Our Klamath Basin Water Crisis
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own property, and caretake our wildlife and natural resources. 

Herald and News: Klamath Falls, Oregon http://www.heraldandnews.com/articles/2003/09/22/news/top_stories/top1.txt Depending on the water Scott Boley, a Klamath Falls native who is now a commercial salmon fisherman in Gold Beach, filets salmon he caught out in the Pacific Ocean. Published September 21, 2003 Fisherman sympathizes with farmers, offers advice By DYLAN DARLING GOLD BEACH - As a kid in Klamath Falls, almost a half century ago, Scott Boley lived right next to the A Canal headgates. His dad worked for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, and his mom would turn the rusty old wheel to open the rush of irrigation water each April. Water has played a huge role in his life - from it comes his livelihood. But it's not irrigation water that keeps his business going, a roof over his head and food on the table. Rather it is the ocean and the crops swimming deep beneath its surface. Boley is a commercial salmon fisherman in Gold Beach who has been in the business for almost three decades. In his time he has seen the number of salmon vessels at his home port drop drastically. He has had to deal with government regulations. He has heard environmentalists say that his life's work is destructive to wildlife. From these experiences he has advice for the farmers and ranchers working the land he used to call home. He said a solution in the Klamath Basin water crisis will be a complex one and will need to come from those who work the land, catch the fish and have a bond with the river and the sea. If the farmers need motivation to work together and with other groups, they just need to look at what happened to the fisheries when they got singled out, Boley said. "You can't finger out one group and say it is the problem," he said. Like the farmers and ranchers, the fishermen are food producers, who depend on the supplies of nature and the demands of people to keep their businesses running, he said. To keep all the industries going, and to meet the concerns of tribal and environmental groups, concessions will need to be made. Boley said solutions forged by officials put in place by liberal or conservative administrations will last only as long as the administrations. "If they really want lasting solutions, they need to be created by the people affected," he said. Although Southern Oregon salmon fishermen and Klamath Basin farmers and ranchers are separated by two mountain ranges and the length of a river, they aren't too far apart in their philosophies. Boley himself contradicts the image that the Pacific commercial fishing industry is lined up solidly against Klamath Basin agriculture. He says the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, which has been active in lawsuits challenging the management of the Klamath River, doesn't represent him or other Oregon-based fishermen. More deeply, the two groups are in struggles, the fishermen fighting to get back what they have lost and the farmers to keep what they still have. Both want to use nature to stay in business. But nature nowadays is ruled by bureaucracy, Boley said. Regulations force Boley to travel 70 miles from Gold Beach to catch salmon. Cruising along in his boat, the "Frances," built in 1930, at a top speed of 7 mph, it takes quite a while to get out there. But, with the decline of the Oregon fisheries, Boley is lucky to still have a boat and to be in business. The Oregon fleet has dropped from about 200,000 to about 10,000 vessels since he started in 1976, he said. When Boley started fishing, Gold Beach had 20 to 30 boats calling the port home. Now there are three or four. "We have been essentially regulated off of 90 percent of our harvest here," he said. Boley said farmers and ranchers should learn from what is happening to the salmon industry and what already happened to the timber industry. He said that salmon boats are a rare sight on the Oregon coast, loggers scarce in the mountains and farmers could disappear from the fields, he said. Though, it can be tempting for farmers to go to the government for help, especially with conservative, pro-agriculture politicians in power, Boley said, farmers and ranchers should be careful what they wish for. The more help the federal government gives, the more control over what it is helping with it will want, Boley said. To protect certain species of salmon, there is now a big no-fishing zone around the border of Oregon and California. Often, Boley and other fishermen have to float down to Central California or up to Northern Oregon in search of salmon. John Wilson, another salmon fisherman and one of Boley's business partners, said it's been 20 years since salmon fishermen have been able to go after coho, which was once the "bread and butter" salmon catch of the Oregon fisheries. Even with the restrictions on coho, the Klamath River still is a major producer for the fishermen. Wilson said 40 to 50 percent of his salmon catch comes from the river. He wants farmers, fishermen, tribes and others upstream interests to be able to come together to find a solution. "The last thing I want is for those folks to suffer the type of regulations we did when we they targeted us," Wilson said. And the regulations continue to tighten. "It's a shrinking ocean," he said. But Boley still sails it in his old ship. White with forest green trim, the boat is a classic. When not at sea, Boley spends a good amount of time working on the boat, replacing old parts and making sure everything is running right. "It's a bit like an old tractor, I guess," he said. The boat can hold up to 2,500 pounds of fish, but a typical catch is 1,000 pounds. It takes him about three days to catch that. Boley hopes to fish for 10 to 15 more years if he can stay in good enough shape. He said pulling in the lines can be grueling work, but wants to do it until he is 70. He is 55 now. Like a farmer or a rancher, Boley doesn't work an exact schedule or punch a time card. "If the ocean gives you the opportunity, you basically take those opportunities," he said. Boley has been involved with the policy processes that affect what kind of opportunities fishermen on the Southern Oregon coast get from the regulatory side of things. He has been on the Klamath River technical team since the 1990s and was on the Pacific Fisheries Management Council from 1990 to 1996. Like farmers and ranchers, Boley said fishermen are a competitive lot and not the easiest to get to sit down at a negotiations table. They have to be pretty independent to put in the work needed on the boats and have to compete with each other and the ocean to bring in fish. But within that competitiveness, they find a bond. To stay in business, Boley has has teamed up with Wilson and another fisherman. He said the trio's business, called Fishermen Direct, succeeds only because it is diversified. It sells a variety of fish and crab at a shop on the Port of Gold Beach waterfront. It will clean, pack, freeze and send sportsmen's to them. It will catch and deliver fish for restaurants. Boley said it's like a farmer's having two or three crops. Many complex factors mixed together to cause the decline of the salmon industry, he said. Tribal catch demands, overfishing in some areas, changes in the ecosystem - all and more played a part. A similar complex string of factors is starting to come together in the Basin, Boley said. He said he doesn't want farmers to end up like some former fishermen. After boom years in the 1960s and 1970s, many had to sell their boats and get out of the business. Boats that weren't able to be sold bobbed in ports for years and were eventually pulled out, torn apart and burned. Boley and Wilson don't want to see a similar exodus happen with Basin farmers. Now is a time that people in the Basin agricultural community could start working together, before massive losses like the ones that hit the fisheries happen, Boley said. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, any copyrighted material  herein is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed  a  prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and  educational purposes only. For more information go to:  http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml

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