The water flowing from the now-mighty Bear River has filled the 75,000-acre refuge, and thousands of acres of mud flats are wet for the first time in six years, giving the grasses and insects - necessary for bird habitat - a chance to recover.

No, Trout insists, it is not a flood.

"It's a good water year," he adds. And it's a godsend.

But not for the bird lovers who flock to the sanctuary each spring. A neighboring farmer's reaction to the high water has dried up their avian pursuits.

They won't see the refuge teeming with colorful ruddy ducks on their floating nests, black-crowned night herons, white-faced ibis or American avocets. Nor will they see - or hear - the uncommon long-billed curlews that thrive in the mud flats and will do even better now that their land has been watered.

That's because the only public road to the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge west of Brigham City was breached Sunday afternoon by a farmer when culverts along the road - which doubles as a dike - were not draining his land of several feet of water that had spilled from the river's banks.

With Box Elder County Commissioner Scott Hansen's permission, Todd Yates used a backhoe to punch a 12-foot-wide ditch through the road about four miles east of the refuge. The water on his low-lying land, though, has scarcely dropped.

Yates said he lost 20 or 30 cows and calves in the high water early Sunday morning. No carcasses have yet surfaced downstream.

Utah Power had been dumping huge amounts of water into the Bear River at Cutler Dam upstream since Thursday because of heavy rains in the Cache Valley and spring runoff higher up. Yates' acreage is below a bend in the river where water flows in high-water years. It is in a flood plain traditionally used only for grazing cattle. The road he breached is often under several inches of water during the spring.

Those cut off by Yates' action - birdwatchers and managers of the hunting clubs next to the refuge - are not happy.

"It's an ignorant, idiotic decision," said Allen Esplin, manager of the Canada Goose Club, a 2,000-acre hunting preserve with a clubhouse and shop near the bird sanctuary.

"How does anyone [without notifying anyone] cut off everyone below them?" he asked Tuesday.

Gary Slot, who manages the 13,000-acre Bear River Club on the north side of the refuge, said Yates' solution to the rising water made no sense.

"That gouge . . . . is like me trying to drain the Great Salt Lake with a bucket," Slot said Tuesday.

It also jeopardized millions of dollars of property and the welfare of the caretaker and his wife who live by the clubhouse, he added.

A fire engine or ambulance would have a tough time getting through the refuge's locked service gates and onto the dirt dike paths that are now the only motor route onto the marshy refuge.

Steve Hicks, deputy refuge manager, said he tried to argue Yates out of cutting a chunk out of the public road Sunday, but was angrily rebuffed.

Hansen, the county commissioner, granted Yates' request to use the backhoe after fielding a frantic call from the farmer. As it turns out, that may not have been Hansen's call to make. The road appears to be within Brigham City's expanded boundaries, and so the city will have to repair the damage.

Street superintendent Darin McFarland and foreman Wayne Kotter were at the breach Tuesday, trying to figure out how to repair the opening while the water is still high. Trout, the refuge manager, said he has learned over the years that it's best to wait until the water recedes, which sometimes doesn't happen until July.

The refuge may allow some birding tours to use the service roads along the dikes, but for visitors' safety and the preservation of the bird sanctuary, the service road will not open to the general public, Trout said.

Since the Great Salt Lake flooded in 1983 and washed out three houses, the hunters' clubhouses and the refuge's old headquarters, the federal government has pumped millions of dollars into the refuge.

Now, Trout and Hicks can control the amount of water in each of the refuge's 26 sections and send all the Bear River water to the Great Salt Lake via canals when the sanctuary is full. That's what is happening now.

In the drought years, they were able to divert the little water they had to two particularly marshy units filled with birds, said Hicks.

While this year's high water is great for the refuge, there is a cost: the nests of some waterfowl and shorebirds have been washed away.

Trout, though, says he is not worried that will hurt the population of geese and ducks.

"Those birds will re-nest. This is not too late."

kmoulton@sltrib.com