OUTDOOR PACKAGE -- matthews-gurrola -- 13sep06
Musing on the DFG's actions relating to northern pike, bighorn sheep, and catfish
By JIM MATTHEWS
Outdoor New Service
After nearly 10 years and well over $1 million pounded down a rat hole, the Department of Fish and Game released an environmental document on its latest plan to eradicate northern pike from Davis Lake in northern California. The DFG tried to eradicate pike in Davis Lake back in 1997 by poisoning the fish, but failed. The agency then spent three years killing pike by various means documenting their effectiveness in the effort. Now, they're back with another plan that looks a lot like the first one that failed back in 1997.
Incredibly, nowhere in the environmental impact statement summary does it say how much the DFG has spent on trying to kill off the pike, studying the pike, holding meetings about pike, writing press releases about pike, and then doing all of those things again and again and again. The best number I could find was something over $1 million and it's probably closer to three times that amount by now.
What do we have after all that expenditure? A thick document and no guarantee that we're really much closer to ridding Davis Lake of the non-native northern pike. And incredibly, the DFG has nothing but assumptions that pike have really negatively affected the Davis Lake trout fishery, and it only has wild assumptions that pike could make their way out of Davis Lake and into the delta and ravage salmon and steelhead populations.
Besides, this is the same agency that put striped bass and American shad into the Sacramento-San Joaquin river system decades ago, and if stripers aren't going to wipe out the salmon and steelhead, it's really unlikely that pike will do the job. But it goes well beyond this. If decades of arguably illegal water mismanagement and diversions, inflated populations of native squawfish, and hundreds of other problems the DFG can't or won't tackle for political reasons haven't completely destroyed the delta, I can't buy that pike are going to be the final straw and that spending all this money is worth it. Spend the money to sue a few developers who are illegally altering streams or draining wetlands. This is bad science trumping economics and common sense.
But the DFG is prone to doing stupid things, showing no consistency in its patterns.
Just this past week, three bighorn sheep rams from the Bighorn Institute in Palm Desert were released into the San Jacinto Mountains. These are peninsular bighorns, currently an endangered species, and these rams are almost certainly diseased sheep, coming from a compound that has been treating diseased sheep for years and holding them in an enclosure that can't be sterilized. Virtually all of the DFG's biologists, many of them world-renowned experts on bighorns, have wanted to end the Bighorn Institute's sheep releases because they are certain these animals are bringing disease into this population.
Unlike with northern pike, where damage to an already compromised environment is speculative at best with no regard to costs, DFG scientists know disease problems have been one of the biggest limiting factors on sheep populations for years. Yet the DFG top brass continues to allow diseased animals put back into the population, in spite of its own scientists objections and decades of work to recover the sheep. A major disease outbreak could set this program back years. This is stupid politics trumping good science.
As proof there's no DFG consistency, however, it is disease fears that prevent private, state, and county entities from purchasing channel catfish from out of state growers for recreational programs. In-state growers are commanding prices as high as $4 per pound for channel catfish, while growers in the South charge 85 cents to a dollar per pound for live fish. It doesn't matter to the DFG there's a shortage of channel cats for stocking programs here -- and even their own program has been hamstrung by the shortage and costs.
It's true those Southern catfish are as diseased as the sheep from the Bighorn Institute. The difference is simple: The catfish from the South would go into closed systems where they couldn't mix with wild fish, spreading the disease. But the DFG says it is being cautious and prudent about the catfish diseases so as to not affect our catfish populations and catfish growers. Huh? Why isn't that same logic used to protect endangered bighorn sheep?
This catfish issue is about a profound lack of common sense and bureaucrats who are too lazy to do something to help a recreational fishing program. The pike issue is about bureaucrats who see they will be able to work on pike at scenic Davis Lake until they retire. And the bighorn issue is about no one in the agency having enough spine to stand up and say, "This has to stop. Now."
Combined, this is the Department of Fish and Game.
