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TOM WHEELER

Welcome to the Econews Report, I'm your host this week, Tom Wheeler, executive director of the Environmental Protection Information Center or Epic as we are better known in these parts. And I am joined by two friends of the show, Justin Garwood and Michael Kauffman. In addition to being friends of the show, they are also authors of the forthcoming book, The Klamath Mountains, A Natural History and that is published by Backcountry Press. So this is part of their their promotion for for the new book. So, congratulations to you both on getting this substantial book together and out for the world to enjoy.

MICHAEL KAUFFMAN

Thanks, Tom. Thanks for having us.

WHEELER

So I'm going to make you introduce yourselves but I'm I'm going to make you introduce each other. Actually, I think this might be a fun way to to test how well you know, your co author. So, so Justin, what should we know about your co author Michael Kauffmann.

JUSTIN GARWOOD

Michael Kauffman is a force of all things Natural History. I met Michael back probably around 2012, I was introduced to Michael by john Sawyer, the late famous local botanist and john told me I needed to meet Michael because we shared similar interests Michael as many know out there is a Conifer aficionado. He's probably knows more than anybody about conifers in this region. Michael is also and author of many books but also produces wonderful natural history books across both regionally and throughout the western U. S. So he's also an educator. Michael teaches kids from diapers up through high school about multiple subjects. He is a teacher. Yeah, that's a good start.

WHEELER

That's a great introduction. Alright, well, Michael now you have to match Justin. So tell us about your Yeah, I

KAUFFMAN

can, I definitely could do that. I like Justin said we met over lunch with john Sawyer because Justin is just passionate about the Klamath Mountains and he wanted to learn more about john and I's love the conifers of the region. And then Justin invited me to what he called Winter Count where deep in the winter a bunch of people got together and talked about things that were going on in their world scientifically related. And I remember throwing out this outline, I think this is probably 2015. I had this vision had been forming in my head for this book and I threw this outline out and Justin latched onto it because he's so passionate about the Klamath Mountains like I mentioned, but also just rigorous science and science communication. Justin grew up in the Klamath Mountains near Lewistown or in Lewistown California. He has studied various forms of life in his time at cal poly humboldt and a few other universities. He works for the California department of Fish and Wildlife where in my opinion, he has the coolest job that you could have studying high elevation lakes and the reptiles and the fish and everything else to call those places home. And he's a good friend and the co author and editor of this amazing book that we're here to talk about,

WHEELER

All right, and now for the last introduction, we have the Klamath Mountains, who I I think that this is a book. This book is a like a love story or it is an ode to this, this incredible place. So Justin how about you give us an introduction to the Klamath Mountains? Why is this area so special to you?

GARWOOD

Wow, that's a heavy lift. There's a reason why we have to co editors and 34 authors on this price, because it is very, very complex landscape, both from a physical perspective that is through climate, through the landscape itself, through the general just distribution of different rock and different geology is across this place. It also has a has a very diverse biotic community, both flores tickly and also in many taxonomic groups of animals, invertebrates all the way through vertebrates. So, it's a very it's a challenging subject to to try to tackle in a single text. And that's why it took so many people to be involved with the project to really give justice to each of these topics in a way that is through a subject matter expert. I can't really write about wildfire that much. So we have an expert that writes about wildfire and Michael can probably add to that.

KAUFFMAN

Yeah. And I think, yeah, I'd love to add to that. I think it's also important to understand some of the general boundaries. And if you'd like to find a map, it's in the book. But the Klamath Mountains? If you're coming from humble Bay and you're heading east, the Klamath Mountains is just instead of defined by the rock type. And if you're on 1 99 high UCI, you pass into the Klamath Mountains, there's a big road cut. And then all of a sudden you see the smith River, it buries summit. When you're traveling east on 2 99 you pass into the Klamath Mountains. And then when you're on highway 36 just past Mad River, you pass into the Klamath Mountains and it's a stark and noticeable transition. The forests shift because the rock type is different and that is really the defining character of how we created the boundaries within which we wrote this book. So, the Klamath Mountains, JIA more Fick Province created that boundary for us to define that natural history and has Justin said to all these different co authors that natural history emerges in various stories from climate, to geology, to water to fire and on and on.

WHEELER

So, something that I have always really loved about the climate mountains is just a staggering biodiversity of this region. I think that we've had you on the show before, Michael to talk about the Miracle Mile and the vast con for diversity that exists in the climate of mountains, what is at the root of our biological diversity in this region, why is this a world heritage or maybe not world heritage. Why is this a hotspot for for biodiversity.

