The Associated Press
A bald eagle flies over the Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge in Klamath Falls, Ore.

Group sues to get water for refuge

Environmentalists argue that water is mandated to go to eagles before farmers

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Originally published August 8, 2001

GRANTS PASS, Ore. -- Conservationists filed a lawsuit Tuesday to force the Interior Department to provide water for a wildlife refuge -- a winter home for hundreds of threatened bald eagles -- rather than giving the water to parched farms in the Klamath Basin.

The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Eugene comes two weeks after Interior Secretary Gale Norton authorized the release of water to farms on the Klamath Project irrigation system from Upper Klamath Lake that was deemed surplus to the needs of threatened and endangered fish.

"The eagles need water now, and we will not stand by and watch our country's national symbol be harmed," Wendell Wood of the Oregon Natural Resources Council said from Eugene. "We have tried very hard to negotiate a solution to this crisis and avoid a lawsuit."

A motion for a temporary restraining order to mandate water for the refuge will be filed today, Wood said.

"Many people feel we waited too long," said Wood. "We are concerned that we waited too long."

Interior Secretary Gale Norton said she was disappointed the lawsuit was filed, saying it reflected a lack of understanding of a complex issue.

"Bald eagles that winter on the refuge are hundreds of miles away at this time. The farmers in the Klamath Basin are not,'' Norton said from Washington, D.C. "Supplemental feeding of the eagles is already being considered in the event their natural food supply is affected by the water shortage.''

Ross Fleming, who farms outside Klamath Falls, said he agreed the eagles need water, but felt they would have gotten all they needed if the government had not shut off irrigation to farmers. The Klamath Project is designed so that the refuge gets the water left over after irrigating the farms.

"I think they'd have had water and everybody would have been just fine if they had run the project the way it's been run the last 97 years," Fleming said.

The lawsuit argues that a biological opinion by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on the needs of endangered sucker fish mandates any surplus water in Upper Klamath Lake go to the Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge to flood marshes to sustain the eagles.

The biological opinion sets 32,255 acre-feet -- about half the amount released two weeks ago for hay fields and pastures -- as the minimum for the refuge. That would sustain about 125,000 waterfowl, a fraction of the millions that normally winter there. Even with that, biologists expect the agency will have to feed eagles.

The eagles, numbering as many as 1,000, are the largest winter roosting population in the lower 48 states. They gather to feed on the millions of waterfowl at the refuge. The waterfowl passing through during migration amount to 80 percent of the birds on the Pacific Flyway.

The refuge got some water over the weekend, when Pacific Power sent 1,000 acre-feet of water that had been dedicated to power production at hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River. Avocets, egrets and other shorebirds lined up for the water as it trickled into an area at the heart of the refuge, refuge manager Phil Norton said.

The Olympian Copyright 2001

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