Hey all:

Fumio and I went to DFG Commision meeting today in Ontario,Ca.

We were able to speak our given 3 minutes. I explained who and what we stand for and explained to DFG that we completely support them, that we are their ally in this fight against these forms of frivilous litigations. I expressed our understanding of their plight and emphasized that we understand that they are severly under funded. I expressed to them our desire to work proactively with them to ensure that our future resources can be well balanced.

On the Agenda for this meeting under Item 5(F) which was other items, Dr. Manji spoke to the commision regarding fish planting. He stated that they are working very hard to implement the intent of the approved EIR. He said DFG is currently facing litigation from 3 partys including CBD, regarding the EIR. The other partys are Owens Valley Audobahn Society and Californian against Toxins. Dr. Manji expressed the fact that DFG is severly understaffed and lacks funding to implement the full allotments of trout required by AB7 and said that they currently could produce about %70 of the fish required. He also stated that this will change in the near future due to the fact that they have started the process of growing triploids and native trouts to fullfill mitigation needs required by the EIR.

DFG commision asked Dr. Manji to prepare a presentation on the status and progress of the stocking program to be presented at a near future meeting. DFG Commision also asked for a Dollar figure that would be needed to fullfill the requirements of AB7.

Of interest is that two commisioner, Daniel Richards, and President Jim Kellog had in a previous agenda item admonished CBD for their litigation practices and the fact that they use friendly Judges to overturn Commision rulings.

Commisioner Daniels asked Dr. Manji to provide the public with a dollar figure that CBD has cost DFG with these litigaions. Dr. manji defered this to DFG Director John Mccamman who couldnt give an amount other than it costs DFG about $240,000 per lawsuit.

Fumio and I were able to meet with Dr. Manji after he spoke for over half an hour.

He graciously answered all our questions in full and insightful detail. He said that the lakes up north shouldn't provide much of a problem and that the public will have to hold tight for a little while but expects very little impacts upon stockings except at high elevation lakes.

He said DFG has given this issue the highest priority since it spent 2.5 million on an EIR, and it fully intends to implement it.

He said as of now, barring further litigation, DFG is going to use the first reservoir of which outflows reach andromonous habitat to plant triploids. Areas above will continue with normal stocking barring any further species, i.e frogs,birds,etc.

He said that Socal is being given the highest priority because of the need to plant triploids in the reservoirs, Cachuma, Casitas, Piru, and lower Castaic. Castaic upper will continue unmitigated since they consider the lower lake to be the access to Andromonous habitat.

Problematic reservoirs, such as Casitas, Castaic (afterbay), Piru and Cachuma (and lakes in similar situations up north and down south) would need to be stocked with either sterile triploids or native strain trout. These options have the following drawbacks: 1) triploids and native strains have higher mortality rates (up to 50%) than trout they have been stocking, 2) triploids do not grow much faster initially as the trout that they have been planting, and native strains grow much slower, 3) native strains are very skittish (they jump out of their pens when workers approach, increasing mortality), 4) native strains will require genetic studies and determination of appropriate genotype (genetic makeup) will take time and be difficult, 5) raising triploids and native strains will require more money, time, and personnel, 6) due to higher costs and mortality, if and when stockings are resumed, the amount of trout stocked per stocking would be less, 7) all this will take quite some time to get stockings of triploids and/or native strains going (no real time table given).

They are currently purchasing eggs and equipment to get up to speed with the raising of these fish. He said the hatcheries will be upgraded to be able to sustain the needs required per AB 7.

This all of course will take time. Right now they are using AB7 monies to provide the hatcheries with the equipment and resources necessary to grow and maintain the triploid fish. Any monies left over will be spent on the purchase of outside fish to fullfill trout allotments.

They are looking at places that have the highest angler impact and they will be the first to recieve the triploid fish when ready. He said they currently have about 40,000 triploid fish in DFG hatcheries.

In a nut shell, most of the waterways will likely resume stockings (some already have). The CBD claims ~90% of waterways in Ca will not be restricted. However, the remaining 10% could include heavily used lakes and reservoirs. Some of these lake may never resume stockings, but will most likely be the high sierra lakes.

While we were there, DFG was forced to place the California Tiger Salamder on the threatened list. This had previously been denied but was litigated against by CBD. We sat directly behind CBD biologist who spoke on behalf of placing the CTS on the endangered list. This is when commision admonished CBD and it's friendly judges.

We left the meeting after lunch and speaking with Dr. Manji. At that time the meeting was at agenda item 6 on a list of over 23! Many people were there to give comment regarding the MLPA process.

All in all I left the meeting with good feeling that DFG is working diligently to return our fish stocking. There might be more that I remember in the near future. I am sure Fumio can provide you all with greater insight. He did an outstanding job with his speaking presentation.


Here is a link to the meeting video:
www.cal-span.org/cgi-bin/media.pl?folder=CFG

At 14:18 Fumio and I speak
At 39:26 CBD Biologist and others speak about the Tiger Salamander.
Follow this through to see the commisions reactions about
the litigations from CBD
At 1:52:30 Dr. Neil Manji speaks on behalf of the stocking program in
response to our concerns.