Myth: Irrigators provide water for eagles and other wildlife on Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge.

The assumption is: if there is reduced water for Klamath Basin farming, there is no way to provide needed water for eagles and other refuge wildlife. This claim is blatantly false. Water can be delivered to almost anywhere in Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) if the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) so wishes to deliver it. Irrigators (and Rep. Greg Walden) falsely make the claim that year 2001 water cut backs to irrigation forced the refuges to go dry. The truth is, even when irrigators receive full irrigation deliveries, many of the Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuges are still without water, particularly in fall, at the onset of the critical waterfowl migration season.

Furthermore, this intentionally misleading claim also ignores that by continually treating Upper Klamath Lake as a "reservoir" for agriculture, Upper Klamath National Wildlife Refuge's marshes are also frequently left totally dry. While few in the basin want to talk about it, Upper Klamath Lake's shores and its thousands of acres of surrounding marshes are seasonally drained below this lakes natural and historic levels so as to fully irrigate Klamath potatoes, alfalfa and onions.

Despite the requirements of the Biological Opinion, in July 2001 Interior Secretary Gale Norton chose to ignore Lower Klamath Refuge's bald eagle needs and sent 76,000 acre feet of water from Upper Klamath Lake to instead irrigate mostly cattle pastures. (In a press release, Norton suggested that an artificial feeding program should instead be implemented to try to feed any starving eagles. Only after conservation groups filed a lawsuit the following month, was a minimal amount of water for eagles' refuge wetlands finally provided.)

Throughout the many dry years of the previous decade almost all irrigation districts received 100% full water deliveries. Yet again in 2002, as in six of the last eleven years, Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge's critical water deliveries were shut off or significantly reduced just before the onset of the fall waterfowl migration. As explained in the USFWS's Biological Opinion of April 5, 2001, Section III, Part 1, Page 13 (written prior to refuge water cut offs in 2001 and again in 2002):

"In four different years between 1992 and 2001 the Refuge has had their water supplies shut off or reduced…As recently as September of 2000, due to water shortages, Reclamation stopped delivery of water to the Refuge. This threatened the availability of water for fall waterfowl habitat reducing the numbers of waterfowl that would use the refuge…Therefore a combination of harsh years, reduced water deliveries, high numbers of wintering eagles and low or non-existent waterfowl populations would result in very high levels of adverse impacts to local and wintering eagles. This underscores the importance of maintaining and managing for the stability of the wintering eagle population in the Klamath Basin."

Water deliveries for Lower Klamath NWR have always been BOR's and Klamath Basin Irrigation Districts' lowest water delivery priority. Irrigators try to make the claim that Lower Klamath NWR only receives water if they do. In fact water generally only reaches Lower Klamath's refuge lands after having gone through BOR's irrigation canal system. But during dry summer months the refuge only gets water when there is extra--and most of this precious "extra" water is already highly polluted. This is because most water that is made available to Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge in the summer months is but agricultural, waste water run off, being returned to the Klamath River through the Straits Drain which flows through the refuge's lands. Thus, much of this water is never truly "delivered" to the refuge--instead refuge managers simply take it as it otherwise heads back to the Klamath River. Sadly, this is often Lower Klamath NWR's only available water source--simply being redirected from the waste drain onto otherwise parched refuge wetlands.

Once an 80,000+ acre lake and marsh adjoining the Klamath River--today Lower Klamath "Lake" is but a series of diked and often dry "wetlands," never more than one forth its original size. As Lower Klamath is cut off from its natural river source, the remaining marsh is thus no long longer viewed as a natural wetland provider. Instead basin irrigators see it as a competing water consumer, and refuge managers are instead forced to defend the once vibrant lake and marshland in the context of "How much water does that darn refuge need?" Such contempt translates simply to Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge's water needs always being met last, when at all.