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Appetite for extinction: Critics say bill to eliminate striped bass regulations is red herring

Posted by: Maven on March 19, 2010 at 6:46 am

From the Sacramento News & Review, this news/commentary by Alistair Bland:

“Sometimes, you’ve got to be cruel to be kind. Take Bakersfield Republican Assemblywoman Jean Fuller. She believes chinook salmon in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta are threatened with extinction mainly because striped bass are eating them. So she’s introduced legislation that would eliminate all regulations, protection and habitat improvement for striped bass, in order to knock the nonnative species into regional extinction and save the salmon.

But critics of Fuller’s legislation, including biologists and fishing groups, note that “stripers” and chinook salmon have thrived side by side for much of the 20th century. They claim the enormous pumps in the Delta that deliver water to farmers in the San Joaquin Valley are the primary cause of the salmon’s decline, and say Assembly Bill 2336 is merely a red herring designed to distract the public from that.

John Beuttler, conservation director with the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, considers the bill merely a political tactic.

“This attack is simply another way to misdirect the government away from the real impacts associated with the development and export of the Delta water supplies,” Beuttler wrote in a statement dated March 8. … “

Continue reading this article from the Sacramento News & Review by clicking here.

March 19, 2010 · Filed Under Wildlife & Endangered Species

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