A land of mountains, forests, wetlands, lakes, and rivers, the Klamath
Basin spans the Oregon-California state line. Farms and ranches, logging
towns, and back-to-the-land communities are scattered over this
10-million-acre bioregion. There are Indian reservations at the
headwaters, at the estuary, and across the major tributary of the
Klamath River. In this place that has witnessed, ever since the Gold
Rush, a succession of wars and resource conflicts, myths of the West
loom large, amplifying differences among its inhabitants.
At the core of the contemporary controversy is overallocation of the
waters of the Klamath Basin. This dispute has pitted farmers and
ranchers against those whose cultures and livelihoods depend upon
fishing and others who would forestall the extinction of wild salmon.
Yet it has also revealed the unity of the Klamath Basin, the
interdependence of economic recovery with ecological restoration, and
the urgency for all the communities within the Basin to find common
ground.