May 22, 2008

Today’s environmentalists confuse
being ‘green’ with making ‘green’

Pre-Script: When I agreed to emerge from my tree stump to pen this blog, I was told that people actually make money writing these things. Although I have no concept how that works, I pre-empted the problem by requesting that any monies coming my way be donated anonymously to the Saint Jude Children’s Hospital in Nashville and Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles because they treat patients far braver than any adults I have ever met….

I have an old friend, another imaginary character named Kermit T. Frog. While we certainly have very distinct tastes in female companionship, we have long had soft spots in our hearts for the world around us. Almost 20 years ago, my buddy starred in a movie in which he sang the opening theme song.

Hard to believe, but back in the 1970’s environmental consciousness was pretty much limited to folks like me who live in tree stumps, guys like Kermit who live in ponds and strange, intense humans who wore dark socks and Birkenstocks. They were the ones with the bumper stickers on the back of their VW vans encouraging everyone to save water by showering with a friend. Sit next to one of these folks in a closed room and it became quickly and odoriferously apparent that these were the friends of those who had no friends.

It’s hard to believe today when it seems like the label “green” is replacing the colors “red, white and blue” in virtually all corporate television commercials, but back in the Disco Era, those folks were a lonely, odd bunch who spoke primarily among themselves at strange little events they created like “Earth Day.” It was in this context that Kermit sang:

“It's not that easy being green
Having to spend each day the color of the leaves
When I think it could be nicer being red, or yellow, or gold
Or something much more colorful like that”

Another anomaly about being “green” in the 1970’s was that good motives, righteous indignation and an autographed first edition of Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” could barely generate the 40 cents for a gallon of gas, a tie-dyed t-shirt, a pair of worn Levis, a hemp vest and a three-finger baggie of weed. Into this economic wasteland entered a new breed of well-educated, bright, young men and women at the prestigious Yale Law School who decided to become the legal shock troops of the new environmental movement. They called themselves the Natural Resources Defense Council and they allied themselves with Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

In the name of the NRDC, its founding members picked their battles carefully and quickly developed a reputation for legal work that created both precedent and fawning press coverage. They became the valiant, “green” knights who jousted with the bloated, unimaginative polluter and developer bar and outmaneuvered them legally and publicly. A group which once been dismissed by corporate giants as nothing more than an annoying gnat had been revealed as a mosquito that carried a kind of “green” malaria that could frustrate and defeat those who pursued environmental business as usual. They were a dynamic force to be reckoned with.

But let’s face it, trees, fish and birds are notoriously deadbeats when it comes to paying the lawyers that represent them. While their classmates and rivals from other prestigious law schools were quickly assimilating into the polluter economy, driving Mercedes and lunching at exclusive country clubs, the new “green” lawyers disappointingly learned that noble purpose and ethereal ethics alone were not legal tender.

“It's not easy being green
It seems you blend in with so many other ordinary things
And people tend to pass you over
'Cause you're not standing out
Like flashy sparkles in the water’
Or stars in the sky”

So these young bright legal lights figured out that when it came to their legal futures, they needed to identify an alternate course to future financial security. The result was to create a national reputation by challenging the polluters in the name of the environment and then trading off their “green” credibility for positions of power and wealth.

Very soon one enterprising utility company took the unprecedented approach of deciding that “if you can’t beat them, co-opt them.” After cutting his teeth with the NRDC and spending a little “respectable” time with the Morrison & Forester law firm in San Francisco, John Bryson parlayed his “green” credentials to appointments to the California regulatory boards overseeing water and public utilities until he was hired by Southern California Edison in 1984 and ultimately appointed its CEO in 1990. Another of the NRDC pioneers, Mary Nichols, has re-created herself as the “neutral” overseer of California’s forestry and fire protection, water, fish and game and state parks. No one seriously doubts the knowledge or intelligence of either Bryson or Nichols, but when a committed conservationist can so easily drift from one side of the battle to the other and exploit their “green” reputation for advancement, their intellectual honesty remains an open issue.

