Balancing Water: Restoring the Klamath Basin

The Klamath Basin is a land of teeming wildlife, expansive marshes, blue-ribbon trout streams, tremendous stretches of forests, and large ranches in southern Oregon and northern California. Known to waterfowl, songbirds, and shorebirds, the Klamath Basin's marshlands are a mecca for birds along the Pacific Flyway. This gorgeously illustrated book is a paean to the beauty of the Klamath Basin and at the same time a sophisticated environmental case study of an endangered region whose story parallels that of watershed development throughout the west.

A collaboration between two photographers and a writer, Balancing Water tells the story in words and pictures of the complex relationship between the human and natural history of this region. Spectacular images by Tupper Ansel Blake depict resident species of the area, migratory birds, and dramatic landscapes. Madeleine Graham Blake has contributed portraits of local residents, while archival photographs document the history of the area.

William Kittredge's essay on the conjunction of conflicting interests in this wildlands paradise is by turns lyrically personal and brimming with historical and scientific facts. He traces the water flowing through the Klamath Basin, the human history of the watershed, and the land-use conflicts that all touch on the availability of water. Ranchers, loggers, town settlers, Native Americans, tourists, and environmentalists are all represented in the narrative, and their diverse perspectives form a complicated web like that of the interactions among organisms in the ecosystem.

Kittredge finds hope in the endangered Klamath Basin, both in successful restoration projects recently begun there, and in the community involvement he sees as necessary for watershed restoration and biodiversity preservation. Emphasizing that we must take care of both human economies and the natural environment, he shows how the two are ultimately interconnected. The Klamath Basin can be a model for watershed restoration elsewhere in the west, as we search for creative ways of solving our intertwined ecological and social problems.

Tupper Ansel Blake is a photographer whose books include Tracks in the Sky: Wildlife and Wetlands of the Pacific Flyway (1987), Two Eagles/Dos Aguilas: The Natural World of the United States-Mexico Borderlands (with Peter Steinhart, California, 1994), and Wild California: Vanishing Lands, Vanishing Wildlife (with Peter Steinhart, California, 1985). Madeleine Graham Blake is an exhibiting photographer whose work has appeared at the Pasadena Art Museum, Friends of Photography, and the Monterey Art Museum, as well as other galleries and museums. William Kittredge is a former rancher and creative writing professor at the University of Montana, as well as author of Hole in the Sky: A Memoir (1992), and Who Owns the West (1996). His essays have been published in many collections, including Waste Land: Meditations on a Ravaged Landscape (1997). He grew up in the Klamath Basin.