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As drought and climate change raises tensions among tribes, farmers, and land managers in southern Oregon, there is an emerging consensus over how to find a lasting solution—conversation, not confrontation.
Antigovernment extremists with ties to Ammon Bundy have set up a literal circus tent next to the headgates of the main irrigation canal off Upper Klamath Lake. The agitators are threatening to open the gates by force, as the drought has caused water levels to drop so low that most farmers and ranchers won't get any water this year. Fish in the lake and Klamath River are dying in massive numbers because the water is so warm.
Rep. Cliff Bentz, who represents much of the Klamath basin, told farmers he's seeking $57 million in federal aid—an offer that didn't sit well with some. “Cattle cannot eat welfare checks,” one farmer told Bentz, according to Jefferson Public Radio.
“Well, I can’t make it rain,” Bentz replied.
Writing in The Atlantic, Klamath Falls-based author Emma Marris offers up a way forward—including respecting 19th century treaties with tribes, slowly reducing the total amount of water used for agriculture in order to provide certainty for farmers, and restoring wetlands that act as a natural filter for Upper Klamath Lake, and removing dams on the Klamath River. “I reckon you could do it all with $1 billion—beer money, these days—and it could serve as a model for the entire West,” Marris writes.
As for the Bundy-inspired sideshow by the canal gates, Marris notes that few actual farmers and ranchers are involved. “These few malcontents want water and they want it now,” she says.
“They care nothing for the fish, the tribes, or—seemingly—the long-term future. They are what happens when being aggrieved becomes one’s only identity.”
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What Klamath Basin communities are facing right now is the definition of a disaster. It is also the new normal. We owe it to future generations to never let another juvenile fish kill like this happen again. We need to act now before it is too late for the Klamath salmon.”
