Our metal powerboat is puttering near a bend low in the Klamath River. Morning fog pours off the hills against a flat gray sky, but we can see a fight up around a bird’s nest.

“The eagles are perched up here in the tree,” says Mike Belchik, a fisheries biologist for the Yurok tribe, whose lands extend 44 miles from the Pacific Coast inland. “The osprey is dive-bombing them.”

Belchik claps loudly to break up the birds. “They both live around here and they fight all the time,” he laughs.

People along the Klamath once fought bitterly over this river, too. But that’s beginning to change.
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