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A cast of thousands

This clear October day is rare for Bob Peterson.

Peterson didn't fool a single walleye before pulling his boat from a ramp where Lind Coulee forms an arm of Potholes Reservoir, a giant storage facility that gathers up irrigation water from the northern end of the Columbia Basin to reroute it to farms in the south.

Peterson is far from alone among outdoor lovers, who make well over a million stops in the Columbia Basin each year. Grant County, once almost pure desert, today is the state's top freshwater-fishing destination and a magnet for waterfowl hunters.

While fishing and hunting reign, "non-consumptive" recreation such as bird watching, hiking, wildlife photography, mountain biking, and canoeing are increasingly popular.

All of that, says the Bureau of Reclamation's Gray, exists in "a county where there was virtually no water" before the project.

"I didn't manage just for hunters, just for fishermen, or just for birdwatchers. I managed for everyone," says Kent.

Trouble in paradise

On the Desert Wildlife Area, southwest of Potholes Reservoir, Kent points out a weedy pond that provides ideal feeding and nesting habitat for dabbling ducks.

If it weren't for Kent's staff, the pond would be a mud hole, full of common carp and little else. The carp, a non-native fish in the goldfish family, have a habit of taking over small waterways and consuming every morsel of food.

"They're so good at it that everything else loses," Kent says. "If you have carp in the water, they're going to win."

But wildlife officials won by building a dike to wall off access to the pond. They then killed off the carp and restocked the pond with fish that will leave enough food for ducks.

"That has been a very important waterfowl habitat improvement strategy here in the Columbia Basin," Kent says.

Inarguably, the Columbia Basin Project was a godsend for agriculture, a windfall for many species of native wildlife, and a perfect home for some introduced species that sportsmen love, including pheasants and walleye.

But it hasn't come without a price.

"The water has brought in a lot of invaders," says Kent, who over the years battled the unwanted animals and plants. From bullfrogs that eat native fish and turtles to Russian olive trees that shade out natural wetlands, invasive species are barging across the basin.

On the same dike that guards against carp, for example, a grassy invader called phragmites is pushing its feathery seed heads toward the sky. In many places, the invasive grass is overwhelming the basin's wetlands more than the infamous purple loosestrife. Kent helped get control of the latter with help from WSU entomologist Gary Piper and some insects imported from the purple loosestrife's native range.

Just down the road, Kent employed another non-native species-the cow-to salvage prime waterfowl habitat known as Birders Corner. Wildlife purists don't often consider livestock to be compatible with wildlife habitat. But in this instance, shoreline plants were wiping out open mudflats that wading and dabbling birds prefer-until Kent signed a contract allowing a farmer to graze his livestock across the area while the birds are gone.

"We use the cattle for mowing machines, basically," he says. "We don't have people to do it, and we don't have equipment to do it. We got cattle to do it, and [farmers] pay us."

It's that kind of simple, effective approach that wins Kent praise for his work.

“He has just done an incredible job protecting and managing the wildlife resources in the basin for future generations to enjoy," Gray says.

"You have to keep your eye on the goal," Kent says. "We want to have as many kinds of wildlife habitat as we can support out here."

A fisherman tries his luck near the North Potholes section.

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