Environmentalists have long depended on photos of
endangered landscapes to spur us into protecting wild places. The
photographers hope that if they show us the wonder of these places,
we will fight like mad to save them.
Tupper Ansel
Blake and Madeleine Graham Blake, the photographers of Balancing
Water: Restoring the Klamath Basin, want their photos to do the
same. The basin straddles the Oregon-California border just east of
the Cascade Mountains, and like many places in the West, it has
been the site of intense battles over water in recent years.
William Kittredge, well-known for his other books on southern
Oregon, joins the Blakes in their efforts. He studies the region’s
history with the same critical eye as he did in Owning it All and
Hole in the Sky, but with sympathy for the predicament in which
basin residents find themselves, too.
“Balancing
water,” as Kittredge calls it, has always been tricky business in
the Klamath Basin. Early last century, the Bureau of Reclamation
and local farmers busily carved the landscape into units for
irrigation, sometimes with disastrous results. Kittredge tells of
an ill-conceived plan in the 1920s that dried Lower Klamath Lake.
The Bureau hoped to create farms, but most of the lakebed’s soil
was unfit for agriculture. Soon after, dust storms and smoke from
burning peat on the dry lakebed darkened the skies over Klamath
Falls. Waterbirds that depended on the lake’s marshes disappeared
or perished from diseases that easily spread in the few remaining
waterholes.
While the federal government and
local people divided water among themselves, nature made it clear
that all these lands were interconnected. DDT sprayed on
surrounding farms and within wildlife refuges during the 1950s
found its way into basin marshes, causing the deaths of many
fish-eating birds. More recently, the lack of water and the poor
quality of the remaining water have played a part in threatening or
endangering Klamath Basin salmon, bull trout and the Lost River
sucker.
Kittredge believes basin residents can
solve these problems through consensus, though it will not be easy.
The Clover Leaf Watershed Council and the Upper Klamath Working
Group – just two of the examples he mentions – are hopeful signs
that local people, the Indian tribes, environmentalists and
government agencies can settle their differences outside the
courts.
Kittredge has spent his literary career
demolishing the cowboy myth and criticizing the imperial attitude
held by many who settled the West. Yet he still holds strong
affection for those who work the land and for rural people who are
pushed aside by those who hold greater power beyond the mountains
and deserts surrounding the Klamath Basin. Some of these residents
must give up water to restore it. Whether they will do so willingly
is unclear.
Kittredge tells a compelling story,
but the Blakes’ photos in Balancing Water will attract the most
attention. The photos of wildlife and landscapes are magnificent,
and unlike those in many books of this type, show people as often
as wildlife. Whatever is decided about the basin’s water, the
photos suggest these people will live with the consequences.
Bob Wilson is a former HCN
intern and a geography graduate student at the University of
Washington.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline A call to heed the wild.
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