Might there be room for another guidebook of the type you wrote [on ancient forests], but slightly different in orientation?
Possibly. Maybe it’ll come from different sources. We couldn’t raise the money to do a color brochure because they cost thousands of dollars, but I was very pleased that the San Francisco Wildlife Association did a 30 page booklet on the refuges with color pictures and a good text. I got to provide editorial suggestions. It gives the refuges a sense of place. I’ve jokingly said that I could do a guidebook, on my personal time, on Crater Lake National Park. It would be called “What to do after you’ve seen the lake (laughs) because the park [service] doesn’t talk about it. The lake is very spectacular, and I wouldn’t do the geological interpretation any differently because that’s what you’re most struck with, but there’s lots of places in Crater Lake National Park that people just do not know about. I’ve been doing these little trips in the basin to get public awareness and last year we did “Crater Lake’s secret waterfalls” (laughs). I had so many calls I had to do it two weekends in a row.
Will you do it [the trip] again?
Probably. I’m working on my August and September schedule right now. Seasonal people [who work at the park] understandably tell visitors what’s around the rim. I came in the north [entrance] gate once and said I was going to go to these waterfalls below Mount Scott … it says Anderson Springs on the map. A lot of places called springs are really very nice waterfalls. Their [park employees] lower jaws drop when I tell them what’s there (laughs). I think there’s a couple of other places in the park where some trails [leading to them] wouldn’t have a big impact.
To discuss the Klamath Basin issue more, there are three legs to the stool of concern, if you will. [One is] keeping water in Upper Klamath Lake, which is not only for the endangered fish but also for the Upper Klamath National Wildlife Refuge–which is basically drained every year as it surrounds the periphery of Klamath Lake. It’s sort of like heresy for anybody to point that out. The refuge [U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service] wouldn’t even say it. Last year we said it and got the Associated Press and the Oregonian to come out and take pictures of me standing out in the middle of the [supposedly inundated] wildlife refuge. A 14,000 acre wildlife refuge stood without water in it while a 200 acre restoration project [on the Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge] was being dedicated in the parking lot at Captain Jack’s Stronghold [located in Lava Beds National Monument]. Another issue has been water for the lower basin refuges [Tule Lake and Lower Klamath], and the third thing has been water in the Klamath River itself. We’ve probably focused more on the lower basin refuges because we felt that there has been less support [for them]. The downstream tribes are very concerned about flows [in the Klamath River], as are the commercial and sports fishermen, because of the salmon. The Klamath Tribe has been more involved in claiming water rights and [expressing] their concerns in Upper Klamath Lake. There’s been less demonstrated support for the lower basin refuges. The Lower Klamath refuge, according to the refuge staff, has the largest concentration of waterfowl of any place in the Pacific Flyway, and, they added, possibly the largest concentrations of anywhere in North America (emphasis on last two words).
