For those who lauded the recent historic signing of agreements that would by 2020 bring down four hydroelectric dams blocking salmon and steelhead migration and depleting thousands of acres of wetlands on the Klamath River in Oregon and California, it is worth noting that in early 1926 – ninety years ago, to be exact –children’s author and naturalist Thornton Burgess called on his Radio Nature League listeners to protest drainage of the Lower Klamath and the environmental devastation it caused.
A Cape Cod native who settled in western Massachusetts, Thornton Burgess
is best known as the prolific 20h century author of 70 children’s books and
15,000 newspaper columns. In fact, the writer was a deeply committed
conservationist who used his animal stories and a pioneering radio program to
advocate for game limits, fair hunting practices, steel leg trap restrictions, anti-littering,
and wetlands protection, among other issues.
Established in 1925, Burgess’ Radio Nature League on WBZ in Springfield,
Massachusetts was instantly successful, gaining nearly 5,000 members within
three weeks. Membership required pledging to “do everything possible to
preserve and conserve all desirable American Wildlife, including birds,
animals, flowers, trees, and other living things; also the natural beauty spots
and scenic wonders of all America.”
As a radio host he involved the public in collecting ruffed grouse
specimens for parasitic studies, and solicited ornithological data on snowy
owls, mocking birds, and other species for scientific research and
environmental education.
One of the earliest members of the Radio Nature League was Burgess’
friend William Lovell Finley. A respected
nature photographer, biologist, and Oregon’s game commissioner, Finley had
written Burgess: “The Radio Nature
League is the child of a big idea. It will encourage greater love and interest
in the out-of-doors. Please enroll our family of four.”
The two men may have met when Burgess attended Finley’s talks
in Boston for the Massachusetts Audubon Society, but perhaps Finley’s children
had introduced their father to the writer’s popular animal stories. They had much
in common for both were professional lecturers, photographers, and contributors
to the prestigious Nature magazine. In
fact, Burgess and Finley were making plans to collaborate on a children’s book
that would utilize Finley’s superb inventory of nature photographs and a Burgess
story about a young visitor to the West and the theft of a condor egg. Apparently
their literary project did not materialize.
However, on January 27, 1926, Burgess invited William Finley
to speak on his half-hour Radio Nature League program about the environmental
impact of the federal government’s drainage of Lower Klamath Lake. In order to
provide water for agricultural needs, magnificent sprawling wetlands were
drained, destroying an essential habitat for resident and migratory birds on the
Pacific Flyway and other wildlife. According to the Oregon Historical Society (www.ohs.org, “Birds of a Feather”), by
1915 the waterbody was reduced from 80,000 acres to 53,600, and by
1922 all that remained of the lake was a 365-acre pond.
After Finley’s talk, Burgess told the audience he was
sending a petition to protest Klamath Lake conditions to Hubert Work, Secretary
of the Interior, and promised to forward any letters or signatures he received.
The immediate and overwhelming response shocked him.
“A week ago Finley
was here and I had him tell his Klamath Lake story on the air,” he wrote to his
good friend ornithologist Dr. Alfred Gross at Bowdoin College in Brunswick,
Maine. “I followed it by the statement that I was going to send a petition to
the Secretary of the Interior, asking him to turn the water back into Klamath
Lake. I invited those who were listening in, who felt this was the thing to do,
to send in their names to be added to that petition. They have poured in so
fast I have not had a chance to count them. I know that already I have between
two and three thousands, if not more.” (Nature’s
Ambassador: The Legacy of Thornton W. Burgess, p.177)
For months after Finley’s Radio Nature League talk on the Klamath,
Burgess continued to receive and forward signatures to the Secretary of the
Interior. He noted to Austin Clark, a curator at the Smithsonian Institution,
that one petition alone contained more than 1,000 names.
The regulatory history of the Klamath River is controversial
and evolutionary. State, federal and tribal agencies continue to wrestle with
complex rights and conflicting needs for the Klamath’s water. In 2016,
Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell authorized removal of hydroelectric
dams on the Klamath River as a first step in the largest river restoration
project in American history.
How interesting to realize that a children’s writer used mass
media in the early 20th century to promote environmental protection for
this great western waterway and the fish and wildlife that depend on it!
Furthermore, it is intriguing to speculate that public
opinion intentionally generated in 1926 by Thornton Burgess may have provided some
degree of momentum for President Calvin Coolidge’s 1928 decision to restore a
portion of Klamath Lake and establish the Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge.
