Did ONRC have a role in the [logging] controversy over Ashland’s watershed?
Not as much. We’ve talked with the folks there, but other groups such as Headwaters and the Rogue Group Sierra Club are taking the lead. Talk to Regna, she’s worked all over the state on that sort of thing. There are so many issues in southwest Oregon, more than we can cover. Headwaters is headquartered right in Ashland, so they often take the lead with those types of forest issues.
It’s whoever can fill the niche best?
The fact that I’m not in Ashland is because Headwaters is there. If they didn’t exist, I may have located over there rather than Klamath Falls. I don’t know that, but it’s probable. . I’m saying to people l8You’re talking about the Klamath-Siskiyou bioregion, [so] why are you leaving out the headwaters of the Klamath River? (laughs) This makes your story more compelling, that you have the largest wintering bald eagle population and the largest waterfowl concentration in North America.” You have the Klamath River running through the middle of it, so just pull it over the hill [join it to the bioregion] and you can even throw Crater Lake into the pot, along with its 700 or however many [plant] species Peter Zika came up with for the park.
Before you relocated [to the Klamath Basin] did James Monteith carry the flag for the basin?
I never thought he was any more or less interested than in any other part of the state, but he did grow up in the area. When I discovered this place, it wasn’t so much his doing. I visited Lava Beds National Monument on Memorial Weekend in, I think, 1987 and I came back and said “Wow! Have you been there?” “Been there?” James said, “When I was a kid I would coil up a dead rattlesnake and scare people as they walked around the first bend in Captain Jack’s Stronghold.” This was really his back yard, so he was aware of the basin’s features. His father drove a Model A Ford out on Klamath Lake when it was frozen and also to the top of Mount Scott (both laugh incredulously). That little road which I guess goes, up there has fallen apart as you get higher up the mountain. Anyway, James was always interested in the [Klamath Basin] area and its defense, but I would say no more so or no less other parts of the state. When I moved down here, he had left ONRC formally. He was asked by a newspaper about me and said “He’s perfect–I want a bulldog down there.” Stub Stewart, who is a mill owner in Cottage Grove, said “1 really feel sorry for the people of Klamath Falls (laughs).
