DFG Director should show some leadership in protecting fish

DFG Director should show some leadership in protecting fish

by Dan Bacher

In a January 18 press release, the California Department of Fish and Game (DFG) proudly announced a new marine and coastal map viewer, called MarineBIOS.

Located at http://www.dfg.ca.gov/marine/gis/viewer.asp, the DFG touts the website an "in-depth source of information" about California’s MPAs (marine protected areas), "as well as some of the more common spatial planning data that was used to create those MPA regulations."

"This map viewer marks a significant milestone in our effort to manage and make available planning data for marine and coastal constituents,” DFG Director Chuck Bonham gushed. “It’s also cost-effective as it was done in-house, using existing department technology and expertise."

Of course, the release failed to mention that the majority of these so-called "marine protected areas" were created under the "visionary leadership" of a big oil lobbyist, real estate executive, marina developer and other corporate operatives under Arnold Schwarzenegger's Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative, a corrupt and unjust corporate greenwashing process privately funded by the shadowy Resources Legacy Fund Foundation.

I just wonder how much this DFG staff time and dollars this "MarineBIOS" program cost. While I love the idea of new technology at the DFG, what the DFG really needs now is firm leadership to defend and restore our fish populations.

As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.”

My opinion is that if Director Bonham really cares about California fish, water and the environment, he should show some courage and take the following crucial actions:

1. He should call for an investigation into the record "salvage" of over 11 million fish, including 9 million imperiled Sacramento splittail, during 2011, a export record pumping year, and direct staff to find a way to stop or at least reduce the carnage at the predatory state and federal export pumping facilities in the South Delta. Scientists estimate that the actual amount of fish lost in the pumps is 5 to 10 times the "salvage" numbers.

2. Bonham should support the call by anglers, grassroots environmentalists and advocates of openness and transparency in government to suspend the corrupt Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative, including the so-called "marine protected areas" created under the leadership of South Coast MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force Chair Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the president of the Western States Petroleum Association. The initiative creates so-called "marine protected areas" that fail to protect the ocean from oil spills and drilling, pollution, military testing, corporate aquaculture, wind and wave energy projects and all human impacts on the ocean other than fishing and gathering.

The DFG wardens would be very happy to hear that they don't have to enforce new "marine protected areas" when they don't have enough staff or boats to patrol the existing ones. That's why the California Fish and Game Wardens Association has repeatedly called on the Fish and Game Commission not to approve any new marine protected areas until the Department has enough staff and money to enforce the existing MPAs.

3. He should urge the Brown and Obama administrations to halt the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) to build the peripheral canal, a project that will lead to the deaths of more Central Valley chinook salmon, steelhead, striped bass, American shad, Sacramento splittail, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, largemouth bass, white and green sturgeon and other species than all of the poachers in the state combined could possibly kill.

Not only would this canal lead to the destruction of Central Valley salmon and Delta fish populations, but it would cost an estimated $23 billion to $53.8 billion to build, according to economist Stephen Kasower, at a time when California is in its greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression.

As Caleen Sisk-Franco, Chief and Spiritual Leader of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, said, "The peripheral canal is such a tremendous destroyer of water systems. There is no one making more water, and there is very little protection to prevent water pollution and little resources targeting cleaning up water, just more greedy building plans to get the little water that is trickling down the Sacramento Valley. It time for Gov. Brown to get rid of those little thinkers and design off the grid projects."

It is no surprise that the Resources Legacy Fund and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, two of the largest funders of studies by UC Davis and the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) to promote the construction of the peripheral canal, are also the biggest funders of the MLPA Initiative fiasco. Neither the MLPA Initiative nor the plan to build the canal aim to "restore" the ecosystem - their goals are to greenwash the privatization of public trust resources and conservation in order to benefit powerful corporate interests.

I'll conclude with another quote from Martin Luther King Jr: “The time is always right to do the right thing.”