Category Archives: environment

To be safe we may want to nuke it from orbit

rotenone-pyrethrins I finished my read of the Yellowstone Lake plan the Park recently published for comment. In it they specify the need to remove invasive Lake Trout and restore the native Yellowstone Cutthroat.

Sure enough, our pal Rotenone coupled with gill netting will be the preferred fish killing method, gill nets deployed by a vendor in the lake proper, and follow-up chemical work for all the tributaries that lack some natural barrier to upstream migration.

I find it surprising that Fish & Game hatchery theory is predicated on us happy anglers killing our limit, but whenever they need to lay waste to a watershed – they never invite us to help ..

Rotenone effects both fish and invertebrates in largely the same way, especially prone are gill-bearing insects that derive oxygen from the water via beating of gills. Naturally that includes everything trout eat, so when the florescent green nasty finally is dissipated by a couple of sacks of Potassium Permanganate, it’ll leave a stream or lake mostly empty of life.

Despite Rotenone having been our chemical mainstay for fish killing for nearly 50 years, but very little science exists on the effects of rotenone on surrounding flora and fauna.

Some of that science is bubbling up unbidden given its linkage to Parkinson’s Disease. Likely making a lot of fellows at fish & game nervous and thinking of transfer from the chemical division back to enforcement …

While that topic is hotly debated, what papers we could find on Rotenone suggests that years are necessary before a stream returns to its historic insect populations, and some streams never return to their pre-poisoning levels.

Why is it so important? Because its use is on the rise given that we’re having to defend both shores and the interior from invasives. Running a multi-day slug of toxic killing agent through most of the tributaries and canals hosting an invasive critter is liable to intersect with drinking water and kids splashing merrily, and if they haven’t baked all that science thoroughly we all could be walking through Love Canal too – the Sequel.

The good news is that now that we no longer care about spotted owls, we can always park some Claymores around the last drizzle of water containing Tricorythodes … then camp in the fast water insisting we won’t budge in between fits of our teeth chattering.

Those Brown Trout do love their Mercury

donnerI’ve always associated the distance driven and the elevation climbed as proof positive I’ve left civilization in my wake.

Once the skyline changes from cement and glass rectangles to jaggy pines, I start getting those destructive thoughts; how I can drink the water, or bathe in it – as filters and iodine are no longer needed, Guardia and cow flop are in my wake – along with everything else the good doctor warned you about.

.. sure I know better, but it still takes the wind out of your sails when you see a blurb on a lake at the very crest of the Sierra’s, whose west side drains to the Pacific Ocean, and East side would flow to the Rockies, and the singularity you dare not forget is “only one meal a week, less if you’re pregnant.”

Nice to know that even the highest and farthest are neither pristine nor chaste – and the Blueliner’s are clinging to something that isn’t blue at all, it’s merely less brown, less odiferous than what I wade in and call home.

The report on Donner Lake’s ailments and contaminants has just been released by CALEPA.

Didymo may be more of an eyesore than despoiler of watersheds

didymo_poster The latest issue of the US Fish & Wildlife magazine, “Eddies” is devoted completely to aquatic invasives. Not just the standard fare we’re used to seeing, but many of the plants that are causing issues for the deep South and Texas.

Now that the fissures in rubber shoe soles are being blamed for seed travel, and once you’ve glimpsed the effect of Giant Salvinia or Water Chestnut on a waterway, you wonder how much longer they’re going to let us get in the water, period.

There was a hint of good news, however. Our old pal Didymo may not be as bad as first thought, given that the biosecurity professionals in New Zealand have not detected any benthic “dead zone” caused by the diatom smothering the river bottom;

In spite of widely held presumptions that didymo “smothers” invertebrate populations and therefore harms fisheries, research has proven the opposite. “That’s what the prediction was,” says Vieglais, “but our results proved otherwise and the fact that there has been no collapse of the New Zealand trout fishery since didymo arrived bears that out.”

