[env-trinity] More LTE's on "German brown kill-off" and "Ill-conceived plan"

Sun Jun 7 12:21:22 PDT 2020

http://www.trinityjournal.com/opinion/letters_to_editor/article_66248748-a52d-11ea-baed-07fdc455c435.html

German brown kill-off

   - From Capt. Armand J. Castagna Living member of the California Outdoors Hall of Fame

   - Jun 3, 2020

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German brown kill-off

>From Capt. Armand J. Castagna Living member of the California Outdoors Hall of Fame

I have been fishing this once great and formerly very productive Trinity River since 1976. Just recently, I have...
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I have been fishing this once great and formerly very productive Trinity River since 1976. Just recently, I have come to hear the workers of the Junction City weir have been instructed to kill all German Browns stopped behind their supposed “counting apparatus.” I couldn’t help but scratch my head and ask myself, “Who in the heck is playing any more than is already being done with the life of this river and our local residents, without asking our say in such a critical issue?”

I came up with two possible answers. The Trinity River “Desperation” Society, and perhaps one if not many of their wonderfully paid and informed employees. I have actually (heard via neighborhood scuttlebutt), that the appointed local commissioner of the Department of Fish and Wildlife is a Restoration Society employee. This just cannot be true and accurate. I just won’t believe it. This would be akin to what is called a conflict of interest, ya think? I used to know of this river as being a 10-month fishery. After saving and investing all that I had 11 years ago to finally move up here, I now, unfortunately, find us with a 5 to 6-month fishery, while potentially sliding even further down a timeline, not in anyone’s favor.

I also had to ask myself, “What have I personally found to be tangible and successful efforts/tasks, that have been proven productive via this “Society”? I am on or near the river almost every day. I used to fish 200 plus days a year, I came up with not a single one. Who has for that matter? Thus my personal name The “Desperation Society” The one that appears to have no clue about how people from all parts of the state, even out of state, even out of this country, used to flock to this river to enjoy all it has to offer while feeding the local inhabitants and economy with their tourist dollars and their easily identifiable energy, that comes with satisfaction.

I was in that group of energized outdoors people for a very long and blessed time. This county needed this tourist/fishing dollar for more than a half-century. What?

We don’t need it anymore for some reason called perhaps controlled failure, now? To be held near hostage (via poor decision making) by an agency that appears to answer to no one, and is making decisions to affect our river, and our economy, and many of our livelihoods, gee not a formula for success.

I say, what decisions have they made correctly, thus far? I recently read a piece, very lengthy and detailed by an unbiased group of qualified researchers that basically stated there is absolutely no hope for success with their current agenda and approach to restoring this river (that didn’t need to be restored in the first place). Yep, all that money and power and yet I still hear near all my clients and neighbors breathe the word “joke” whenever these bad decisions and ridiculous practices of theirs’ are ever mentioned.

By the way, wouldn’t nature have done their hundreds of millions of dollars worth of, hmmm, “work” for them in the first place? To actually have the power to make more fish, (instead of killing them), to have at least some power to possibly flex in the area of excess netting practices, and overharvesting of fish, to have the money to listen to those that really know, by hiring better and more qualified researchers. No, just sounds like a shell game to me. Keep these jobs, (which we actually are grateful for) and we’ve done our job, right?

Not accomplishing a single finite thing to this point should be more than investigated, while there is so much money involved for what? All while our hard-earned taxpayer dollars are being spent on this? No more hatchery fish, no more Brown trout? No more ... what next?  The COVID-19 situation probably has come at an opportune time for all this mess to be overlooked. Gee, more than a hundred million dollars, sure could possibly go a long way to finding a vaccine, couldn’t it?

Now, killing a resource like our prized browns in desperation sure is the correct action, right? I am sure the Society never had a zero-day guiding this river until out of nowhere Mr. Brown showed up on a client’s line and it bailed out the entire zilch day of catching until that point. No, having two species of fish (if not three) in the river during winter months is a bad thing, isn’t it? It is too bad we are only able to, at least at this point, still be able to fish for two species while the third is only there for those that are the only privileged in the entire U.S. able to net coho. So yeah, make another jaw-dropping decision to hide and seek. Not good business I would say.

