"Final" Fish Stocking EIR/EIS Released

On November 7, 2008, Judge Marlette of the Sacramento Superior Court ordered the California Department of Fish and Game (CDFG) to prepare an Environmental Impact Report on the impacts of its fish stocking program. This document was to be submitted "no later than January 11, 2010". That would be today. Rumor has it that the document will be submitted today but no information has yet been posted on the DFG Hatchery EIR-EIS web page. I'm assuming that the document will be available to the public in the next few days. 

As I've detailed in previous posts, this document will guide the CDFG fish stocking program for decades to come. So, it is incredibly important that the EIR-EIS be thorough in the development of measures to mitigate the impact of fish stocking on California's aquatic ecosystems. The draft document was badly flawed in this regard and I'm not expecting that the "final" document will be much better. This just doesn't seem to be the way the CDFG operates. Instead, I suspect that this "final" document will be similarly lacking and that these failings will precipitate further litigation to force the CDFG to get it right. That sure is a screwy way to make policy decisions but for the CDFG it seems more the rule than the exception. My blog posts for the next few weeks will describe the changes that the CDFG made to the earlier draft document in response to input from the public. Stay tuned.


In other news, acting CDFG Director John McCamman has been appointed as Director. Don't expect this to change agency politics. As always seems to be the case, science will generally only be used to guide management decisions when the scientific results are convenient. When it comes to fish stocking impacts, you can bet that the "best available science" is far from convenient.


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