“But green's the color of spring
And green can be cool and friendly-like
And green can be big like a mountain
Or important like a river
Or tall like a tree.”

Not that any of this is new. In 1902, to open more western land to settlement and irrigation, Congress created the United States Reclamation Service. The Owens Valley was one of the first places considered for a government-sponsored irrigation system. Simultaneously, however, William Mulholland, Los Angeles superintendent of water, took note of the quality, quantity, and proximity of Owens Valley water. Well aware that more water was necessary for Los Angeles’ growth, Mulholland and others garnered political and economic support for a Los Angeles water project by implying in speeches, interviews, and articles that Los Angeles teetered on the brink of a water crisis. Letting Owens Valley ranchers and farmers believe they were selling their land to the U.S. Reclamation Service for the Owens Valley irrigation project, engineers J.B. Lippincott and Fred Eaton bought vast amounts of land and associated water rights in the valley for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP). The Reclamation Service subsequently scuttled the irrigation project. Instead of returning reclamation service land in the Owens Valley to the public domain for homesteading, Forest Service chief Gifford Pinchot made reclamation land (mostly treeless) a part of the Inyo National Forest under the auspices of “the greatest good for the greatest number.” So in order to satisfy the political demands of Los Angeles, the water in Owens Valley was appropriated and piped 300 miles south. Coincidentally (or maybe not), Gifford Pinchot, revered in some circles as the proto-type environmentalist, was the founder of Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, the same place where the NRDC was born. And (more coincidentally) who wound up as the chairperson of the LADWP? Mary Nichols.

But it would be unfair to point the finger at a few and ignore what has become a vast black market of selling environmental reputations to the highest bidder. It is commonly the goal of environmental activists to seek out the attention of and, ultimately, the absorption by the Borg they have resisted. They have learned to leverage the threat of action to fashion some accommodation from developers in exchange for a hold-harmless agreement that they will not challenge a proposed, amended project. The developer demands 100 percent more than that to which he knows he is entitled, the environmental groups force him to accept 50 percent more than he thought he could get and “environmental victory” is declared.

Makes you re-examine a recent May 8, 2008 Los Angeles Times article, huh?

“A coalition led by the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club, Audubon California, the Planning and Conservation League and the Endangered Habitats League will not oppose the Tejon Ranch’s plans to build three urban centers, including more than 26,000 homes as well as hotels, condominiums and golf courses at the western and southwestern edge of the ranch.

”Those groups and others had threatened a campaign against development of the property, saying it would extend Southern California’s suburban sprawl to the Central Valley, add to regional traffic and air pollution woes, and harm endangered species such as the condor.”

Nothing says environmental sensitivity in an undeveloped wildlife area with endangered species like “more than 26,000 homes as well as hotels, condominiums and golf courses.” The NRDC strikes again?

As a result, government regulators will be politically intimidated by the imprimatur of the environmental groups, and the principals negotiating the deal for the environmental groups will gain a reputation as “reasonable” and, therefore, potentially employable by the “dark side of the force.” Once re-planted in the executive corner office of a government agency, corporate headquarters, law firm or utility company (perhaps overlooking more than 26,000 homes, hotels, condominiums and golf courses), his or her environmental credentials will become a valuable commodity for future negotiations perhaps on behalf of the same entity they once opposed and with a succeeding generation of environmentalists who one day hope to follow in their footsteps. Resistance is futile.

To be fair, there was some dissent on the Tejon Ranch deal. Ilene Anderson, a biologist and spokeswoman for the Center for Biological Diversity, said her group remains worried about habitat for the condor. Apparentlt Ilene never got the memo and it looks like her future may be limited to writing silly little blogs that no one reads.

As for me….

