Audubon California lectures while they pass the humidor

It’s only a blip on my radar, and  few are losing sleep over a dirty little dustbowl lined with “Quad” tracks.

This morning commences the Cache Creek Aggregate Producers Breakfast, where they’ll be attired in top hats and too-tight vests, an abundance of hearty backslaps and thick cheroots, and some environmental pipsqueak trying to be heard over the din champagne corks and water jokes.

Yes, these fellows are the “evil industrial complex” that saw fit to drain my creek dry to fuel their “13% more tomatoes grown during a third year of drought.”

Monitor a dust bowl, Mr Fat Cat

I’m being overly melodramatic – these are actually the “evil indrustrialists” that make a moonscape of the watershed, and after peeling Mother Nature’s brassiere off – they’ll donate her pock marked form to the county – thereby collecting enormous tax write off’s and engendering good feelings …

… and they don’t need a lecture from  Audubon California (as will be featured) reminding them of their civic responsibilities, as they’ve decided a riparian zone dustbowl is plenty good for buzzards and rodents.

There hasn’t been any water in four months. And as the last ragtag squadrons of wild fish are coming up the Sacramento, again there’ll be nothing to spawn in.

… save the little beaver pond to the left of the table groaning of pastries and sausages, whose inhabitants desperate actions dammed the last trickle to build a shrinking pond in the middle of a desert.

Over the last couple of years I’ve removed my support from our traditional conservation organizations because I believe their priorities are wrong. I understand they mean well, and are trying desperately to preserve things they cannot keep operational. It’s this attempt at saving the rarified names, and fancy watersheds – while ignoring the commonplace that has me disgusted.

… and so they play the game. Today’s breakfast it’s Audubon California handing out conservation plaques to the guys that bulldozed a shitty little brown trickle that no one cared about.

… the salmon cared a great deal, as 50 miles of perfect pea gravel has been denied them.

I’ll assume there’s some great plan out there, where they’ll trade my 50 miles of unknown for 400 yards of really prime real estate somewhere far north of me – someplace it’ll take me a hundred dollars to get to – but as they lack budget to manage it affectively, I won’t really want to go there.

This month’s eco-bulletin will announce a major victory, acquiring the very tree that Joaquin Murrieta pizzled on while being chased by cavalry. The price will be a couple of scientists having to hand some fat cat a plaque – and he’ll want to wash his hands after …

Thanks Mr. Aggregate for January, grower of watery pink tomatoes which become slightly gray under the hot lamps of Wendy’s, I hope you choke on an English Muffin.

Tags: Yolo County Parks & Resource Department, Cache Creek Aggregate Producers, Riparian monitoring, Little Stinking, fishless fishing

2 thoughts on “Audubon California lectures while they pass the humidor”

  1. A. Wannabe Travelwriter

    Well, I DID attend this meeting, and there was neither breakfast nor champagne served. Shame, I would have appreciated both.

    You are correct, sir, as to the past crimes of channel “degravelization” by the aggregate folks, but they have little to do with tomatoes. For that, you can thank the agricultural-irrigation industrial complex.

    Good news is that the gravel folks have been forced to higher ground. The bad news is that we need rain, and lots of it, notwithstanding El Nino forecasts that claim it is on the way.

    While there were plenty of -ologists at this meeting to discuss future monitoring of wildlife, including of the fish variety, I questioned “what wildlife?” given the lack of water, whether due to tomatoes, drought, or black-holes in outer space.

    This creek is an interesting animal of its own right with is circuitous route towards the Pacific Ocean; it will be an uphill swim, indeed, for any salmon attempting this trek.

    While I take umbrage in being called “some environmental pipsqueak,” I will continue to attend these non-breakfast breakfast meetings. At least until it is clear there will never be any champagne

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