Conservationists threaten to sue if supplies allotted a few farmers aren't
diverted to benefit the national symbol
Thursday, May 24, 2001
By Michael Milstein of The Oregonian staff
Conservation groups say a trickle of water going to a few farmers in the
parched Klamath Project of Southern Oregon should be going to help
imperiled bald eagles on national wildlife refuges instead, and on
Wednesday they promised to go to court to make sure it does.
Because the bald eagle is a threatened species protected by the Endangered
Species Act, conservation groups said that federal managers must protect
them on a par with the threatened salmon and endangered suckers that
already have taken priority over farms for the Klamath's scarce water.
Federal biologists have said 950 bald eagles that depend on wildlife
refuges in the Klamath Basin may die of starvation, be displaced or be
weakened if the refuges go dry, as many of the basin's farms will in this
drought year.
When wet, the refuges host millions of waterfowl that migrate along the
Pacific Flyway and provide prey for the eagles.
The Oregon Natural Resources Council, Northcoast Environmental Center and
Golden Gate Audubon Society said they would sue to make the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation provide water for eagles if it does not do so on its own within 60 days.
More than 1,000 farms that normally draw their water from Upper Klamath
Lake will get none this summer because officials are holding what little
water there is in the lake and the Klamath River to assist salmon and
suckers. Two irrigation districts that depend on Clear Lake and Gerber
Reservoir, which lie in a drainage east of Klamath Falls, have been allowed
to take 70,000 acre-feet of water for irrigation.
The water should not be flooding fields while America's first national
wildlife refuges and the home to the largest population of wintering bald
eagles in the lower 48 states dries out, said Wendell Wood of the Oregon
Natural Resources Council.
"The national symbol has to take priority over irrigating cattle pasture,"
he said. "We're not asking for extra water for eagles; we're asking for
water already promised to eagles through the Endangered Species Act. You
can write a check to farmers to help them, and that's being done. You can't
write a check to bald eagles."
But the possibility of diverting water from Clear Lake and Gerber Reservoir
more than 40 miles to the wildlife refuges along the Oregon-California line
raises new questions: How far must the government move water to help a
protected species? And must farmers in one basin sacrifice water for a
species in a different basin?
"Physically it's possible, but there's a question of whether you should
compel diversions between basins in the kind of species balancing act we
have here," said Karl Wirkus, manager of the Bureau of Reclamation's
Klamath Project.
You can reach Michael Milstein at 503-294-7689 or by e-mail at
michaelmilstein@news.oregonian.com .