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Summary: 298
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Conflicts based on the perceived needs of ecosystems
versus humans for fresh water are increasingly seen in
the news. In the US, a fiery debate has erupted in the
Klamath basin of Oregon and California, where farmers
have protested the loss of irrigation water to protect
endangered fish, and where over 30 000 chinook salmon
and other fish recently died, perhaps due to insufficient
water quantity and/or quality (Levy 2003; Figure 1). The
states of Georgia, Alabama, and Florida have been
engaged for over a decade in contentious negotiations
over water allocation in the Apalachicola-Chatta-
hoochee-Flint River basin, with demands coming from
the growth of metropolitan Atlanta, agricultural irriga-
tion, and the Apalachicola Bay oyster fishery (Richter et
al. 2003b).
In New Zealand, a debate rages over how to allocate
enough water to maintain the ecological needs of the
Rangitata River while addressing the water demands of the
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