Suckerfish

February 12, 2002

Justice is served. Turn the water on! Throughout last year's crop season, family farmers operating 400,000 acres in Southern Oregon and Northern California saw their crops shrivel and die for lack of water. Farmers, villages and towns fell into depression. Hiding behind the endangered species act the Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries shut the irrigation water off to reserve the water for the suckerfish in the Upper Klamath Lake. President Bush in Portland last month promised the farmer he would do whatever he could to help them.

Last spring unwilling to accept a federal judge's ruling that sided with the suckerfish, Secretary Gail Norton asked the National Academy of Science to study to see if there really was justification for saving all that water for the fish. The conclusion of NAS: there was no justification for their action to protect endangered fish by withholding water from farmers. In fact, the study noted that the best year for sucker survival was a low water year.

Armed with the National Academy study done by a dozen scientists, it seems clear that now Secretary Norton can tell her newly appointed Director ofFish and Wildlife to turn the water on and farmers will have irrigation water this crop year. That won't make up for the suffering they faced last year, but there is hope now as they look to the future. It is also encouraging to see the fanatics that would give priority to suckerfish over farmers' debt a stinging defeat.