A Wildlife Sanctuary Withers

Water is the coveted prize in the Klamath River Basin's supply-demand struggle, and the area's National Wildlife Refuges are last in line for this precious resource.

KLAMATH BASIN NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGES, Calif. -- On a cool, clear morning
last week, a bald eagle cruised over a highland swamp where several thousand
arctic snow geese were resting on their migration north.

The shadow of the raptor suddenly spooked them. In a riot of flapping wings
and peevish honks, the birds exploded skyward. The setting for this predatory
rite of spring is a wildlife refuge that Theodore Roosevelt created in 1908 as
the nation's first federal sanctuary for waterfowl.

The sanctuary, however, is now shriveling for lack of water. Eagles and geese
are performing their adversarial dance in a partially dewatered wetland that
is less wildlife refuge than busted plumbing system.

It's a problem endemic to the elaborately engineered river systems of the arid
West. In the Klamath River Basin, too many interests are chasing after too
little water, with politicians posturing, farmers protesting, Native Americans
suing, environmentalists pouting and judges laying down arcane operating rules
that bureaucrats struggle to enforce and the public struggles to understand.

Lack of water in the wetland has helped shrink the annual migration here from
more than 7 million birds to fewer than 2 million, according to Dave Mauser, a
biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Not even counting waterfowl in need of water, the oversubscribed plumbing
system that is the Klamath Basin has a knack for generating national outrage.

It has attracted the personal attention of Karl Rove, President Bush's senior
adviser, who has supported the rights of irrigation farmers.

Those farmers organized a noisy and successful protest in 2001 when the Bush
administration cut off their water in favor of endangered fish. Withering
crops became a symbol of environmental overkill -- and pressured the federal
government to retreat from hard-nosed enforcement of the Endangered Species
Act.

A year later, after the Bush administration had made political amends and
given farmers their usual allotment of water, one of the largest adult fish
kills in U.S. history took place on the Klamath River. More than 34,000
migrating salmon perished in a warm, stagnant, dewatered river. The federal
government has since said that diversions to farms were partly responsible.

The water problems of the Klamath Basin may play a role in this year's
presidential election. In Oregon, George W. Bush lost to Al Gore by about
7,000 votes in 2000. Recent polls give the presumptive Democratic nominee,
Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), a narrow lead over Bush.

It's a margin that Bob Moore, a Portland-based pollster who works for
candidates in Oregon and across the West, said could be swayed by continuing
fallout from the conflict in the Klamath.

"The Bush administration was forced to do something there to protect farmers,
and I don't think that they initially understood that it would resonate around
the West," Moore said. "But it has, and Bush has been the beneficiary. You are
talking about protecting people against protecting fish. Klamath illustrates
what a lot of western voters don't like about environmental groups. They are
too extreme."

The Wall Street Journal reported last year that Rove had personally championed
the cause of Klamath irrigators, urging the Department of Interior to protect
their water supply. That prompted Kerry to ask for an independent
investigation of whether the White House was putting illegal political
pressure on the department. Last month, the Interior Department's inspector
general cleared Rove, finding that "individuals at the field level denied
feeling pressured at all."

Here in the Klamath Basin, though, local pressure is mounting on federal
regulators to somehow find enough water to maintain a system that everyone now
agrees has too many users.

Farmers, who rely on one of the oldest federal irrigation projects in the West
and who for decades were the only powerful consumer of water in the basin,
continue to be angry about endangered fish.

"Let's bust the myth that more water means more fish," said Steve Kandra, a
third-generation irrigator who is president of the Klamath Water Users
Association.

With the help of their congressional delegation, irrigators have successfully
resisted proposals that would reduce demand for water by allowing the federal
government to buy out some farms from willing sellers.

Kandra said that if the government were allowed to buy out farmers -- and take
land out of production -- it would weaken the local economy, bankrupting farm
equipment dealers and closing schools.

Environmental groups, meanwhile, are increasingly annoyed that federal law
allows farmers to lease land and grow crops on dewatered land inside one of
the country's premier bird refuges -- even as it runs low on water.

"You don't have logging in Yellowstone, and you shouldn't grow potatoes in
this special place," said Bob Hunter, staff attorney for Waterwatch, an
Oregon-based environmental group.

And then there are the migrating birds and the mysteries of western water law.
Theodore Roosevelt created the refuge in 1908, but he created the irrigation
project three years earlier. Under western water law, first in time means
first in right; the refuge is therefore beholden to farmers for water.

The refuge relies almost completely on irrigation runoff to fill its wetlands.
There has been about a third less runoff in recent years, as competition for
water has increased in the basin. It means that about 40 percent of the
wildlife refuge is no longer productive for birds, according to Ron Cole, the
refuge manager.

"We are not a priority on this project," Cole said. "The reality is I have to
find a way to live with agriculture."

To that end, Cole hopes to preserve what is left of the refuge not by fighting
with nearby farmers, but by persuading more of them to flood their land
periodically as a way of killing pests. Fallow flooding can save them money on
chemical pesticides and herbicides, while allowing them to certify their crops
as organically grown. When water is sitting on farmers' fields, the refuge
becomes more interesting for snow geese and bald eagles.

The flooding program, though, has a long way to go. It is being used on only
1,800 acres out of 22,000 acres that farmers lease inside the refuge.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company