Stillwater National Wildlife Refuge Overview

The Stillwater marshes were drying up. Home for thousands of years to thousands of migrating birds and northern Paiute Indians who were closely connected to rhythms of the local ecology, the marshes' waters were being diverted by twentieth century agriculture, drying them out and threatening wetland life. This is an absorbing story of a group of conservationists' ingenious solution—to have the refuge buy agricultural water rights.

A visitor to Stillwater National Wildlife Refuge a few years ago remarked that the refuge name ought to be the "No-Water National Wildlife Refuge." The visitor came during a six-year drought when refuge wetlands were bone dry, but the lack of water was caused not only by a lack of rain.

Droughts commonly occur in this western Nevada refuge lying in the Great Basin's Carson Desert 60 miles from Reno. Their adverse effects, however, were much less severe when the mountain water of the Carson River flowed freely into the marshes.

That flow stopped about 100 years ago when dams and reservoirs were built to store the river's water for agricultural uses. The marsh resembles its wet historic past, when tens of thousands of water birds were seasonal or permanent inhabitants, only when precipitation approached record highs.

In 1990, however, landmark federal legislation was enacted that, for the first time, provided a way for Stillwater NWR to protect and stabilize its wetlands. The legislation allowed the refuge to purchase water rights that were attached to the land sold for agricultural use. An environmental impact process is under way in which the refuge will choose the most acceptable plan for purchasing the rights to the water it needs.

The water of the unfettered Carson River used to end up in the Stillwater Marsh as well as in Carson Lake and Carson Sink, all slight depressions in the expansive Carson Desert that is without outlets to the sea. The desert is the bottom of historic, glacially created, 300-foot-deep Lake Lahontan. Even though the Carson and five other rivers flowed into the huge lake, excessive evaporation through the millennia eventually turned the lake into desert.

Flowing out of the Sierra Nevada range in California, the Carson River is revived each spring as snow melts in the mountains—the deeper the snow the more water entering the valley. Rejuvenation of the shallow lakes and Stillwater Marsh depended on the river's flow, their sizes changing constantly as the flow fluctuated.

A haven for nesting and migrating water birds in the Pacific flyway, the wetlands hosted as many as 350,000 ducks, 13,000 tundra swans, half of all the canvasbacks, and a third of all the dowitchers in the flyway. The marsh was also the place where Paiute Indians found their subsistence over thousands of years.

History
In the mid-1880s as they passed through and saw the river and its adjoining meadows, settlers were lured by the area's potential for cattle raising, a growing industry driven by food demands of the ever-increasing population settling in the far west. They moved their livestock in first and then began putting in irrigation ditches to supply river water to their expanding hayfields.

By the turn of the century, land reclamation and homesteading had become a federal initiative. The Lahontan Valley, the name adopted for the Carson Desert, was the site of the first of 28 massive projects designed to harness uncontrolled water supplies and use them to reclaim land for agriculture.

Nevada's Senator Francis G. Newlands drafted and pushed through Congress the land reclamation bill, and both the bill and the Lahontan Valley project bear his name.

The Newlands Project, as it came to be called, included the construction beginning in 1903 of dams and canals that were expected to reclaim and irrigate 200,000 acres of Lahontan Valley desert land, the result of President Theodore Roosevelt signing the Reclamation Act in 1902. A staunch defender of reclamation, Roosevelt said the act would irrigate arid western wasteland that would be "otherwise worthless."

Because the land was never really suitable for agriculture, which now accounts for only eleven percent of the county's economy, the total acreage finally irrigated was only about 65,000 acres. By 1992, because of the loss of annual fresh water, 150,000 wetland acres had dwindled to just 2,000 acres during a six-year drought; no wetland acreage was left in the refuge.

Except for reservoir releases during floods and winter power generation, water in the marshes comes mostly as drainage from the irrigated farm fields. The drain water is loaded with minerals leached from irrigated soils and toxic to living organisms. They are thought to have been a principal cause for past animal and plant losses. The Newlands Project can be credited with the loss and virtual loss of two Nevada refuges. Established in 1936 in part because it was a prime feeding area for white pelicans, Winnemucca Lake NWR was dried up by the Newlands Project and delisted as a refuge in 1962.

Fallon NWR is dry except in wettest years and exists mostly in name only. Although once important to ducks and shorebirds, it is now an alkali playa at the terminus of an old tributary of the Carson River and is of little value to wildlife.

