Opposing Viewpoints Converge
By DD Bixby & Dylan Darling, K-Falls Herald & News
July 18, 2004

From opposite ends of Main Street and opposite viewpoints on the Endangered Species Act, residents of the Klamath Basin converged on the Ross Ragland Theater Saturday morning.

It got a little rowdy, but it stayed peaceable as groups representing Klamath Basin irrigators and the Klamath Tribes met in front of the theater, later the venue for a congressional field hearing.

About 100 members of the Klamath Tribes and environmentalists started at the Klamath County Museum and walked to the beat of a drumming group.

About 250 water users and others in the agriculture community, some singing a soft chorus of "God Bless America," set out from Veterans Park and walked ahead of the clomp of horse hoofs.

Main Street was blocked for the marches, and local law enforcement officers were out in large numbers.

The water users got to the theater first, and speakers began addressing the crowd. Across the street in a parking lot were loads of timber and hay.

Speakers said the ESA had damaged Klamath Basin agriculture since 2001, and crowd members such as John and Patti Northcraft agreed.

"My husband was a hay broker for many years," Patti Northcraft said. "We lost our business during the water crisis."

She said the losses are a tragedy not only for individuals but also for the nation.

"We feel a great piece of our country is going away," she said.

Some of the first speakers to the podium were hardest on the ESA.

"The ESA is nothing less than a weapon of mass destruction for the eco-al-Qaida," said Elliot Schwartz of Brookings, Calif., a leader of a group called Rural Resources Alliance that tries to bring together groups that depend on natural resources such as logs, water and fish.

Other speakers from outside of the Klamath Basin spoke of ways they had protected endangered species without cutting off agriculture endeavors.

"We've shown conclusively that we can solve these problems without destroying agriculture," said Bill Krum, a speaker from the Shasta Valley. He said private farmers, with government incentives, have done good things for species in his part of California.

As the third speaker, Dan Keppen, executive director of the Klamath Water Users, was getting to the podium to speak, the other marchers arrived.

Keppen's call for peer review of Endangered Species Act science was drowned out by shouts of "We were here first," "Free the water," and "You didn't come here with water," from a vocal minority of the Tribes marchers.

"It kind of got ugly," Keppen said.

Heckles continued through the next two speakers as the water users and Tribes members closed in on the podium, vying for the front row, which was set up in front of the Ragland's box office.

Shouts and interruptions ceased as Troy Fletcher, executive director of the Yurok Tribe, which has a reservation on the Lower Klamath River, and Allen Foreman, chairman of the Klamath Tribes, took the stage. "I'm a product of this community," Foreman said. "Look at what this is doing to the community. We can come together for a restoration."

Ken Farmer, a Klamath Falls resident, was among the crowd that gathered by the Ragland.

"I believe the ESA isn't working. There's too much government interference," he said. "It's got to be fixed by people who use common sense and science."

Farmer, who supported the Bucket Brigade in 2001, attended Saturday's rally to support the Klamath Basin community.

"I'm here to show support to everyone, farmers, Indians, everyone," he said.

After hearing the shouts of "What about the treaty rights" and others referring to the conflict between American Indians and homesteaders, Farmer said, "It's a shame to see the division over things that happened years ago that people here had nothing to do with."

Young people were prominent in both groups. At the front of the water users, for example, were 4-H and FFA members.

On the opposite side of town, Morning Wilson, 12, of Chiloquin, said her elders have told her that the C'waam, or Lost River sucker, is a native food for her people. She said she came down with her sister, uncles and aunts to the march.

"They all know what is going on. We are trying to do something about it," she said.

Lyalle Miller Craig, who said she was in her 70s, couldn't march because of a disability, so she had her daughter, Cecilia Craig, drive her to the Ragland.

She said she lived on the Williamson River when she was younger and ate C'waam as a kid.

"The fins would be by the hundred coming up the river," she said.

The sucker, along with the shortnose sucker, was listed for protection under the ESA in 1988.

"This brings us to tears," she said.

As the rallies ended, people took their seats inside the theater for the field hearing or straggled off. For much of the morning, law enforcement officers were a majority of the people outside the building.

Fifteen minutes after activities concluded in front of the theater, a large bundle of signs, some reading "Save the ESA" and others calling it an "Economic Suicide Act," had made their way, together, to trash can in front of the theater.

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