious possible cause of stress leading to the lethal infections of fish in the lower Klamath River during 2002."

The Klamath Water Users Association (KWUA) cited the report to justify its position that the Klamath Project's operation was not responsible for the fish kill. "The KWUA is pleased that the NAS determined the operation of the Klamath Project was not the cause of the 2002 fish kill and that changes in the operation of the project at the time would not have prevented it," said Dan Keppen, KWA executive director.

However, a draft report of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, suppressed for six months by the Bush administration, was leaked to the Eureka Times Standard on October 22, two days after the NRC report was issued. This report, in contrast, said that low flows - "decreased discharge" from the Klamath Project - did cause the fish kill!

The unfinished report was not considered in the KRC's final report - and the scientists' conclusions regarding the fish kill may have been different if the administration had released the report in time for the scientists to review the data.

In evaluating the NRC report, Kristen Boyles of Earthjustice said it has "some good things," including the fact that it looks at the problems of the Klamath Basin from a "basin wide perspective," including the habitat and hydrology of the watershed.

However, she noted that the report suffered two major flaws. First, the report was issued without having all of the available science available.

"They didn't have the long promised US Fish and Wildlife Service report on the fish kill, the report from the Oregon Independent Multidisciplinary Science Team (IMST) or the Hardy Phase #2 report," said Boyles. "However, it wasn't the fault of the panel, but of the agencies that hadn't released their reports in a timely manner."

Second, she said that the NRC report proposed solutions that will take years to implement, with no recognition of the need to take immediate actions until the long term plans are in effect.

For example, Boyles cited the proposal to shut down Iron Gate Fish Hatchery - before other habitat improvements are made to restore salmon populations - as a prime example of the panel's "ivory tower"perspective. In reference to the proposed removal of Dwinnell Dam, she pointed out that there are many people living on Lake Shastina who recreate there and dam removal could prove "impractical."

Glen Spain also criticized the proposal to temporarily close the fish hatchery. "The real issue of competition of hatchery versus wild fish needs to be addressed," he explained, "but it doesn't require closing the fish hatchery. The DFG has gone a long way in recent years to address the problems of genetic diversity at its hatchery facilities."

He also said the analysis of fisheries management issues in the report was "poor to abysmal," with no data on the run sizes and fishery management actions. In a particularly glaring omission, the report made no mention of the Klamath Basin Restoration Task Force's accomplishments over the past 17 years.

Spain did praise the panel's recommendations to control logging, cattle grazing and road building in the basin, as well as the proposal to screen 220 unscreened diversions. He was also encouraged by the proposal to remove Iron Gate Dam, a dam that was constructed on the California side of the border in 1962 because California didn't require fish passage over the dam, as Oregon would have.

"There is something in the report for everybody," Spain concluded. "There are some good long term solutions proposed, but almost nothing about next year's water. Until the long term solutions are implemented, there is no other option to save the fish than to put more water in both Klamath Lake and the Klamath River."

The NRC - with its long term solutions that will take years to accomplish - brings to mind the Bureau of Reclamations's Water 2025 Conference in Sacramento in July. The Yurok tribe, fishermen and environmentalists criticized the Bureau for planning long term solutions to Klamath Basin problems, without the input of Klamath Basin tribes, when the immediate problems of the Basin aren't being addressed.

"I don't ever want to witness a fish kill like last year's, when over 34,000 salmon died," said Susan Masten, Chair of the Yurok Tribe, during a protest in front of the conference. "We can't wait until 2025 - we have to find real solutions to the Klamath crisis today."

Though the KRC report contains some interesting scientific data and some good recommendations for solutions to the problems of the Klamath Basin, it is an incomplete, seriously flawed document. It proposes long term solutions that will take decades to accomplish, while avoiding making the recommendations that are needed to solve, or at least alleviate, the problems that threatened Klamath salmon and endangered suckers face today.