Irony is dead in the Klamath Basin.  This has been a joke among conservation advocates working on wildlife, wetland, and salmon issues for years.  It usually comes up when one drives past a burger joint named after Captain Jack, or an advertisement for a new housing development in the dusty sagebrush dubbed something like “Pelican Point” or "Heron Bay."

Lately, though, it is has taken on a deeper meaning.  Conservationists who are skeptical of the Bush-initiated "Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement" (KBRA) have found themselves the subject of focused attacks by its backers on the Oregonian website, and in the pages of the Eugene Register-Guard.

Rather than address the problems in the agreement (such as locking in agribusiness on Tule Lake and Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuges for another 50 years), KBRA backers have tried to intimidate the opposition with attacks on their character and motivations.

And this is where the irony comes in.

Over the course of this past couple of weeks, I have been a participant in a heated email debate among supporters and opponents of the KBRA.  It has been fascinating to see how quickly KBRA supporters label a legitimate concern about how the agreement harms wetlands, wildlife, or salmon as a personal attack as a means of ducking the question.

I expect some of this has more to do with a luke-warm reception to KBRA legislation in Congress than it does with our opposition.  When Oregon Wild and WaterWatch were forced out of the talks, it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out where things were headed on water allocation and the wildlife refuges, or that we and other groups concerned about wildlife and river flows would likely be forced into the position of opposing the final product.

But the ultimate irony is that the Bush administration and the attorneys representing the Klamath agribusiness were so successful in using dam removal as a wedge to split the Klamath conservation community and bring us to this point.

In the good old days, we were generally united behind three goals -- dam removal, reducing the demand for water by the Klamath Irrigation Project, and ending commercial agribusiness on the National Wildlife Refuges.  In fact, membership in the Klamath Basin Coalition (KBC) was once contingent upon endorsing its vision statement, which included ending lease-land farming on the refuges.  I recall Glen Spain, the chair of the coalition, commissioning an excellent fact sheet on the benefits of ending lease-land farming for the Klamath Basin Coalition.  It still resides on the KBC web site:

http://www.klamathbasin.info/refugewaterfacts.pdf

Fast forward to today, where groups signing on to the KBRA are now actively endorsing agribusiness on the refuges for another 50 years.  Though there are fig-leafs in the KBRA (such as making the refuges a purpose of the Klamath Project, though without changing their priority for water), at the root of it, the  most important freshwater wetlands in the Western United States got used as trading stock.  As a result, advocates for the refuges will most certainly fight the KBRA tooth and nail, in Congress and in the court room.

In a year or two, perhaps we will all be in a place where we can once again talk about a real compromise for the Klamath.  I have a feeling the economy and the federal budget are going to do a far better job of killing the $1 billion deal than any amount of opposition from wildlife conservation groups.  At some point, fiscal reality is going to force a paring down.  I hope it happens in time to prevent the KBRA from taking dam removal down with it.