As stakeholders in the Klamath Basin react today to a long-awaited scientific report on the region's threatened and endangered fish, an environmental law expert at UC Davis says science alone cannot determine how limited water resources should be allocated among competing demands.

Law professor Holly Doremus writes in the current issue of the journal Ecology Law Quarterly that, beyond the scientific analyses, the Klamath conflict represents a clash of cultures requiring value choices.

"Society must choose between farming and fish, or find a way to accommodate both," write Doremus and her co-author, professor Dan Tarlock of the Chicago-Kent College of Law.

Calling the Endangered Species Act a "weak catalyst" toward sustainability, Doremus says the Klamath experience confirms the act's limited ability to change long-established water allocation patterns.

While the legal tools to address the Klamath Basin's water woes exist, the authors say, they are fragmented and scattered under the authority of a variety of federal and state agencies.

Doremus calls for a more comprehensive approach in the Klamath Basin, combining large-scale ecosystem management efforts with local activities. The new scientific report's authors, who include two UC Davis fish and water scientists, made similar recommendations.

The law professor concludes it is urgent that the lessons of the Klamath Basin be learned and applied elsewhere. "Other small basins in the West, particularly those with little storage capacity, may be poised for very similar water crises."