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The
San Francisco Chronicle
November
20, 2009
by Jane
Kay
Most of California's native salmon, steelhead and trout
species face extinction by the end of the century unless
the state acts quickly to provide adequate freshwater and
habitat, according to a study released Wednesday by the state's
leading salmon expert.
Twenty of 31 species of the prized
fishes are in sharp decline, including the Sacramento River
winter run of chinook salmon, the Sierra's California golden
trout and coastal coho, according to the study by Peter Moyle,
a nationally known UC Davis professor of conservation biology.
The fish advocacy group, California
Trout, that commissioned the study will use the results to
try to help persuade legislators and the governor to direct
and help the California Department of Fish and Game to better
carry out its mission of conserving the state's wild fish.
Decades of lax controls on farming,
logging, grazing, mining and road-building have filled and
polluted streams, the study said, while the removal of streamside
vegetation on the North Coast, in Sierra creeks and on inland
lagoons has warmed the water and harmed fish.
For the past 50 years, ocean salmon
that spawn in rivers from the Klamath south to the Sacramento
have been blocked by dams and other barriers and deprived
of water diverted to farms and cities by state and federal
water projects.
In some recent years, salmon returning
to the ocean to feed and grow have found a poor food supply
of krill, squid and smaller fish caused by higher water temperatures
that could be related to global warming.
"Our fish need cold, clean water to survive, but they're
getting less and less of it," Moyle said. "Dams
block access. Climate change is now looming to exacerbate
the threat, and it increases the urgency. All of these things
are pushing our fish toward extinction.
"If we allow these fish to go extinct, we've allowed
the deterioration of the streams and rivers," Moyle
said, adding that the same waterways supply clean drinking
water to humans.
One species, the bull trout, already
has disappeared. The fish was last seen in the McCloud River
in the 1970s, and scientists link its disappearance to the
Shasta and McCloud dams.
In the 316-page study, Moyle calculated
the survival chances into the next decades of 12 kinds of
salmon, 11 kinds of trout, eight kinds of steelhead and one
species of white fish.
He based the assessment on size of
the habit and population, dependence of the fish on human
intervention to save it, tolerance to environmental stressors,
vulnerability to genetic disruption and likelihood of doing
worse under global warming.
Fish and Game Director Donald Koch,
in a statement released Wednesday, said the agency looks
forward to reading the report.
"We thank California Trout for their dedication to California's
native fish species," he said. "We appreciate their
support and look forward to engaging them and other stakeholders
in finding solutions to further our efforts to conserve the
state's valuable fish and wildlife resources."
Sport and commercial fishing and environmental
groups have complained that the agency is mismanaged and
underfunded, resulting in a shortage of wardens and other
staff members charged with preventing poaching, checking
stream quality, running restoration projects and monitoring
logging and development plans.
Brian Stranko, CEO of the 7,500-member
California Trout, praised recent progress in aiding the state's
fish. There were two preliminary agreements last week to
remove four dams on the Klamath River and a court settlement
involving restoration of the San Joaquin River, which aims
in part to bring back the spring run on the river that was
wiped out by the construction of Friant Dam in the 1940s.
Restoration measures work, Stranko
said. Volunteers working with state and federal agencies,
conservation groups and private parties have begun to bring
back the California golden trout in the southern Sierra and
the Goose Lake redband trout near the Oregon border.
But the most important changes must
come from Fish and Game, an agency legally mandated to manage
and conserve fish and wildlife, Stranko said.
Assemblyman Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, the new chairman
of the Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee, said the state's
fiscal crisis will prevent expansion of Fish and Game's resources,
which have been depleted by cuts.
But Huffman, who plans hearings on the salmon problem early
next year, said the state can find other sources of revenue
and can consider other ways to reconfigure the agency "so
it can fulfill its missions." In some states, the wildlife
agency is combined with the parks agency, he said.
"The department is understaffed and underfunded. The
answer is more than money," Huffman said. "We need
a department that is fundamentally more committed to its
resource-protection mission. That means it can't be subservient
to political interests.
"The fishery watchdog agency hasn't had a good track
record," he added, referring to court orders to protect
smelt that have stopped water deliveries from the delta of
the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers. In 2007-2008, the
Sacramento's fall run of chinook was the second lowest on
record in recent times.
"This is no longer a hook-and-bullet agency," Huffman
said. "It has a serious resource mandate as well."
State Sen. Patricia Wiggins, D-Santa
Rosa, chairwoman of the Joint Committee on Fisheries and
Aquaculture, said she would have hearings on Moyle's findings.
"It wasn't too long ago that salmon flourished throughout
Northern and Central California. In just one generation,
we have lost significant salmon and steelhead runs in the
Russian, the Eel and the Klamath rivers as well as rivers
in the Central Valley," she said in a statement.
Wiggins' bill, SB562, was signed into
law last year, providing $5.3 million in funding that will
be used to gain federal money for salmon monitoring and restoration.
She intends to bring a package of bills to the Legislature
in January.
Unless immediate changes are made to
protect the environment, she said, "wild salmon as we know it will disappear
from our dinner plates."
Fish in peril
-- Read the 316-page study at links.sfgate.com/ZFKN.
-- For a summary, go to links.sfgate.com/ZFKO.
"Dams block access. Climate change is now looming to
exacerbate the threat, and it increases the urgency."
Peter Moyle, UC Davis professor of
conservation biology
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