June 22, 2001

Why Endangered Fish Lose to Farmers

o the Editor:

Re "Cries of 'Save the Suckerfish' Rile Farmers' Political Allies" (front page, June 20):

Dedication to saving pristine Western environments must be tempered by the reality that we have all been homesteaders.

Agricultural land adjacent to Tulelake, Calif., and Klamath Falls, Ore., never belonged to river fish. This land was reclaimed from seasonal swamp lakes nearly a century ago. Abundant snow runoff in the Klamath Basin has for generations allowed limited irrigation of farmlands to coexist with waters and fish.

We are all farmers, or descendants of them.

The farmers of Klamath Falls are right. The reclaimed lakelands and their water rights belong through sweat and sacrifice to generations of farmers.

True environmentalists seek to preserve existing wilderness, but must also preserve our human heritage planted in wet earth through the sweat and toil of our fathers.

EDWARD KERWIN
Klamath Falls, Ore., June 20, 2001