As Thousands of Salmon Die, Fight for River Erupts Again By TIMOTHY EGAN
EATTLE, Sept. 27 � More than 10,000 chinook salmon have died in the Klamath River in northern California in recent days, leaving biologists stunned and Indian tribes and fishermen angered at the Bush administration, which they say caused the deaths by favoring farmers in one of the most contentious water disputes in the West. Advertisement Federal officials, while not conceding that administration policy had anything to do with the die-off, said they would reverse an earlier policy and begin releasing water from Upper Klamath Lake in southern Oregon in an effort to revitalize the Klamath River downstream. The slow-moving river is littered with thousands of dead, bloated salmon, rotting in the sun. Biologists say they have never seen a salmon kill of this size. It comes six months after the Bush administration decided to divert more Klamath Lake water to irrigation in the Klamath basin, saying the decision would satisfy farmers and comply with environmental laws. Indian tribes and fishermen say the administration broke the law � and starved the river � by favoring farmers over fish. "We're seeing dead fish everywhere; it's just tragic," said David Hillemeier, a biologist with the Yurok Indian Tribe in northern California. "No matter what happens now, the damage is done. We could lose 30,000 fish." Although biologists disagree on what caused the fish to die, they say a very warm and dry September in the Pacific Northwest and low water flows in the Klamath River are the two major reasons the river is too low for fish to move upstream and spawn, as they would normally do this time of year. Instead, the fish are crowded into small pools and dying of disease. On Thursday, fishermen and environmental groups went to federal court in Oakland, Calif., charging the Bush administration with giving too much water to irrigation interests at the risk of thousands of salmon, including coho, which are listed as threatened with extinction, and king salmon, or chinook, which are considered the most desirable and grow to 70 pounds or more. "Basically, the administration created a drought in the lower river," said Zeke Grader, with the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen, the largest trade group of salmon fishers on the West Coast. "We were expecting a really good run of fish this year. And now we've got the federal government essentially killing fish to satisfy their irrigation interests." Bush officials said they had acted on the best information from scientists and were baffled by the death of the salmon. Allocating more water to irrigators, who staged protests last summer when they were denied their usual amount of water for farming, may not have been a factor in the die-off, the officials said. "It's an anomaly," said Mark Limbaugh, director of external affairs at the Bureau of Reclamation, which controls water in the upper Klamath Basin. "No one has ever seen a problem like this, and it may very well turn out to be a natural phenomenon." The Indians say that the warm and dry weather has not affected any river except the Klamath and that the fish die-off can be directly tied to the withholding of river water. "We begged them for more water, starting in the spring," said Sue Mastern, chairwoman of the Yurok Indian Tribe, which has 4,500 members and lives in northern California. "They would not consult with us. They ignored us. And now people are feeling helpless and outraged. It's just a sickening feeling." Continued at http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/28/science/28KLAM.html