The Stillwater Wildlife Management Area is Born
Theodore Roosevelt had unwittingly contributed to the demise of the kind of area that he as founder of the National Wildlife Refuge System wanted preserved.

Concern for disappearing wildlife resulted in the creation in 1948 of the Stillwater Wildlife Management Area—200,000 acres superimposed on both Bureau of Reclamation and private lands. Carved out of that area was the 24,000-acre Stillwater NWR, whose staff would manage the entire area. Water controls were installed at a cost of $5 million, but the scarcity of water rendered them all but useless.

Stillwater NWR seemed doomed to the fate of Lake Winnemucca and Fallon NWRs unless someone came forward with a hitherto unknown plan to save it. An idea for a plan began unfolding in a duck blind in the marsh on a cold morning in 1987, says Rose Strickland.

She headed the Nevada chapter of Sierra Club's Committee on Public Lands and instigated the founding of the Lahontan Valley Wetlands Coalition of diverse organizations and individuals, some of whom had been separately seeking ways to save the marsh. Together they agreed that acquiring water rights for Stillwater NWR was what was needed, and that became the coalition's priority.

But the process started, Strickland emphasizes, with those in the marsh duck blind who had the idea to focus the support of waterfowl hunters in a new organization—the Nevada Waterfowl Association. Its members took the crucial first step: testing the legalities of purchasing private water rights for the wetlands.

With the donations it sought and received and with technical assistance from The Nature Conservancy, the association waded through the complexities of the first purchase, proving that privately owned water rights were transferrable.

Buoyed by that revelation, the coalition, of which the association was a key member, worked in cooperation with refuge staff at the local, state, and national levels to include water for Stillwater in the negotiations that were already under way among competing interests in the valley to settle water-allocation conflicts.

The Coalition's resolve paid off. Three years later, the Water Settlement Act that included water for the Lahontan Valley wetlands was passed by Congress, and signed by President George Bush in November 1990. Nevada's Senator Harry Reid (D) and Congresswoman Barbara Vucanovich (R) steered the legislation through the 101st Congress hours before it adjourned. For the first time, the purchase of water rights for a national wildlife refuge was authorized by law.

The act provides for enough water to sustain an average 25,000 acres of valley-wide wetlands, most within the Wildlife Management Area and refuge. (Nevada voters also approved state purchases of water rights for the Carson Lake wetlands, which are managed by the state.)

Less than 20 percent of the needed purchases have been approved and paid for. Others await completion of the environmental impact process.

The Water Settlement Act also makes Stillwater NWR a permanent unit, triples its size to 77,520 acres, and allows for its further expansion to include more of the Wildlife Management Area by 1997, when an acreage recommendation is due from the Fish and Wildlife Service.

During the past 5 years, The Nature Conservancy has conducted the water-rights purchasing program in cooperation with FWS and the Nevada Division of Wildlife. It has spent more than $2 million to purchase over 10,000 acre-feet of water for transfer to the refuge and the state. (An acre-foot is the amount of water that covers one acre to a depth of one foot, approximately 326,000 gallons.)

The conservancy has established a project office in Reno and will continue transacting purchases from willing farmers hoping to be repaid from future federal appropriations. State funds are available through a bond issue.

Meanwhile, the 1995 season at Stillwater was both a surprise and a prelude to what's coming. "Free water" is how refuge biologist Anne Janik describes it. There was so much snowmelt, runoff, and spring rain this year, she says, that the Truckee-Carson Irrigation District had to let water out of the reservoir to prevent damaging overflows.

First Water!
Fallon NWR had its first water since 1986, and Stillwater's comeback brought nesting birds that had not been seen for over 10 years: black terns, Forster's tern, and American bitterns. In the fall, 21,000 shorebirds fed and rested in its marshes. All the grebe species proliferated, and the nesting of a female surf scoter was a record first on the refuge.

In the Lahontan valley, record numbers of black-necked stilts and phalaropes were recorded, and the production of over 6,800 white-faced ibis fledglings was the highest on record (only 782 last year). White pelicans at Fallon NWR had lower mortality rates and abandoned nests that have plagued them as water levels dropped at Anaho Island NWR.

The returning birds created quite a show, said Janik, especially after many years of drought. Data from 1972 through 1977 show the close relation of wetland availability and bird populations.

Only foot traffic is allowed in the original portion of the Stillwater National Wildlife Refuge, but the remaining parts of the refuge and all of the Wildlife Management Area are open to observing, primitive camping, fishing, hunting, and horseback riding.