Resembling despoiled toilet paper is still undesirable, certainly an eyesore for a heretofore pristine creek, but whether its periodic bloom is permanent or transient, it’s certainly a comfort to know that its impact on the fishery may be much less forbidding than first thought.

… welcome news, as Didymo is but the first in a long line of invasives that could result in our feet being banned entirely from the watershed.

Why you should stock up on Carp lines this Christmas

The Yellowstone Carp line, new for 2035 Dire news on climate change suggests that Western US and particularly the Yellowstone basin are already in the grip of a warming trend, and warming  quicker than the rest of the continental US.

The demise of the whitebark pine trees is the most noticeable result of climate change. Warming temperatures have allowed the mountain pine beetle to thrive in previously inhospitable, high-elevation whitebark forests turning the mountains in every direction brown. Aerial surveys have established that whitebark pine die-offs are approaching a staggering 85 percent. A recent study concludes that climate-induced beetle kill will render the pine species functionally dead in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem within the next seven to 10 years.

-via the Bozeman Daily Chronicle

As the Whitebark Pine offers precious cover to delay snow melt, it suggests that Spring runoff will be quicker and potentially much more violent, and summer flows smaller and warmer than those of the past.

Studies indicate that within the next 50 years the Yellowstone River between Livingston and Laurel-one of the world’s great trout streams-will likely become a warm-water fishery.

So B.A.S.S. can add both Lake Tahoe and the Yellowstone River to their ever-increasing list of exotic venues.

The National Park Service has released a 36 page response to the impacts of climate change to the national inventory of parklands. As you might expect it is a roadmap to handle the effects and adaptations anticipated, as they cannot stop the process by any means. As part of the issue is carbon sequestration on park lands, I’d imagine that it’ll require vendors and visitors to adjust to a lower carbon footprint (possibly affecting their ability to enter the park, or the means by which they’ll be allowed access), and the end to livestock grazing – as it’s a known source of gases.

(… rivaled only by fly fishing blogs and their authors … )

Fish hatcheries impacted by state budget shortfalls, less fish the result

There may be less of these in our future It appears that budget shortfalls and emphasis on belt tightening may have exposed the soft white underbelly of the “put and take” fishery. With both federal and state budgets being carved of fat, and desperate to avoid too deep cuts to the remaining muscle, a combination of license hikes and the systematic redirection of conservation funds may result in a lot less fish for your local creeks.

That’s because when Science fails it often does so catastrophically. The role of a hatchery in this modern era has changed from fishery restoration to fish production, the ability to augment what Mother Nature provides with a steady stream of catchable fish at a rate greater than or equal to their being consumed.

Which was the flaw in their thinking.

Outlined in an article on the New York angling scene, with the state deficit looming at around a billion dollars, and after a license hike of 53% last year, the state hatchery system is faced with not enough money to complete their mission, despite their plight being one of the reasons for the license increase the prior year.

For the first time since 1976, no eggs were taken from the Adirondack strain of lake trout in Raquette Lake, which means there will be 115,000 fewer lake trout for stocking in 37 waterways, Kemper said. Staffing shortages and budget cutbacks have reduced the egg take for landlocked salmon at the Adirondack hatchery by 50 percent, which will mean 700,000 fewer salmon stocked to New York waters, he said.

– via the Wall Street Journal

As hunting and fishing organizations assumed the new revenue was earmarked for agencies charged with the conservation mission, imagine their surprise to find the government may have other plans …

… which will lead to more law suits and additional expenditures, while the remaining holdovers from last season are attrited slowly under the ever-increasing hail of PMD’s with a Pheasant tail dropper.

It’s been that way in California for years, and if your state hasn’t yet it surely will.

Anglers have endured any number of cost increases with only minor grumbling. With incomes stifled by a sluggish economy and with less government being a rallying cry of the next dozen elections, will we begin to see initiatives on the ballot requiring dollars raised from license increases and special stamps, be spent in a manner consistent with their purpose?

