UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES -- matthews outdoor column-ONS -- 05nov09
Trout stocking lawsuit also threatening entire aquaculture industry
By JIM MATTHEWS
www.OutdoorNewsService.com
The lawsuit that forced the Department of Fish and Game to address the environmental impacts of its entire trout and salmon hatchery and stocking program might have some serious, unintended consequences.
It could result in a crippling of the state's private aquaculture industry.
For sportfishermen, that could mean that private stocking programs for trout and catfish could be severely reduced or come to a screeching halt. But the trickle down affect could mean that people who have backyard koi ponds might have to get permits and provide quarterly documentation their ponds are disease- and invasive species-free.
The draft environmental document being circulated by the Department of Fish and Game for public comment before going back to the court and the litigants for approval has language that has terrified private growers of trout, catfish and other fishes throughout the state. Why? Because it would result in a whole new set of regulations, permits, and testing that affect their businesses.
Tony Vaught, of Professional Aquaculture Services in Chico, has been talking with private hatchery owners throughout the state, and he says the DFG's preferred alternative in the environmental document would have two particularly onerous points:
1) It would require anyone stocking any water in the state, including a private, backyard pond, to obtain a stocking permit from the DFG. To get the permit, you would have to provide annual documentation (by hiring a professional) that no sensitive species are present. 2) A water could also only be stocked with fish obtained from a certified disease-free source. In addition, that facility has to be invasive species-free and checked quarterly for invasive species.
Vaught, and other growers, point out that many private facilities currently providing fish for city, county, state, and private waters for recreational fishing programs could not meet the disease- and invasive-free criteria. Many of the Department of Fish and Game's own hatcheries don't meet these criteria.
"What happens if they find something, something that kills a pollywog or something. Do they shut the whole [fish] farm down?" said Doug Elliott, who owns Corona Lake and the fishing concession at Santa Ana River Lakes.
He is concerned that it will make it more expensive and harder, if not impossible, to get trout and catfish for his and hundreds of other recreational fishing programs across the state.
Elliott said that trout and catfish growers have been disappearing from California because of increasing costs and more regulations for the past decade. His costs for fish have far outpaced the rate of inflation, and he is concerned that it will simply become impossible to get fish.
Anglers across the state should have the same concerns. Private hatcheries have picked up the slack as DFG plants and planting locations dwindle. No one dreamed the private hatchery would be threatened by this lawsuit, too. But the DFG is making sure this whole thing spirals out of control.
The amount of environmental damage caused by the DFG's hatchery program (and the private hatchery program) is almost negligible. If you were to say all of the state's aquatic environmental damage was a glass of water, the problems caused by hatcheries would be a fraction of a drop.
The DFG's environmental document doesn't even attempt to address the real issues that have been the major contributing factors to the spread of aquatic diseases and invasive species: water transfers. Quagga mussels are now throughout the Colorado River system and virtually every water in Southern California that gets water from the Colorado River. Imagine that. It also fails to look at the biggest impacts on native species: dams. Dams have changed the whole character of rivers below those dams or blocked migration to spawning areas. The San Joaquin River has been dry in places for decades. It's kind of hard to have native steelhead and salmon runs in a dry river bed. Yes, the DFG's environmental document was specifically about hatcheries, but it should have placed the known damage from hatcheries in the framework of overall damage to the resource. That's called perspective. The DFG document doesn't give this perspective.
Fixing the state's hatchery problems is like treating a paper cut on someone who's having a massive heart attack. In today's world, the benefits of the DFG and private hatchery programs far outweigh the minuscule problems they cause, and the few egregious exceptions are easy fixes.
This should have been recognized when the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) was passed decades ago, and the DFG should have written a categorical exemption for the hatchery program. Then there could never have been a lawsuit contesting the whole hatchery program, just site-specific lawsuits that address those few serious problems. The DFG hasn't had anyone with foresight in decades. It's a wildfire response agency: Put water on flames and set backfires. Heaven forbid we'd actually try to manage the forest to prevent massive fires.
Now, there's no predicting all the casualties from the hatchery environmental document. You can thank the DFG for that.
Trout stocking lawsuit also threatening entire aquaculture industry. Jim Matthews
