Klamath Tribes file lawsuit against Reclamation and USFWS
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“Most Americans assume that because the ESA requires federal agencies to refrain from actions that ‘jeopardize the continued existence’ of species on the Endangered Species List, that leaders of these agencies would do so.”
The following is a press release from the Klamath Tribes of Oregon.
CHILOQUIN, Ore. - The Klamath Tribes see no alternative but to sue the Federal Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to force those agencies to live up to their obligations under the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) and protect the C’waam (Lost River sucker) and Koptu (shortnose sucker) from extinction.
“Most Americans assume that because the ESA requires federal agencies to refrain from actions that ‘jeopardize the continued existence’ of species on the Endangered Species List, that leaders of these agencies would do so,” said Klamath Tribes Councilman and Chairman-elect Clayton Dumont. “But they have proven repeatedly that we cannot trust them to do the right thing, follow the law, and do even the minimum necessary to sustain our treaty-protected fish.”
For years the Klamath Tribes have watched the BOR in consultation with the USFWS issue a series of “no jeopardy” Biological Opinions (BiOps) purporting to manage Ews (Upper Klamath Lake) in a way consistent with the legal requirement to not “diminish…critical habitat for both the survival and recovery” of our endangered fish. And year after year they fail to meet the minimum seasonal lake elevations of their own BiOp, denying our aging C’waam and Koptu the opportunity to spawn and condemning those juveniles who do manage to hatch to a certain death without access to protective nursery habitat in shoreline wetlands.
Any reasonable person must conclude that these agencies have proven that regardless of legal mandates, our culture sustaining, ESA protected fish are not their priority. And if there were any observers left anywhere with any remaining doubt about BOR’s actual concerns, the Bureau’s most recent action has ended any and all speculation.
When their own long-standing formula (driving their own ecologically inadequate BiOp) showed that zero water could be safely taken from endangered fish for agriculture, BOR simply tossed it aside and made the cynical political calculation that they could ignore the ESA with impunity, allocate water to Project farmers, and hasten the imminent extinction of fish that have lived here, and only here, in the homeland of the Klamath Tribes for thousands of years.
Despite the many needs of our people, the Klamath Tribes have no choice but to expend our scarce financial resources attempting to force these powerful federal agencies to obey the law and do at least the minimum necessary to save the C’waam and Koptu from extinction.