Redwood Reader

Governor's Appointee Is Blocked
State Senate leader acts after interim member of fish and game panel votes to delay protection for coho salmon. But she may yet retain her post.By Kenneth R. Weiss, Times Staff Writer July 1, 2004
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-me-salmon1jul01,1,2336401.story?coll=la-news-science The battle over listing coho salmon took another turn yesterday as Governor Schwarzenagger’s choice for a post on the state Fish and Game Commission was blocked by Senate Majority leader Dan Burton after she voted to delay listing coho as an endangered species. Acting as an interim commissioner, Marilyn Hendrickson, co-owner of a fishing tackle outfit and vice president of a nonprofit group set up to work with state officials to enhance "angling opportunities in the state" and co-produces a "California Sportsmen" radio show, joined two other Davis appointees in voting to delay listing California coho to the state's list of threatened and endangered species. She was set to be confirmed Wednesday by the Senate Rules Committee, .when Dan Burton yanked her name from consideration. Burton said he was upset at her vote and would meet with her and straighten her out or he would find a new commissioner. Term limits mean Burton will leave the State Senate this year, while Hendrickson has until March to be approved. She said she is not worried in the least about it, and declined to give reasons for voting for the delay.
Last month Burton and Sher (Senate Environmental Quality Committee Chairman) sent all commissioners a letter urging they vote to list coho north of Punta Gorda threatened, and south of Punta Gorda as endangered. There are about 5,000 coho remaining from historical stocks of around 250,000. The letter said there was no scientific basis for delaying listing. Yet that is exactly what happened when commissioners met last week in Cvrescent City, ignoring recommendations by state Department of Fish and Game and National Marine Fisheries Service.
Commissioners Micheal Flores, James Kellogg and Hendrickson approved delaying the vote, continuing a pattern begun in 2000. Last week they postponed action on the commission's decision last February that directed state officials to begin the process of giving coho salmon protected status. Instead, they asked that state officials check whether federal officials might do more, given that the coho have some measure of protection under the federal Endangered Species Act. The delays are increasingly frustrating Burton and Sher. The two, together with the proponents of listing currently on the Board are convinced coho will disappear from California in the next ten years if protections are not put in place.
Opposing industries include timber, afraid of more restrictive forest practice rule; and cattle and alfalfa irrigators who resist withdrawal limits and oppose screens to protect juvenile fish. Farmers are afraid restrictions will take land out of agriculture and add expensive new rules, and possibly limit water use, according to Commissioner Flores, who said he was sympathetic, and that he hoped voluntary efforts would begin to make a difference. Nothing changes the fishes current status, illegal to catch commercially or by sportsmen since 1988.
Tom Weseloh, California Trout regional manager, said "The water in these streams is over-allocated so a lot of these streambeds go dry. Dry streams cannot grow fish." Commissioner Sam Schuchat and Commissioner Bob Hattoy lost last weeks vote. Schuchat said: “"I'm convinced that if we don't protect this species as endangered, it's going to go extinct in the next decade. It may already be too late."
Commentary: It is boggling to watch supposedly informed people deny old science repeatedly demonstrated to be true. If they can’t get over the old, how will they come to grips with the new? The timber industry has an opportunity now to think in terms of glomalin and sedimentation. Positive action by them in this area might really give coho a glimmer of hope for survival by improving habitat, or at least slowing its destruction. Glomalin gives a scientific basis and predictability for ground disturbance when it is ignored. Glomalin studies will eliminate clear cuts and should reduce road building but is the missing tool needed for sustainable land use practices.
Cattlemen and farmers need to start thinking about retaining precipitation on their own lands. Once the water is in a creek bed it is a public resource, and will always be subject of debate. We need farmers, and they need water, but not at the expense of entire industries, communities and species. Understanding glomalin allows farmers more flexibility in water management schemes and should reduce the need for withdrawals. It is a question of whether we are restoring a remenant of historical species or changing the landscape to one that can not support its current menagerie of biota- the beginning of a post-industrial ecology completely different from that which it sprang from.