When people look at these areas, the say “Gosh, it’s lovely to see all the birds, but it’s so manipulated.” Were it not for the fact that waterfowl are greatly adaptable to agricultural lands which we’ve so modified, they wouldn’t be here at all. It’s still an incredible resource. The Klamath Marsh and Upper Klamath refuges are, yes, more natural and not as manipulated, but the Upper Klamath produces 4,000 ducks a year versus 40,000 on the Lower Klamath. It’s still important, I should add, to protect areas that don’t produce as many ducks per acre.
Are restoration projects a viable part of the equation? In the ancient forest battle you were largely defensive, whereas restoration might be a way of taking an offensive role, like with your willow planting.
It is in the sense that it’s what can be done for the particular resource. In other words, with waterfowl populations you can show a major response when you restore wetlands. In terms of a broader vision of wanting to restore more of the viability of the whole Pacific Flyway, the Klamath Basin because of the concentration of wildlife and its land values in comparison to the Central Valley [of California] is cost effective. Our conclusion is, from talking with groups such as Ducks Unlimited and others who have looked at every refuge in Oregon, that focusing on the
Klamath Basin is where you get the biggest bang for the buck. There still is a lot left here. As much as people hate taxes, my idea is to have a real estate transfer tax. When you sold a house, you’d pay $100 which would go to creating a wetland. If you could go around the dike on your bicycle or whatever, and every spring and fall have a flock of birds fly over your land, then people would be happy to invest that $100 because they’d have a tangible result.
Sort of like Arcata, where the public has access [to a publicly funded wetland]?
Exactly. Areas which have historic wetlands in interior valleys were the most productive for waterfowl for the same reason they are productive for agriculture. They had the richest nutrients and warmer growing conditions, so restoring these areas is really needed. The thing that is really exciting is it really can be done.
Where agriculture helps wildlife, it’s often just a happy circumstance because it worked out in the farmer’s interest. If it weren’t in their interest, they wouldn’t do what works for wildlife. Some of the flooding for rice, where they were formerly doing field burning in the Sacramento Valley, has been tremendously beneficial to waterfowl. A lot of the waterfowl, as the Fish and Wildlife Service says, that used to go south to California now winter in the Klamath Basin. They don’t go further south because there isn’t anything for them. It also provides sort of an artificial situation where we think things are better than they really are in the Klamath Basin because we have all this wildlife. We should have that, and there should be more than that which goes further south, too.