The 26-mile loop tour through the refuge will be increasingly interesting as permanent water is returned. Both primroses and sand verbenas blossom after spring rains, but that is also the time to check with the refuge office for road conditions. Visitation is highest from May through September, but fluctuates widely depending on water conditions.

In addition to Fallon NWR, Anaho Island NWR is managed by the Stillwater staff although the Water Settlement Act gave title to the Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation.

The refuge, an island in the middle of Pyramid Lake, is 35 miles from Reno and was designated a preserve by President Woodrow Wilson in 1913 for colonial nesting birds before being named a national wildlife refuge in 1940.

The island increased in size from 248 acres to as many as 740 acres, the result of an 80-foot drop in the water level of Pyramid Lake. The lake derives its water from the Truckee River, which was also diverted as part of the Newlands Project.

The drop in water level was particularly worrisome because of the possible creation of a land bridge from the island to the lake shore. Mammalian predators and human visitors would likely decimate the currently protected nesting colonies.

Besides the largest nesting colony of American white pelicans in North America, the island also supports colonies of double-crested cormorants, green-backed herons, California gulls, and California terns. No habitat management occurs, nor is public access allowed. Because of the sensitivity of the pelicans, boating is not permitted within 500 feet of the island.

The presence of the endangered cui-ui fish, a large black sucker unique to Pyramid Lake and a cultural link to ancestors of Pyramid Lake Paiutes, led to court actions and operating procedures that continue to minimize Truckee River diversions to the Lahontan Valley.

Water-rights purchases for restoration of cui-uiase are also provided for in the Water Settlement Act.

The issues of buying and transferring century-old water rights and the salvation of the Stillwater Marsh seemed irreconcilable a few years ago. Were it not for a few earnest conservationists, the problems might still be begging for resolution.

Although many are owed credit, much of it belongs to Refuge Manager Ron Anglin and his staff. They maintain the data and information that were crucial input to water-allocation negotiations and contributed their professional expertise on this unique ecosystem to all concerned.

"Great Basin marshes are more dynamic than any other wetlands in the country," says Anglin. Water comes in and then evaporates—fresh water in one year, salty in another. The marsh contracts and expands. Species adapt to boom and bust cycles. We are its caretakers for the next generation."

A 6000-Year Legacy
Anthropologists say that Stillwater Marsh has sustained human life for as long as 6,000 years. They can point to the actual evidence of a 3,200-year record reconstructed from the human remains that were found and analyzed in the 1980s. The lengthy connection between people and marsh in the Carson Desert is fascinating, but their abrupt separation caused by 20th century technology is both astonishing and sad.

For tens of centuries, the marsh and its environs were home to a subgroup of Northern Paiute, the American Indian Tribe that occupied northwest Nevada and southeast Oregon. Referred to as the Cattail-eaters, these native Americans were completely dependent on the desert oasis, and they were expert in its understanding. Their survival on the plants and animals with which they co-existed and the skills by which they produced food, clothing, and shelter are remarkable feats for these ancient people who endured in an arid climate of temperature extremes.

Cattails were an important source of both food and other uses for the Stillwater Paiute. The baked pollen, steamed roots, and ground seeds were food staples along with the seeds produced by alkali bulrush and Indian rice grass. Cattails were used for thatching their houses and for making rope, and it and hard-stem bulrush (tule) provided the raw materials for making boats, duck decoys, nets, storage bags, and baskets.

Boats were essential for these people who were skilled hunters of the tremendous numbers of waterfowl that fed in the wetland complex. From their boats, marsh people would set life-like decoys, made from bulrush and cattails covered with feathers, and either drive the birds into nets that they had strung or shoot them with arrows deflected off the water into the breasts of the birds—a technique they had perfected. Several recently discovered decoys are still intact and estimated to be 2,000 years old. Using another technique, submerged hunters concealed with helmets of vegetation would grab ducks from under the water.

Some 20 species of birds are reported to have been hunted for food. Tundra swans and canvasbacks were the most highly prized catches. Also consumed were the eggs and nestlings of some species including great blue herons, redheads, and California gulls. Much celebrating occurred after the big midsummer and fall drives for American coots, the bird that was apparently eaten in the greatest numbers.

Stillwater Paiute also ate rodents, mammals, and fish. But diets, which depended on food availability, changed with the seasons and the droughts and floods that characterize the Carson Desert.