“When green is all there is to be
It could make you wonder why
But why wonder why wonder
I am green, and it'll do fine
It's beautiful, and I think it's what I want to be”

May 8, 2008

Dirty secrets from
the June Lake Loop

       Department of Fish & Game: Are you the spirit whose coming was foretold to me?
       Spirit of Fishing Past: I am.
       Department of Fish & Game: Who and what are you?
       Spirit of Fishing Past: I am Texas Haynes, the Ghost of Fishing Past.
       Department of Fish & Game: Long past?
       Spirit of Fishing Past: No, your past.
       Department of Fish & Game: What is your business here?
       Spirit of Fishing Past: Your welfare.
       Department of Fish & Game: My welfare?
       Spirit of Fishing Past: Your reclamation, then. Take heed, rise, and walk with me.

Originally called “Horseshoe Canyon,” the June Lake Loop in the Eastern Sierra was first surveyed in 1886 and became a Mecca for avid fishermen and hunters in the early 1900s. It soon became well-known for its large “trophy fish.” The unrivaled fishing and beautiful outdoor recreation opportunities drew people from hundreds of miles, despite the long, dusty dirt roads frequently sloppy with mud after storms. It was accessed from the original Hwy 23 (US 395) from the north junction via the Rush Creek drainage, and ended at Goose Lake, now called Silver Lake. In 1915 the Rush Creek Power plant was started and soon afterwards in 1916, the Carson family built a small building on the shore of Silver Lake. The local lakes teemed with trout and within a few years the community grew, offering a hideaway for some of the wealthiest families in California and famous celebrities including motion picture stars Greta Garbo, Clark Gable, Wallace Berry, director Frank Capra, and Walter Lantz, the cartoonist/creator of Woody Woodpecker. President Herbert Hoover, until recently arguably the worst president in modern American politics, once fished there.

Most of the stars flew into the area landing on a short dirt strip just east of June Lake. By 1924, the south road into June Lake was built along June Lake (“Summit Lake”) and, according to local legend, the Heidelberg Resort, originally built in 1926, was converted into a combination speakeasy/gambling hall on the first floor and a discrete brothel upstairs to provide evening “entertainment” for the wealthy visiting fishermen.

The literature and photos from the period convincingly document that the June Lake Loop, and Silver Lake and Rush Creek in particular, were preeminent fly fishing waters, and on September 9, 1932, fisherman Texas Haynes caught a Brook trout weighing 9 pounds, 12 ounces from Silver Lake, a long-standing state record that will celebrate its 66th anniversary this year.

As with most of the Eastern Sierra south of the Conway Summit, there were no native trout in the June Lake Loop but there was a bumper crop of chubs, a sucker minnow that grows to between 10 to 12 inches and is a natural forage fish for larger trout. At the same time, Rush Creek plummeted hundreds of feet down a natural waterfall from its origins in the high country and flowed unrestricted for several miles to its confluence with Mono Lake, a saline lake. Reverse Creek drained June Lake into Gull Lake, and then continued downstream for a mile or so before it joined Rush Creek. Combine miles and miles of spawning habitat with a food supply for large fish and the result was historic fishing excellence. But sixty-six years after Texas Haynes set a state record for Brook trout, there are no more Brook trout in Silver Lake and the lakes and streams of the June Lake Loop are almost entirely devoid of sport fishing except for hatchery imports. What happened?

Playwright George Bernard Shaw could have been talking about the Department of Fish and Game’s pathetic track record in the June Lake Loop when he wrote: “A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent in doing nothing.”

In the spring of 1940, the late CDFG biologist Eldon Vestal heroically performed the intended role of the Department of Fish and Game when he protested illegal water diversions by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power when they used a new dam on Rush Creek to substantially dry up Rush Creek below what is now Grant Lake. Mr. Vestal’s supervisors quickly reminded him that when it came to water, road or real estate development, CDFG biologists were to be seen but not heard. Soon thereafter Mr. Vestal was transferred out of the area and the illegal diversions continued for another 45-years until the Mammoth Flyrodders obtained a court order forcing the release of water into lower Rush Creek. Mr. Vestal’s successors, however, had learned the lesson of the consequences of impertinence. And since any destruction of habitat could be masked over the short term by squirting fish from a hose attached to a hatchery tanker truck, the June Lake Loop deteriorated in silence.

