Farming at Wildlife Refuges Opposed
12/8/97
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Headline: Farming at Wildlife Refuges Opposed
Source: The Associated Press
Date: 12/8/97
Author: Scott Sonner
Copyright 1997: The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - Conservation groups are suing under a wildlife refuge law
President Clinton signed just seven weeks ago to try to restrict farming on
two refuges for bald eagles and waterfowl in the Pacific Northwest.
The National Audubon Society, Sierra Club and others said they would ask a
federal court in Sacramento, Calif., on Tuesday to clamp down on irrigation
farming, planting of row crops and use of pesticides at the refuges along the
Oregon-California border.
The Lower Klamath and Tule Lake refuges south of Klamath Falls, Ore., contain
the last remnants of hundreds of thousands of acres of wetlands there before
white settlers arrived in the 1800s, the environmentalists say.
A key stopping point for millions of migratory birds in the Pacific Flyway
from Mexico to Canada, the Lower Klamath Wildlife Reservation was set aside by
President Theodore Roosevelt in 1908 as one of the nation's first refuges for
waterfowl.
``The Klamath system is the Everglades of the Pacific Flyway. Eighty percent
of the birds in the flyway stop there,'' said Dan Beard, National Audubon
Society's senior vice president.
``We're not interested in getting rid of agriculture entirely. But wildlife
conservation has to be the top priority for our national wildlife refuges,''
he said Monday in a telephone interview from San Francisco.
The lawsuit accuses the Interior Department and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
of violating a part of the new law requiring the interior secretary to provide
an adequate supply of clean water at refuges.
It says extensive commercial agriculture and pesticide use have resulted in
significant declines of bald eagle and waterfowl populations, especially at
Tule Lake in California.
About one-fourth of the 91,000 acres that make up the two refuges is dedicated
to farm land - about 18,000 acres of grains such as wheat, oats, barley and
alfalfa, and about 5,000 acres of row crops, including potatoes, sugar beets
and onions. Farmers are allowed to work the land under decades-old lease
arrangements.
The farming is ``inconsistent and incompatible with the primary wildlife
conservation purposes of the refuges,'' the lawsuit says.
The environmentalists are asking the court to force Interior Secretary Bruce
Babbitt to modify or eliminate the farm leases. Interior Department officials
referred calls to its Fish and Wildlife Service.
``Every time the population expands, it takes wildlife habitat and turns it
into farm areas or shopping malls. Wildlife always loses,'' said Thomas
Stewart, the Fish and Wildlife Service's refuge manager for the two sites. He
fears the lawsuit will undermine efforts to work cooperatively with farmers to
protect wildlife.
``What we are trying to do at Tule Lake and Lower Klamath is show they do not
have to be at odds with each other. It is possible for wildlife and
agriculture to coexist,'' he said.