KAUFFMAN

Sure, yeah, it should be a world heritage site. And there are some people working to get it designated as such. But the guy, I mean, there's a lot going on, right. We have, we mentioned the geology, there's it's a vast and varied geology That spans hundreds of millions of years of age of the rock. The timing of when that rock was placed onto the North American continent, that whole story shapes biodiversity. But then it's also important to consider how climate and water and fire all interact with each other to create different habitats. And and this is across, not just say, the last 100 years, but the past, even 60 million years. And over that time, the Klamath Mountains have served as a refuge. And again, I'll bring it back to conifers because I think it's a manageable means to an end to comprehend that biodiversity. But it's been a place that these conifers are an ancient lineage of plant. They've been around for 300 plus million years. They've moved around the earth as climates have changed. They've involved with those climates and some of those, a lot of those conifers have gone extinct back in the Jurassic, there were 20,000 species or if not more of conifers. And now we're down to about 650 660 species. So this is a species that in the past has done really well. There, the diversity of conifers has has declined, but still, the area where conifers cover the earth is quite impressive. There's they cover vast landscapes north of the 45th parallel, in particular areas that are have cold winters, extreme climate. And so the Klamath Mountains have acted as a refuge for those conifers over time. Obviously some have gone extinct, but others haven't like the brewer spruce, this is our endemic spruce. The spruce used to have a much wider range and now it only lives in the Klamath Mountains and it lives in a habitat and it lives in a climate that mimics a climate of a very long time ago, but is now in a much smaller place, which of course is a climate. So that's just one example of how that biodiversity exists here. And other examples include new species that have arisen in more recent time based on the conditions that are here. Maybe it's the soil in which they grow and I'll let Justin add to that story.

GARWOOD

Yeah, it could also be looked through the lens of vertebrates are salamander diversity in the Klamath ranges is unrivaled in the west. We have a family of terrestrial salamanders called the lung list salamanders and we have upwards of 14 species in the Klamath Mountains and six of them are either endemic or near endemic to the Klamath range

KAUFFMAN

And

GARWOOD

remarkably five of these species have been described since 2000. So in about 20 years, we've gotten five new species identified by Western science using advanced molecular techniques

KAUFFMAN

because

GARWOOD

the salamanders may not look that different, but they're very different genetically and they live in close proximity. And what this shows is that there's a lot of fragmentation within the range, even though it's a refuge, the populations are fragmented because we have a very diverse landscape and it's hard for salamanders to move across really dry zones or even across major rivers. So it houses this diversity in these wet zones throughout the range.

KAUFFMAN

And we have

GARWOOD

among the smallest salamander rages in the in the world for a few of these species, it's pretty remarkable to have that diversity locally.

WHEELER

That is pretty remarkable. And it also shows kind of a cool story of how evolution works where you have reproductive isolation. And then even in a small area, even when they're very close to each reproductive isolation can lead to different species ation so very neat. And I love cryptic species. I love that we keep discovering that our world is more bountiful, more diverse than we may have thought it was. Through the use of enhanced genetic testing. So, very cool stuff. So, so writing this book, as I, as I understand it, there are what what did you say, 34 different authors? How did you determine the scale and the subjects that you wanted to have covered and talk about pairing up kind of subject matter with subject matter experts.

KAUFFMAN

Sure, I'll start on that one. Like I mentioned earlier, I had been this idea had been brewing in my mind since counter for country, I've always been a fan of natural history. Let's even take it further back. And I mentioned earlier how the Klamath Mountains offer this JIA more fick province that's define herbal and it allows you to create a natural history. And I grew up on the east coast, I didn't, I wasn't keyed into natural histories on the east, the east coast, the landscapes there are a lot broader and more vast. The Appalachian mountains spread all the way from north Carolina, all the way up into Maine and and even northward into Canada. So it's hard to, its harder to define a natural history, I believe on the east coast. And when I moved to California after college I was teaching environment education, I found a natural history of the Sierra Nevada on my first trip into the Sierra and immediately purchased it at the National Park bookstore and I started to read it cover to cover. I explored the Sierra and it gave me this new perspective on a mountain range that I'd never had before because because of the defining the boundaries of the Sierra Nevada. So there's this model for a natural history that I was exposed to and that has always been just absolutely intriguing to me to to understand not just the plants. Maybe that's the first chapter I would have read, but then I would flip to the birds or I'd flip to the mammals or learn about the river systems. So this is what I realized is there was a gap in the Klamath Mountains. We didn't have that, that the Sierra has like five or six natural history is written for it. The Klamath has never had a natural, comprehensive natural history written for it. There have been even just a few books about the Klamath Mountains, obviously the Klamath knot, which was a great resource, but it doesn't explore to the degree that I wanted. So I cooked up this outline. Like I said, I threw it out at this winter count. Justin was all in from the beginning, he and I massaged that outline and we started to think about the experts in the field, but we also wanted to have diverse voices. We didn't want it to just be scientists from humble state, right? We wanted it to be scientists from across the Klamath Mountains. We wanted the native voices involved because they native people play a huge role in the natural history and interpretation of that natural history. So it was sort of like a little spit of a scavenger hunt to start to figure out who's gonna, you know, Justin was obviously all over the amphibians and fishes and I was all over the plants. But but then we had to find the other authors and just not let you kind of jump in and and tell a little bit more of the story if you want.

