California Endangered Species Act Petition is Filed

On January 11, 2010, the California Department of Fish and Game (DFG) released their badly flawed fish stocking EIR-EIS. In response to the failure of the EIR-EIS to put into place provisions to adequately protect the imperiled mountain yellow-legged frog from impacts caused by hatchery trout, on January 25 the Center for Biological Diversity petitioned the California Fish and Game Commission ("Commission") to list the mountain yellow-legged frog as "endangered" under the California Endangered Species Act (CESA).

The CESA is similar to the federal Endangered Species Act in most regards but the CESA is administered by the DFG. The DFG now has 90 days to recommend to the Commission whether the petitioned action may be warranted. If so, the DFG has 12 months to prepare a report for the Commission, based on the best scientific information available, which indicates whether the petitioned action is in fact warranted. The Commission then makes it final decision soon thereafter. So, it will be more than a year before the petition makes its way through the process, a process that I suspect will be full of twists and turns. This could get interesting. 

Additional details on the petition process are provided in Fish and Game Code Section 2070-2090. The mountain yellow-legged frog CESA petition is available on the Center for Biological Diversity web site.

Back to The Mountain Yellow-legged Frog Site.