With each succeeding insult to the June Lake Loop’s environmental integrity, the CDFG learned that to “get-long” it was better to “go-along.” And the panacea was always the same. What should be done by blighted development that turned the stream bed that joined June Lake and Gull Lake into an overgrown gulley filled with trash? Hatchery trout. What should be done about waves of silt washing down from the June Lake Ski Area and covering the spawning gravel in Reverse Creek? Hatchery trout. What should be done about the sand washed into Rush Creek when Southern California Edison regularly sand-blasted the equipment at the Rush Creek hydroelectric plant? Hatchery trout. What should be done about the widening of the June Lake Loop road by Cal Trans that turned Rush Creek into a roadside drainage ditch? Hatchery trout. What should be done about private property owners that dredged large sterile ponds in the wetlands above Silver Lake? Hatchery fish. What should be done about the west end of Silver Lake being turned into a vast, overheated, shallow sand bar best suited only for aquatic weeds? Hatchery trout. What should be done about the makeshift dam at the outlet of Silver Lake that impedes fish access? Hatchery trout.

The result today is a Silver Lake with a vast population of chubs that compete with trout fry, thrive in the warmer waters and sandy bottoms caused by decades of siltation, and are too large to be forage for anything but the largest Brown trout which much prefer hatchery rainbows that lack the full fins and survival instincts to avoid consumption. And in the Silver Lake that once had the environmental capacity to produce a state record, no one can recall a Brook trout since the early 1950’s.

The view of Silver Lake looking toward Carson Peak and the silver ribbon of water cascading from the high country that attracted the wealthiest sportspeople in American a hundred years ago remains one of the most breathtaking views in California. But beneath the beautiful mountain scenery is a biological wasteland caused by the abject failure of governmental agencies, particularly the CDFG, to take any position short of serial capitulation. It may appear to be the same Silver Lake and Rush Creek experienced by Texas Haynes, but now the only life pulse is that provided by defibrillation from a hatchery tanker truck. As visitors to “Madame Tussaud’s House of Wax” often remark: “It almost looks real.”

And what about the generations of neglect by government employees who kowtowed to the whims of every real estate, water and road project by abandoning their environmental stewardship? Their options are limited because unfortunately the second floor of the Heidelberg Resort has been converted into time-share condominiums. Aside from that, I wouldn’t give them a ghost of a chance.

May 1, 2008

Observations on the DFG’s “one fish, two fish,
red fish, blue fish” hatchery accounting system

     In one of only two miracles attributed to Jesus by the New Testament, all four gospels report that while Jesus was teaching a crowd of 5,000 – excluding women and children – He insisted that the people be fed where they were, rather than sending them to the nearest towns. Upon investigating the provisions of the crowd, the disciples were only able to find five loaves of bread and two fish. The Gospels state that Jesus blessed the food, broke it, and gave it to the disciples, who distributed it to the people present – all of them being fed. The Gospels also state that after the meal was over, the disciples collected the scraps, filling 12 baskets.

     A very impressive miracle, but only until you consider the multiplication of fishes by the California Department of Fish and Game…

     According to Department of Fish and Game's (DFG) Deputy Regional Manager Bruce Kinney, DFG plans to provide all Mono County waters with an increase of at least 250 pounds more in total trout compared to its 2007 allotment objectives. Increases will vary from 250 pounds to 5,000 pounds. This means that the overall 2007 allotment goals for Mono County waters will be increased by an estimated 65,000 pounds of trout in 2008. In total, DFG plans to stock 775,000 pounds of catchable trout, weighing one to two pounds each, in Eastern Sierra waters in 2008.