GARWOOD

Yeah, I think Michael and I being co editors, it's kind of yang and yang. Michael is more of a terrestrial botany tendencies and also is a big fan of mammals, invertebrates and birds. I'm more of the aquatic, my background at least professionally is in aquatic sciences in aquatic ecology. So we both have, we're kind of plugged into that those different scientific communities

KAUFFMAN

and

GARWOOD

I kind of tackled the aquatic stuff. Michael took on more of the terrestrial stuff and we found people that would

KAUFFMAN

would fit

GARWOOD

into these chapters quite nicely and folks that are really passionate about the project.

KAUFFMAN

GARWOOD

yeah, that's that's kind of how we divided it up.

KAUFFMAN

So I

WHEELER

I imagine that getting this diverse range of authors who are subject matter experts that even though you are both fans of the climate mountains that you've spent a lot of time there, I'm sure that you've learned new things about this area. So Justin can you think of anything that you've learned or are taking away from this book that you didn't know before?

KAUFFMAN

Oh,

GARWOOD

it's it's too much to list. It's a 500 page book. It's it's a tomb of natural history and I think the geology chapter probably was the biggest learning I had in the whole project. It's learning about rocks. I'm not formally trained as a physical scientist. So that chapter really opened my mind to understanding the base of it all. I think Michael Furniss Local biologist. He likes to say geology is destiny and that's so true, drives everything. And Mark bailey did an outstanding job writing that chapter, making geology readable. Michael and I's goal for this book was kind of too full. We wanted it to be, we wanted it So anybody can read this book from our parents that are not scientists to really specialize scientists. So we wanted to be available and we wanted it to be a celebration of the natural history. So it's a very positive book. It doesn't have any controversial topics in it necessarily it's it's purely a celebration of what makes the clam is so amazing. Yeah. So,

WHEELER

we're talking about the forthcoming book, The Klamath Mountains, A Natural History, published by Backcountry Press.

KAUFFMAN

Alright, Michael,

WHEELER

what did you learn in the book that surprised you? Well, good

KAUFFMAN

question. I think, I think what I what for me, rose to the top was my perspective and interpretation of the the impacts that the first peoples have had on the landscape for such a long time. And then also how western science has excluded a lot of that knowledge in the past and I think things are changing for the better. So, I I had the opportunity to spend some time after several, many of these chapters have been written. I realized I needed to get a new native american perspective on what we were doing and see how people felt about it. So I was given the opportunity to sit on some crew elders front porch talk about the perspective of the Klamath Mountains from their point of view and then they took the time to review a handful of these chapters for us and provide feedback. And I think without that opportunity, this book would not have been as exquisite in stellar as it is. And I keep saying that it's not just the efforts of Justin either. So, so much effort went into this with so many other people that I feel like I'm allowed to praise this book so much. But anyway, that perspective from the first peoples, the karaoke elders who allowed me to see that for instance, in the geology chapter we wrote about the extraction practices that early explorers or early Europeans went about within the Klamath and I didn't understand how hurtful that could be two people native people. And so we were a able to shift that perspective of that and tell the story as it is, is a more painful story and less about the glory of mining and more about the pain that mining and inflicts. And and so anyway, I think that was probably the biggest eye opener for me. But there were so many more, I mean I thought I knew the birds of the Klamath mountains and I took the chapter on and I got an early draft and I sent it out to the other co authors and I learned so much more about migration patterns and how certain birds will actually spend time on the coast. Like the the allens hummingbirds spend time on the coast and then move up into the mountains in the summer and then follow the high elevation flowering for their for their young to raise their young. I mean, just little things like that. I never had that perspective before and the stories could go on and on from there.