Trustworthy? I’ll say it again “to have all that money and power and here’s where we ‘really are’?” We obviously need to be heard, we obviously need to be better represented. Perhaps our incoming supervisor whom I have known for 40-plus years to be honest,and a doer can grab their attention and make them thoroughly realize, they are writing their own legacy. Careful eyes not just here but throughout the West, are looking at, and toward their successes, and failures. Eyes and ears watching and listening to all re:  their actions.

Theirs’ will become a model of success or obtuse and predictable failure for generations to come. It’s not too late to change this downward spiral. It never is when it comes to a holocaust of sorts. Or is it? Earlier this year I was out fly fishing with my nephew Kyle. He caught such a wonderful fish, a gift from God, we were in awe about her before he released it. We didn’t have to go to Patagonia to do it, either. You mean to tell me my memories, and Kyle’s, as well as all those that may fish this river with their loved ones, are not important enough to thoroughly rethink how all species can exist in this river together?

Making more fish isn’t the answer, no just too easy a solution right? The farmers would tell you that, I am sure. The sooner one doesn’t have to worry about a problem, the faster it must have righted itself, by itself, right. Yeah sure! Who is really on notice now? They sure don’t think nor act like it must be them at all, so, it must be us! You dig? Stand up and be counted in all these decisions, your children, their children, and your children, children’s, children will hopefully be able to applaud you for it, or damn you for just being a “usual” victim of our times.

Let’s not allow this to become “just another dead river.” Please!  We all need to do our part. something, anything, we all have to!

http://www.trinityjournal.com/opinion/letters_to_editor/article_014e4100-a52e-11ea-a5f5-0f28b3af3124.html

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Ill-conceived plan

   - From Roger Chatterton Trinity Center

   - Jun 3, 2020

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Thanks to the letters from Messrs. Giuntini and Tuthill, and the Journal publishing them, I and we are now aware of the ill-conceived plan by the California Department of Fish & Wildlife and the Trinity River Restoration Program to kill off all the brown trout in the Trinity River.

Supposedly the presence of brown trout are a predatory problem in the Trinity River.  I state supposedly because, as Giuntini points out, a study by two of CDFW’s own biologists has debunked that theory.

My own experience, admittedly individually anecdotal, is consistent with those findings. I have fished the fly fishing only area of the Trinity River since the early ’90s, well before we moved here. When we retired, the main reason we chose Trinity County was for the quality of fishing (and not just the river). Over the years I have caught hundreds of rainbow trout (both anadromous and non-anadromous) from the river.

Going on the fly fishing ethic that a good game fish is too valuable to be caught only once, I have released every one, even before it was the rule on that section. In all that time I have caught only one brown trout, and that was many years ago. It was a worthy trophy, over 26 inches long, but it, too, was returned to the river without a second thought, because that was the ethical thing to do.

>From another perspective, Mr. Giuntini points out in the same study I previously cited estimated that the brown trout fishery generates $1,350,000 in revenue for Trinity County. This revenue, and the reputation of the Trinity River as a blue-ribbon fishery, is a critical element in the economy of Trinity County.    

I previously mentioned ethics in the context of responsible fly fishing practices, which is universal in our sport. We are doing our part through organizations such as CalTrout, Trout Unlimited and the aFederation of Fly Fishers. We look to agencies such as CDFW and TRRP to preserve, protect and (hopefully) enhance our fish and wildlife resources. Conservation has to inform their decisions and actions, even though our economic welfare may not.

But when we see forthcoming intended actions such as this, where agencies charged with stewardship are abdicating that role for what appears to be political expediency, then we are left to ask who will protect this invaluable natural resource when the agencies so charged have apparently not just compromised, but abandoned their ethics.
The Board of Supervisors must immediately step up and provide the ethics, principles and leadership discarded by CDFW and TRRP. It is the right thing to do. Now is the time to fight the good fight.
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