Documenting the cultural and natural history of Stillwater NWR is an earnest undertaking of Manager Ron Anglin and his staff. They, in cooperation with the University of Nevada and U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, made possible the publication authored by a local anthropologist of an engrossing, yet scholarly, synthesis of records and conversations with Paiute descendants to reconstruct the past. The book, In the Shadow of the Marsh: An Ethnography of the Cattail-eater Northern Paiute People of Stillwater Marsh, is available from the Superintendent of Documents.

In the mid-1980s, erosion by a massive flood on the refuge uncovered additional secrets of the past. The refuge lost no time in importing a team of archaeologists to recover human bones representing 416 individuals. Analysis revealed that some of the bones were from Cattail-eaters who died 3,200 years ago. The archaeologists reasoned that 30 and 40 years was old age for the marsh people, probably because of the rigors of outdoor living and the illnesses that struck when food supplies were limited by drought or by cold.

The remains of those early people were put to rest again in 1989, but this time in an underground vault overlooking the marsh on a mountain foothill safe from flooding. The reinterment was preceded by a ceremony conducted by tribe members on the adjacent Fallon Indian Reservation. Descendants of the early inhabitants of Stillwater Marsh now live on the reservation, set aside by the federal government when grazing and irrigation changed the culture and displaced the Cattail-eaters.

Coalition of Diverse Groups Take up Fight for Stillwater
Without the Lahontan Valley Coalition, getting water to Stillwater NWR would not have happened, according to Rose Strickland, one of the coalition's founders and a current active member.

Why was it such an influential force? Strickland says that its strength lies in its diversity and its broad representation of both local community and national interest groups. Organized in 1988, the coalition eventually attracted a total of 16 national, state, and local organizations that were not normally united.

Because it included an array of conservationists, wildlife biologists, animal protectionists, hunters, fishers, and trappers, the coalition, says Strickland, was not seen as a biased, wild-eyed group but was instead a highly credible group among local leaders and the media. So much so that it generated interest among local businesses to organize the Coalition for a Negotiated Settlement, a group that successfully built public support in the cities of Reno and Sparks for the water settlement.

But the going was tough. Competition for water was intense even without including Stillwater's needs. Coalition members recognized the valid conflicting claims of others and, although constantly tempted to take sides, managed to base all their decisions on what would benefit wetlands. Some federal officials at first even rejected their notion that wildlife had any claim whatsoever to scarce clean water. What seemed to work in the end was the group's guiding principle: Getting water for Stillwater must be done without jeopardizing other claimants.

Organization and education were keys to success. All members were assigned to task forces, and many became intimately informed on water law and wetland management. The accomplishments of the coalition set the stage for drafting the Truckee-Carson-Pyramid Lake Water Rights Settlement Act, commonly called the Water Settlement Act. The three major accomplishments emerging were:

1. Acknowledgment that Stillwater had a legitimate need;
2. Demonstration that water rights for a national wildlife refuge could be acquired; and
3. Proof that farmers were willing to sell their water rights for Stillwater.

Enacted in November 1990, the Water Settlement Act authorizes for the first time the purchase of water rights for a national wildlife refuge. Its effect, therefore, goes beyond Stillwater NWR, and other refuges are now also benefiting from that precedent-setting law.

Coalition members now face a different kind of difficulty: ensuring that the money is appropriated during these budget-cutting times to buy the rights that have been authorized. The new effort is not nearly as attention-getting nor as enticing as the three years of work it took to get the water-rights authority, but Strickland views it is as no less important. Rose Strickland is a freelance writer, concentrating on nature and the outdoors. A native of the Great Basin Desert who lives in Reno, she has an abiding interest in the welfare of public lands.

Fearing that Stillwater would die, she planted the idea of the coalition in the mind of Tina Nape, long-time conservationist with exceptional leadership skills in bringing diverse groups together, and the first meeting was soon held in Reno. Strickland says the coalition worked because of Nape's leadership and the combined skills of its members.

Selecting an Alternative
The bulk of purchases of water rights for Stillwater NWR must await the completion of an environmental-impact process including draft and final impact statements. The comment period for reviewing the 400-page draft statement closed in October 1995.

Preceding the draft preparation were workshops and public notice mailings to over 2,500 persons and organizations. Refuge officials must now sift through agency and public responses in deciding what plan the final statement will recommend.

Based on computer-model projections, analysts articulated four alternative strategies for ensuring enough water to maintain Stillwater, Carson Lake, and tribal marsh areas.

