[env-trinity] Redding Record Searchlight Editorial: Natural allies are senselessly at odds on Trinity River

[Tom Stokely]

Editorial: Natural allies are senselessly at odds on Trinity River
Posted December 5, 2011 at midnight

http://www.redding.com/news/2011/dec/05/editorial-natural-allies-are-senselessly-at-odds/?partner=RSS 

If you wanted to do the best possible job restoring a river's fish habitat — the noble goal of the Trinity River Restoration Program — wouldn't it make sense to keep tight lines of communication with the anglers who spend so many days on that river?

The steelhead guides might not have precisely the same perspective as the biologists, but in the big picture they're emphatically on the same team. And those fishermen are certainly a busy set of eyes on the river, a good source of ground truth.

Yet to hear the Trinity River Guides Association tell it, the head of the Trinity River Restoration Program and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation have blown off concerns that guides raised about negative side-effects or outright failures of river "improvements." The agencies never even bothered to respond, at least formally and in writing, to a March letter that pointed to flaws and called for a moratorium to review what's worked and what hasn't, before forging ahead.

In a nutshell, the guides complain that efforts to restock the river with gravel and cut new side channels to improve spawning conditions and habitat for juvenile fish had, inadvertently, filled in the deeper pools vital for adult fish.

They don't want to stop the recovery of the Trinity. Far from it. They just want to get it right.

Is a moratorium on Trinity River projects the right call? Maybe not. Robin Schrock, director of the program, defends its work.

But the philosophy behind these kinds of projects is "adaptive management" — which means learning as you go and adjusting course as needed. That surely includes listening to the guides who have logged, by their count, "tens of thousands of hours of personal observation of the river."

Teaming with the California Water Impact Network, the guides wrote in a letter last week that they'll be digging in for a fight against any further work.

One way or another, their complaints will surely be addressed. It's just senseless these natural allies should have to resort to legal threats to get a hearing.


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