… as this new austerity trickles its way throughout Main Street and finally settles into your kid’s consciousness that he’s not going to peer at Life via the lambent glow of an X-Box, it’ll make the both of you read the fine print of the new trout stamp legislation and wonder whether the State that’s proposing to tap you for “spare change” isn’t really going to put it up their nose – versus buy a trout’s dinner like they claim.

They’ve got to fill all those hotel rooms with somebody

Big changes destined for the Lake Tahoe basin has California legislators scrambling for dollars to fund the Lake Tahoe Restoration Act of 2010, which will no doubt end up as “California Pork” inside some other piece of legislation…

Responding to a recent study produced by UC Davis, which suggests 50% less snow for the Sierras, an earlier thaw, massive flooding of the Truckee River, which will eventually run dry by the end of the century, and phosphorous precipitation and removal of dissolved oxygen, will transform the area and surrounding watersheds into something much less picturesque.

… with the inevitable fight over the remnants of the Truckee, as it’s one of the primary sources of fresh water for Reno, Pyramid Lake, and some of the farm communities within Nevada.

Add to that mixture the “degree per decade warming trend” and Tahoe might find new life as one of many trophy largemouth lakes and a regular host to B.A.S.S  tournaments.

BASS Tournament 

There’s plenty of hotel rooms, and them bright lights of Reno will still beckon to the unwary.

A little Orange Visqueen would’ve been an easier sell than cleated rubber being the New Felt

ATT-Cell-coverage All them wading shoe companies and their capitulation to soft-sticky rubber soles may well rival the disaster of New Coke. A couple years spent trying to convince us they actually grip anything other than dry pavement – undone by basic science and five miles of black VisQueen.

Meanwhile, scientists at Lake Tahoe are busy laying waste to beds of Asian Clams, merely by deploying rubber mats to cover them.

… and when fabric artist Christo insisted on loaning his artistry to cleansing the Arkansas, he was promptly shot down. A selfless act blending fabric imagery with ridding the Arkansas River of invasives, misinterpreted by bible thumping local officials intent on “not having some long-haired weirdo screwing around in our river.”

The local citizenry might’ve had reservations about explaining why six miles of river had an orange streambed, not realizing there’ll be twice the questions once the bottom looks like toilet paper, and everyone is scared to go near it.

Us cash conscious lay-environmentalists would’ve gladly rolled up the orange sheet once the novelty had worn off, and redeployed it systematically until we’d cleaned everything down to the ocean. Then we’d have called the local news station and insist it was material left over from AT&T’s cell phone coverage beef with Sprint, and insist they come and remove it.

The annual “I ain’t drinking that shit no more” post

There's little comparison Now that Canadian researchers have discovered that Goldfish under the influence of Prozac do not respond to sexual advances, I’m duty bound to ask how much tap water do our Northern neighbors drink before a Goldfish looks good enough to hit on?

… and aren’t we glad that fish have scruples?

Californians are known to house most of the native crazies, much of the lower 48 exports their antisocial types to the coast, where we hose them down and provide a change of wardrobe, before returning them as Presidents or members of Congress…

In other related news, British researchers now have proof that all the gender bending chemicals released into the watershed via sewage treatment – actually bend gender, affecting fish reproduction and inducing as much as a 75% failure rate.

Endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) disrupt the ways that hormones work in the bodies of vertebrates (animals with backbones), including humans.

They can be found in everything from female contraceptive drugs and hormone replacement therapy pills, to washing up liquid, with the most well studied EDCs being those that mimic estrogen (female hormone).

EDCs have been seeping into rivers through the sewage system for decades and have an observed effect on fish, altering male biology to make them more female – hence the ‘gender bending’ reputation of these chemicals.

– via PhysOrg.com

All this research puts us anglers in a bit of a quandary. As many of our planted fish have been gargling EDC’s by the bucketful, imported into the watershed from numerous federal “gladiator academies” – which requires us anglers to adhere to the “Don’t ask and don’t tell” statute.