WHEELER

Well, it's very cool that you deliberately cultivated the incorporation of traditional ecological knowledge and an indigenous perspective into this book because I think that this has been one of the rightful criticisms of the environmental movement broadly. But natural history is more specifically is that they're often written by white men like us who almost right as if they were the first people to ever stumble into an area and they neglect to provide their readers with an understanding that actually these places have been lived in and that the people who lived in these places to shape the environment as we see it. So, you know, this, this even goes as far as our our incorporation into the wilderness act of protection of areas untrammeled by man to use the language of the act, which is a fiction. And so it's nice to recognize that fiction and to call attention to the first peoples that have lived in these areas since time and memorial. So thank you for for going and doing this work. So you were both aficionados of the Climate Mountains. I want you to tell me about your favorite place in the Klamath Mountains and perhaps you can relate it back into the book and and tell a story about this place through the book. So Justin do you have a favorite location in the Klamath Mountains? That kind of sums up why you, you find this place to just be so dang interesting.

GARWOOD

Yes, thank you. Well, besides home, I grew up in louis in my whole life and that whole area, I have a special place in my heart for it in general. That's the opportunity river watershed. But I'd have to say we kind of made a point in this book to not out a bunch of areas that because I feel like natural history should be kind of a journey for somebody to and and for them to discover things on their own. So we kind of made a point of not putting names on a lot of photos of where places were because I think it kind of takes away from the unique experience. But I will say that probably my favorite zone in the, in the Klamath range is the sky islands. The places that are really high elevation where it's, it's mainly rock and and it's it's where plants and animals are really tested by just the elements and and they're shaped by that by the elements through time. And it's just a great place to, to see biodiversity but also have great views of the Klamath range around you,

WHEELER

Michael. Yeah. I

KAUFFMAN

think what's what's so mysterious and intriguing about the Klamath Mountains is that when you drive through them, you rarely really see them in a lot of ways because the travel routes are along these low elevation river canyons and there are very few roads like Justin mentioned up into the Sky islands. There's a few exceptions, but I think what that says is that it's sort of this anonymous group of mounts, right. A lot of people call it the Klamath Siskiyou because it's this collection of of these mountains that nobody really understands exactly what appellations they are. You know, what's how does this issues fit to within the Klamath Mountains? How do the marbles fit within the Klamath Mountains? The Mccloud Range, the Scott Mountains. But so we, one of the things that we did about halfway through the book is we finally created a map that names all of these appellations within at least the ones that are named within the Klamath Mountains and of those Appalachians. I'll just mention two of them that I really enjoy and I enjoy all of them. I mean I spent two weeks in the marbles this summer and it's got my heart. I mean I love the Salmon Mountains, but the Ola bola and the Cisco and the Cisco are probably my favorite spot within the whole Klamath Mountains. It's a sub range of the Klamath right? And the Ciscos of California are just absolutely stunning and spectacular. And you could never see it all in your lifetime. So I don't feel like I'm giving away anything exceptional here. But my first trip and I read about this in my book, counter for a country. My first real adventure into the Klamath Mountains was up near Bear Basin butte dropping into Clear creek in mid february. And I was just a real novice about the Klamath. I thought that a 4000 ft pass would be a piece of cake in february because I had just come from southern California and 4000 feet's nothing down there. But I got into the Cisco use. I saw my first darling Tonia California, ca the pitcher plant with snow on covering the crowns of the cobra lily. I saw my first brewer spruce and I was just, I just I just fell in love with the place. And the other thing about it is I was really confused about what I was seeing. I thought I knew my conifers. I didn't know what I was seeing. Everything was just so different. That mystery has continued to drive me to visit the excuse or all of these small sub ranges, The Klamath Mountains over the last 20 years since that first trip. So I'll go with the Ciscos tom all right.

WHEELER

And this is one of the cool things about the Klamath Mountains is that, as you said before, the Sierras they're they're known, there are so many books about them. The Klamath Mountains have survived in part because we are we are so remote here in the Klamath. It is so far from things, it is so inhospitable. It is so inaccessible. There are so few roads that run through it that there is still so much to discover about this area. As Justin said, We are only now discovering the diversity of salamanders in the region because they all kind of looked alike and they're all close to each other. So we assumed that they were all the same species. When we're discovering these very, very small, very isolated populations that are wholly different species. So there's still so much to learn so much to love about the clinic mountains. What a special place to devote an entire book to. I I know that we are talking about the Climate Mountains and what they are. This is this is a love story to the Climate Mountains.

GARWOOD

They're also more ancient than all the landscape around them. And they have connections with the, with maybe Michael can talk about the connections with the Appalachian mountains with their snail and salamander and Connor for diversity that shared among these really far out ranges. But they both escaped this ice sheet. So they're kind of like relics surviving. And he did touch on that a little bit early on. But

KAUFFMAN

I would agree I was also gonna say wrapping it up with sort of the future

WHEELER

Michael. I understand that there's a connection of sorts to the Appalachian Mountains far across on the east coast. Can you help help me understand what this connection is?

