Why is there some controversy over the Klamath Restoration Agreement?
The most vocal opponents of the KRA have been environmentalists such as Oregon Wild who do not like that the KRA allows ongoing farming of the Klamath Wildlife Refuges and who feel that the KRA’s flow regime gives unfair advantage to irrigators, a contention echoed by the Hoopa Valley Tribe. A scientific response addressing concerns the settlement underallocates water for fish was released this spring. Some stakeholders point out that Oregon Wild is itself at fault for unstrategically introducing the issue of farming on the wildlife refuges into an arena where compromise in that regard was unlikely. Despite the fact that other groups may have been sympathetic to the idea of reducing agricultural impacts on wildlife refuges, they may have felt that the restoration agreement negotiations were an inappropriate place to attain this goal. When stakeholders dissolved the negotiations midway through, they were re-initiated without Oregon Wild so as to continue with negotiations minus the loom
