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Lake County Board of Supervisors seeks exemption in fish stocking program

Posted by: Maven on December 10, 2008 at 5:55 am

From the Lake County Record Bee:

Whether endangered frogs live in Lake County water bodies was the central issue Tuesday that spurred the Lake County Board of Supervisors to declare a local emergency and to pursue an exemption from a state fish stocking prohibition.

The trout that eat the frogs can no longer be stocked in Blue Lakes Upper, Cache Creek, the Indian Valley Reservoir and the Pillsbury Reservoir after a Nov. 6 Sacramento Superior Court ruling. A group of Stanford law students, representing the Pacific Rivers Council and the Center for Biological Diversity, sued the Department of Fish and Game (DFG), claiming the department had never done an environmental impact report for state fish stocking programs more than 100 years old.

“We can’t just roll over and let some environmental and economic damage be done to Lake County because of some idiotic senior project. There’s no basis for it, other than it’s just busy work,” Supervisor Rob Brown said.

Grounds for the exemption included the expected loss of tourism dollars associated with trout fishing and the harmful affect on native birds that eat the fish. In addition, there was some uncertainty about whether Lake County is home to the species of red- and yellow-legged frogs that are considered endangered species.

“People have been looking in Lake County since 1890 for all kinds of frogs and have not found any red-legged frogs. There’s no historical basis to suggest that red-legged frogs were ever in Lake County,” University of California Davis Extension advisor Greg Giusti said.

Read more from the Lake County Record Bee by clicking here.

December 10, 2008 · Filed Under Wildlife & Endangered Species

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