7368

• UCREFRP Catalog Number: 7368
• Author: Meyer, C. H.
• Title: Western Water and Wildlife
• USFW Year: 1989.
• USFW - Doc Type: The New Frontier\
• Copyright Material: NO

-1-
INTRODUCTION
Out West, vast farms, great cities, posh resorts, and many a private fortune have
been built on water--and the ability to control it. These occurrences, in s land where
sagebrush and cactus once reigned, have required the development of complex water
delivery systems and an equally complex system of water laws.
For over a century, water allocation has been controlled by a small group of
lawyers, engineers, and bureaucrats who have divvied up among their clients the West's
most precious resource. In western parlance they are known as "water buffaloes".
They form a club of powerful men (and very few women) who for years have
wielded enormous power over what will flourish and what will fail.' They do battle
and cut deals with each other in a constant cycle of conflict and compromise. And they
have tended, as have the high priests of so many orders, to develop an attachment to
the system they manipulate which transcends the purposes for which it originally was
developed. Like an old general grown more fond of the military itself than of its
ultimate goals of peace, freedom, and prosperity, it is difFicult sometimes for the water
buffaloes to comprehend the calls for change which Dome from conservationists and other
"newcomers". Likewise, without an understanding of the central role water law has
played in a century of western development, it is not easy for conservationists to fathom
the seemingly irrational aff'ecfaon the old guard has for an antiquated resource allocation
system so patently ill-adapted to the broader needs of people, wildlife, and the
environment they share.
The water allocation system run by the water buffaloes provided security to
farmers and their labyrinthine network of ditches, canals, and reservoirs. The system
facilitated the development of great cities which sent canals across deserts, and tunnels
beneath mountains in search of water for bluegrass lawns, swimming pools, and car
washes. And the system accommodated the generosity of the federal government, which
poured billions into a western "reclamation" program of mammoth proportion. But in
doing all this, the system's operators more or less ignored the needs of the desert
environment from which that water is extracted.
While declaring as its central premise that water should go to whomever put it
to use first ("First in time is first in right"), western water law overlooked the fact that
the cutthroat trout, the sandhill crane, and the pronghorn antelope arrived on the scene
well before the miner, the rancher, and the homebuilder. The traditional rules of water
law served as a Catch-22 for wildlife: aright to water would be recognized only when
water was diverted from a stream. Because fish and wildlife do not build dame, water
they needed was accorded no legal protection whatsoever. Also ignored were fishermen,
canoeists, backpackers, and birdwatchers--anyone whose enjoyment of the environment
rested on water left in the stream.
Today pressure is growing for fundamental change in the existing water system,
change that will recognize for the first time that water is needed for fish as well as
farms, birds as well as bulldozers. The ability of western water law to adapt to new
demands in order to safeguard environmental values will determine in large part the
success or failure of efforts to conserve wildlife habitat across the West. From the
Stillwater Basin in Nevada, to the Beaver Dam Mountain Wilderness Area on the
Arizona-Utah border, to the Platte River in Nebraska, the single most critical component
in wildlife protection efforts is water.
'The extent of that power is illustrated in the story of Owens Valley, a once prospering agricultural
nunity completely dried up to meet the burgeoning needs of the city of Los Angeles. See W. Kahrl,
~r and Power: The Conflict Over Los Angeles Water Sunuly in the Owens Valley (1982); R. Nadeau,