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Little hope in delisting endangered sucker

Herald and News Letter to the Editor July 22, 2011 by Warren W. Haught, Klamath Falls

The Klamath Basin has been held hostage by the Endangered Species Act for more than 20 years. The timber industry will never recover, and farmers and ranchers are in dire straights.

As you may remember, last February, National Marine Fisheries Services demanded huge additional flows down river to flush parasites off the coho salmon and back out into the sea.

As hard-strapped taxpayers, we will never know the weird science behind that rationale, but it ranks right in there with increasing flows down the Rio Grande river to wash disease and pestilence off the millions of illegals who come across that well-known creek.

When the U.S. government is not manipulating the ESA to exert more control, they have proposed listings like the chinook salmon to pick up the slack. We can only hope that Congress, with control of the purse strings, will drastically reduce funding for the ESA.

With our great country and the rest of the world in deep financial trouble, you would think that ESA listings, most of which are a drag on the economy, would be high on the list for cost cutting. Our local 11.8 percent unemployment rate is in large part due to the ESA.

The sucker fish is currently under five-year review, but like the spotted owl, I see little hope for delisting. All local irrigation entities and public officials are of like mind to modify the ESA, so lets keep the pressure on.

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Readers comment:

48night posted at 11:03 pm on Thu, Jul 21, 2011.

Warren is 100% correct when he states that "all local irrigation entities and public officials are of like mind to modify the ESA ,so let's keep the pressure on". You may not know this, but the local Republican Central Committee has taken on the challenge of reforming the EAS. The support locally is growing as one would expect. The rather troubling and disturbing aspect is that the majority of the Project Irrigation District Board of Directors have apparently refused to sign onto this effort. The only supposed reason was that these irrigation district boards endorsed the KBRA and dam removal. In these so called agreements, signers are required to endorse all aspects of the agreements. One of the aspects is the acknowledgement that the ESA trumps the KBRA and dam removal agreements. It seems the boards are not willing to rock the boat, so to speak. Someone needs to put them back on track to go after the ESA with the rest of the community. Talk about "divide and conquor."