Река Уокер: История, экология и проблемы озера Уокер.

River in Nevada, United States
The East Walker River also begins in Mono County, California, in the Bridgeport Valley, fed by several Sierra streams originating in the Hoover Wilderness, including Buckeye, Robinson, Green, and Virginia creeks. After forming the Bridgeport Reservoir at the town of Bridgeport, the East Walker flows northeast into Nevada in Lyon County, receives Rough Creek, and flows north along the eastern edge of the Toiyabe National Forest before its confluence with the West Walker. As a result, the level of Walker lake has dropped by 160 feet (49 m) between 1882 and 2010, with about 20 feet (6 m) of that occurring between 1996 and 2010. The lake has lost more than half its original surface area and 80 percent of its water volume.

The first humans to inhabit the Walker River basin may have arrived as early as 11,000 years ago. The first European to see the Walker River was probably Hudson's Bay Company fur trapper Peter Skene Ogden, who had discovered the Humboldt River in 1828 and returned in 1829 to trap beaver south of the Humboldt Sink, although records are scant. In 1833, Joseph R. Walker led a party sent by Captain Benjamin Bonneville to find a route from the Great Salt Lake to California via the Humboldt River, the Humboldt Sink, the Carson Sink, and then up into the Sierra Nevada by either the Carson River or the Walker River to near the headwaters of the Merced River and thence down to the San Joaquin River. John C. Frémont named Walker Lake after the trapper, and the United States Geographic Board named the river after Walker in its Fifth Report. Due to a very heavy snowpack in the winter of 1996/1997 and a very warm spring, the West Fork of the Walker River flooded to unprecedented levels. Much of Highway 395 for the 30 mile span where it shares a canyon with the river was completely washed away.

That North American beaver (Castor canadensis) were once native to the Walker River is evidenced by a 1906 article in the Nevada State Journal newspaper by newspaper mining writer Fitz James MacCarthy (aka Fitz Mac), who stated that the Mason's Valley of the Walker River in Yerington was well known to "the early trappers and fur hunters Kit Carson knew it to the bone The beavers of course were all trapped long ago, and you never see an elk nowadays " Beaver have since re colonized the Walker River watershed. The Walker River and Walker Lake formerly supported Lahontan cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarkii henshawi) or LCT; however, increases in salinity due to the declining water level have decimated the fishery. The last confirmed catch of LCT from Walker Lake was in 2009.