The law says 25,000 acres of wetlands are to be safeguarded. The analysis says that five acre-feet (AF) per acre of marsh per year will do the job. That means a total of 125,000 AF of water, on average, is needed each year, including some 43,000 AF already approved for acquisition.

Each alternative uses differing amounts of fresh, drain, and dam-release water and "use rates" to achieve the goal.

1. The "maximum acquisition" alternative contemplates no drain-water use and, although 133,500 AF of water rights would be purchased, usage at less than full entitlement would permit the retirement of 20,000 AF of water rights, allowing reduced Truckee River diversions.
2. The "least cost" alternative uses the full entitlement of 97,700 AF of water through purchase of water rights and nearly 19,000 AF of drain water.
3. The "minimal acquisition" alternative relies on pumped ground water to supplement river and drain water and on usage rates that are changeable depending on water availability.
4. The "proposed action" alternative also retires water rights and uses an estimated ten percent of drain water.

Acquisition costs could be as high as $100 million for the proposed-action alternative, according to the impact statement, and as much as $77 million for the least-cost alternative.

Cost depends on whether willing sellers sell their water rights with or without the accompanying land. Land acquired outside the refuge would be resold to maintain the balance in the valley of private-land ownership.

Each of the alternatives will take land out of agricultural production: a 61 percent reduction for the proposed alternative and a range of 37 to 66 percent for the other alternatives.

The impact statement suggests that the acquisition of water rights could cause farmland conversion to residential uses and further suggests a variety of federal and local mitigation measures for that and other effects (such as persistent population growth and increased wildlife habitat) of decreased agricultural production.

The Newlands Project
Little did Nevada's Senator Frances G. Newlands know the troubles that would ensue from his pet project. The 1902 Reclamation Act he helped author was supposed to make deserts green and improve the lot of his constituents.

The Newlands Project (first known as the Truckee-Carson Project) spawned by his legislation was the first federal land reclamation project. Almost from its beginnings in 1903, the irrigation project was plagued with problems that seemed at times to defy solution.

The concept was simple: Arid land could be made productive by the distribution of river water instead of letting the water spread out in marshes and briefly wet desert sands. Private interests had gone as far as they could with their distribution systems, capturing only a fraction of the water flows in the Carson River.

The big plan was to divert both the Carson and the Truckee rivers from their normal channels and "reclaim" 200,000 or more acres of wasted desert. Earlier surveys had identified the area between the parallel flowing rivers as ideal for a federal irrigation project.

The first step was building of Derby Diversion Dam on the Truckee River and of Truckee Canal. Impounded Truckee River water flowed through the 33-mile canal, into irrigation channels along the way, and finally into Carson River, increasing the amount of water needed for irrigation.

Still, much of Carson River water was not being captured, and in 1914 the 162-foot high Lahontan Dam was built on the Carson River to channel the flow of both rivers into the Lahontan Reservoir. Over 700 miles of canals and ditches were built to distribute the irrigation water and to carry away the drain water.

Aside from the project falling short of overblown water-delivery forecasts, farmers complained from the outset about having to pay for the water on the one hand and being restricted to water rights for only 160 acres on the other.

But the most perplexing problems were the disputes over water allocations. The uncertainty of claims to water on the upper Truckee was one of the reasons Lahontan Dam was built so as to capture more Carson River water.

But that did not suffice. A federal lawsuit was filed in 1913 to decide still-uncertain water rights. A temporary order was not issued until 1926, and a final decree came in 1944.

The decree essentially ratified a series of agreements among the major players in Nevada and California for more upstream reservoirs and for overall management of the bi-state project.

The controversies over water rights persisted, however, and eventually resulted in the first version of Operating Criteria and Procedures (OCAP) for the Newlands Project in 1967.

Designed to minimize use of the Truckee River and maximize use of the Carson, OCAP was amended in response to later court decisions that ordered further reductions of Truckee diversions in favor of Pyramid Lake and its fisheries as well as more efficient irrigation water deliveries.

The effect of the decisions—less water for Stillwater NWR—brought the realization closer than ever before that, without water rights of its own, Stillwater NWR was destined to be Nevada's third refuge fatality.

Directions
I-80 going east, exit 46, east on US-50 to Fallon; or going west, exit 83, south on US-95 to Fallon; US-50 east approximately 4 miles to left on Stillwater Road (Route 116) to refuge.