Art Cerini, owner of the Narrows Lodge Resort at Upper Blue Lake, was stunned when he learned the Department of Fish and Game (DFG) will no longer stock Upper Blue Lake with rainbow trout.
“Without the monthly trout stocking I doubt that any of the four resorts that are at Upper Blue Lake will survive,” Cerini said.
According to Cerini, the main attraction for his guests is the excellent trout fishing. He said that on weeks the lake are planted with trout, his resort is full with entire families.
Cerini has owned the Narrows Lodge Resort for more than 11 years and said he bought the resort because Blue Lakes was one of his favorite spots. He said that down through the years he has had the same families return to the lake many times and just about all of them love to fish for trout. He is afraid that all that could disappear in a matter of weeks if the DFG doesn”t continue to stock the lake.
The DFG”s decision not to stock the lake is because of a lawsuit filed by the Pacific Rivers Council and the Center for Biological Diversity, two environmental organizations. They sued the DFG to protect the red-legged frog, which is on the endangered list. The lawsuit claimed the DFG hadn”t filed a Environment Impact Report (EIR) as required by law. As part of an agreement between the DFG and the environmental organizations, the DFG won”t stock 175 lakes and streams throughout California. Included on the list of lakes that won”t be stocked are Upper Blue Lake, Lake Pillsbury and Indian Valley Reservoir.
In other words, no waters in Lake County will be stocked. The moratorium on the stocking goes from this December until January 2010. That”s the length of time the courts have given the DFG to file an EIR.
Actually, the ban could be indefinite if the EIR lists the lakes in Lake County as possible red-legged frog habitat. It is also doubtful the DFG can complete the EIR in just a year. Each of the listed 175 lakes and streams in the state have to be studied individually and the DFG doesn”t have the staff to do all that within a year.
In fact, the first lawsuit was filed in October of 2006 when the two environmental groups, represented by Stanford Law students, sued the DFG over fish stocking programs it has engaged in for more than 100 years, claiming that no EIR had been completed for the state”s trout stocking programs. The result of the case was a court order requiring DFG to complete an EIR.
The DFG used three criteria to identify the lakes that wouldn”t be stocked. They are waters that now have the red-legged frog, waters that have possible red-legged frog habitat even if there are no frogs there, and waters that haven”t been studied yet. To my knowledge the red-legged frog has not been found in Lake County for years, if ever.
The lawsuit claims that trout are not a native species in California and their presence in certain lakes and waters pose a threat to the frog and other endangered amphibians. In regard to the lakes in Lake County, there are also large populations of bass, crappie, catfish, Sacramento Pike Minnows and bullfrogs, all of which would also eat the red-legged frog.
In fact, the primary predator of the red-legged frog is the bullfrog, which is not native to California but is in the state by the millions. Most of the experts say halting the stocking of trout in Lake County lakes will not protect the endangered frog because there are so many other species of predator fish.
Lakes that are exempt from the ruling are those larger than 1,000 surface acres and lakes that have no stream flowing in or out. Also exempt are lakes that have been stocked solely by private organizations for longer than the past four years. None of the lakes in Lake County meet such criteria. In other words, the resorts at Upper Blue Lake can”t even purchase trout from a private hatchery and stock the lake themselves.
One solution is for the state legislature to pass emergency legislation that would make an exemption to the section about stocking the trout in certain lakes. The Lake County Board of Supervisors could start by passing a resolution requesting such an exemption.
The loss of the trout stocking program is sure to have a major impact on the tourist industry in Lake County. And it”s not only Lake County that will see a reduction of the tourist trade. Many of the popular trout lakes in the Bay Area are also on the hit list as are most of the more popular lakes throughout California.
Cerini said he will be contacting the Lake County Board of Supervisors as well as Congressman Mike Thompson for help.