Which explains why the fish are so damn tight-lipped when my fly floats past.

Thinking outside the Lakes, the charismatic solution to a double invasive

We're here to make things different, kinda It’s akin to Ponce De Leon traveling up the isthmus of South America and into Mexico lured by the tales of a city of gold. Surviving disease and pestilence, angry Indians and ritual sacrifice – and with the payoff in sight, he sees the dust of Sir Francis Drake making off with everything.

Much is being made of the Great Lakes being unfit for man nor beast, and with Asian Carp poised at the gates, it appears scientists are suggesting the Quagga Mussel ate everything already.

But Fahnenstiel said that if carp evade electronic barriers and reach the lake, they’ll probably find so little nourishment they’ll either go back or starve.

– via Cleveland.com

Mother Nature being the poster child for adaptive processes, the Silver Horde turning around may not be in the cards, every culvert headed east or west is an option, yet them voracious plankton eaters may surprise us and develop a taste for clams.

It won’t be the first time the Great Lakes had to be restored completely, and as little can be done about the ballast water / invasive issue, short of retrofitting everything flagged in Liberia with ballast treatment, we may want to consider taking a page from Aliens …

… nuke it from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure.

Then again, despite the renewed interest in atomic power, radioactive waste, and domestic energy independence, the fission cloud may drift towards Montana, or Canada – and the result even more fish in peril.

So I propose a less intrusive option, one that won’t cost the taxpayer a farthing.

We’ll simply drop the problem in BP’s lap, as they’re charged with “making this right” … Toss a couple of freebie drilling leases into the package, write off the Gulf as toast, then let them demonstrate their willingness to make amends by laying a protective blanket of crude over them mussel beds.

…open the locks wide, let the phalanxes of Carp through, then drop match.

Sure, there’ll be a couple of seasons without steelhead or salmon, but if California can do it, can we ask the Midwest for less?

Outside of the obvious genetic tomfoolery, exactly where is all that water coming from?

“Extra labeling only confuses the consumer,” said David Edwards, director of animal biotechnology at the Biotechnology Industry Organization. “It differentiates products that are not different. As we stick more labels on products that don’t really tell us anything more, it makes it harder for consumers to make their choices.”

Which is exactly what troubled me about the “Mercury-toxic-no-eat-sign” featured prominently at every junction of the creek nearby, why would you go to all that trouble to label something genetically identical to the healthy specimen?

It must be more of that government waste I hear so much about.

Tastes like Chicken

The FDA defends its approach, saying it is simply following the law, which prohibits misleading labels on food. And the fact that a food, in this case salmon, is produced through a different process, is not sufficient to require a label.

We’re simply reminding everyone that this is the week the FDA rules on genetically engineered fish, our thoughts on the matter being well known, yet it’s still a landmark case with impacts far beyond the current focus.

The company has several safeguards in place to quell concerns. The fish would be bred female and sterile, though a small percentage might be able to breed. They would be bred in confined pools where the potential for escape would be low.

What concerns me outside of the obvious, is where is all that water going to come from? Most of the known world is already using its potable water multiple times between snowpack and faucet. Trucking saltwater in from the ocean would be cost prohibitive, yet terrestrial fish farms located close to market implies yet another water-craving industry determined to siphon those last few droplets from native fish.

Close to market means Los Angeles, Phoenix, Las Vegas, and a host of other desert cities, no?

Nestle and the bottled water crowd may be a blessing compared to the the rich soup we’ll soon see in our spigot. The agricultural industry has locked up the rights for any source of significance, yet the aquaculture crowd will insist on something “clean” to grow salmon in – and that combined payload of antibiotics and fertilizer should follow whatever slope is available to mix with local waters or intermingle with groundwater.

If they mix in salt you can add toxic to that blend.

Yummy.

The upside could be a gene or two added to all them roman nosed fish lying doggo in the salmon wastewater pond. If we get lucky we might wind up with sea-run Carp, or they’ll get white faces like the Joker – sight fishing would be so much easier.