KAUFFMAN

Sure. It sort of goes back to the little bit of that story I was telling earlier where the Klamath mountains have and continue to be a refuge over deep time. And if you imagine in the pleistocene, so we'll just go back two million years to about 15,000 years. Right. And this is the course understandings based on geologic records and fossil records and things like that. But major ice sheets pushed south during the Pleistocene couple of repeated events and they pushed south far enough that these large scale ice sheets did not necessarily cover the Klamath Mountains. They covered some areas of the climate. There were some large glaciers in Canyon Creek and what we now call Stewart's Fork, but there weren't vast ice sheets and because of that, there were areas where species were able to linger, the land was still accessible to them. And this is the same story as is in the southern Appalachian mountains. Big ice sheets pushed south into what we call now pennsylvania, but they didn't necessarily cover that vast landscape moving further south. So you imagine these species over these repeated glaciation events may be migrating south as the glaciers move south and migrate going back north as the glaciers retreated. So there was this in and out of this movement. And because of that, there's some distinct similarities between the Klamath Mountains in the southern Appalachians, where we find numerous species even the same species, but often just to the same genus, whole continent apart. So we have hemlocks, we have spruces in both of these mountain ranges, we have wild ginger in both of these mountain ranges. That list goes on and on as far as plants and that really is is this Klamath app connection that creates these two most diverse temperate forests in North America.

WHEELER

So Justin last time I had you on the show, we talked about climate change in your search for the last glacier in the climate mountains. This is perhaps ending a very positive show on somewhat sad note, but let's talk about that as a harbinger of climate change and what climate change is anticipated to do.

GARWOOD

Absolutely. So the climate mountains did have glaciers. They just didn't Cover The entire range. And if anybody likes to go backpacking in the various mountain ranges and visits all these high mountain lakes and meadows and ponds, those were all created by glaciers during the pleistocene of course that ended 10,000 years ago. And what we have now is is we're living in the Holstein or some would say the anthropocene now with the effect of humans on how we're influencing the climate. And we had a little ice age that started about 700 years ago and It lasted until the late 1800s. So during that time some small vestigial glaciers have formed in the Klamath mountains. I think we know of at least seven of them that have what we call marine piles, which are stacks of rock that the glacier builds up in front of it. And those are are hanging below the peaks and above the lakes. And you can see that we've had recent glaciers and in fact two of those glaciers survived into the 21st century. We call them salmon glacier and Grizzly glacier and trinity out. I went there, visited them in 2009 on a solo trip and found two glaciers alive and well in the climate grade, which is really remarkable because 2000 ft lower than any other glacial ice in California. So the Klamath Mountains being in the coastal proximity and getting all the water in snowpack, we get the glacier machine at lower elevation than in sierra Nevada. I started monitoring those glaciers because with a couple of colleagues of mine, ken Lynn came Michael Van had um we were not glaciologists not even formally trained where citizen science is to scientists on that front. And we found that they were declining quite rapidly and we lost one of them in 2015. And we've been monitoring grizzly ever since. The news is not good for grizzly. Our summer temperatures are just too warm for it to maintain. And it seems like it's hit a tipping point and I have no doubt we're going to lose that glacier very soon. So it it is an instrument that we've had through time and seeing how climate changes. But that instrument, we're going to lose that instrument soon. So it's it's just a reminder that even though the Klamath Mountains have a lot of biodiversity, we are on the tipping point for some features and species. So something to just consider as we think about this biodiversity into the future and how to protect it.

WHEELER

Well, thank you so much for joining the show. For the last half hour we've been talking with Michael Kauffman and Justin Garwood. They are the authors and editors of the new book, the Klamath Mountains Natural History, which is published by Backcountry Press. So, check out the book online and there are a number of events going on to publicize this book. Published by that country. Press. Check it out on their website. Also, Michael, I I understand that there are some events coming up in october that you might want to publicize. What's going

KAUFFMAN

definitely, you know, you can check our website backcountry Press dot com. That will have all of our calendar of events. But I'll be giving a talk for the north coast chapter of the California native Plant Society in Arcata, the second Wednesday of october about the plant communities and more of the Klamath Mountains. If you like to come out and check that out, would be great to see people

WHEELER

Well. Thanks Justine and Michael.

KAUFFMAN

Alright, thanks Tom

WHEELER

and thank you listeners for joining us again on the Econews Report. Listen to us next week on this same time in channel. Talk to you then.