     In fact, by the operation of Senate bill 1262, by July 1, 2008, DFG hatcheries are legally obligated to plant 2 1/2 pounds of trout for every fishing license sold last year in California, an estimated total production of 5.5 million pounds. By July 1, 2009, that production must rise to 2 3/4 pounds per fishing license.

     Given the state budget deficit approaching $20 billion, the current mandatory across the board 10 percent budget cut required of all state agencies, and the increasing costs associated with fish farming and stocking (salaries for the electricians, plumbers, truck drivers, biologists, maintenance and administrative personnel, the cost of electricity to pump water through the hatcheries, the cost of trout feed, the drugs to treat hatchery diseases and infestations, the expense of cleaning the water released from the hatcheries, the fuel and maintenance costs for trucks, etc.), how on earth can DFG afford to produce the additional pounds of fish required by the law?

     A little birdie working for DFG provided the answer a few years ago when he pointed out that while the amount of money spent by DFG on trout feed has increased with inflation, the actual weight of the food has not kept up with the numbers and pounds of fish allegedly produced. Are we dealing with anorexic fish? Or is there another explanation?

     Although DFG press releases will often provide precise numbers, like the 521,166 trout they claim were planted last off-season in Crowley Lake, it is obvious that no one at DFG accounts for each and every one of over a half million wiggling, squirming fish by counting. “One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish.”

     The manner in which DFG estimates the number of planted fish is by weighing a water-filled tanker truck without fish and then again with fish. The weight differential is the weight of the fish. They then approximate the number of fish by dividing that weight by the approximate average weight of the fish from that area of the hatchery where the fish are obtained. But here’s the little secret to this trick: Most of the heavy-duty scales at the hatcheries have been inoperable and, when operable, are rarely if ever used. That means poundage figures are pretty much whatever pure “guess-timates” are necessary to appease the fishing public.

     For years, Crowley Lake had a reputation with fishery biologists as being a black hole for rainbow trout. The Department of Fish and Game would plant the lake with a half-million rainbows each year. Anglers would catch them by the boat load, and the trout not caught would never hold over more than one season. The answer to the mystery is that there were far, far less fish planted than represented. The numbers were inflated to create an appearance to convince the unsuspecting public that nothing had changed and dutifully repeated by outdoors reporters whose concept of journalism is regurgitating DFG press releases. So much for modern miracles….

“The best measure of a man’s honesty isn’t his income tax return. It’s the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.” – Arthur C. Clarke, British science-fiction writer

April 24, 2008

The Lorax remembers a

far different fellow

also named Tim Alpers

      In this new cyber-world filled to over-flow with the thoughts and ruminations of a whole army of people who lack the minimum education, experience and communication skills to either think or ruminate effectively about anything of consequence, why does the world need still another voice crying out in the wilderness? Good question…

      I offer the comments that will occur in this blog because issues impacting the outdoor enthusiast community have taken on a complex patchwork of political, legal and scientific issues that are rarely addressed by an outdoor media for whom “journalism” has too often been reduced to re-writing the public relations hand-out from whichever destination resort offers them the most impressive junket. And when it comes time to take a stand on the progressive degradation of California’s outdoors, they write soppy articles that alternately bemoan that the “good old days are gone” while simultaneously promoting expensive vacation destinations that have retained quality fishing and hunting opportunities through the privatization of the outdoors as the alternative. They act as though they are archeologists commenting on the decline of a lost civilization with which they had no personal contact. No one is blamed, no one is held responsible.

      The sad fact is that over the some 50 years I have observed outdoors conditions in California, these “good old days” stories are recurring annual events. The sobering reality is that 10 years from now, 2008 will be described in glowing terms as the “good old days” generating pangs of longing caused by selective memory.

      It is my hope that the words on this blog have the possibility of surviving in the total recall of the cyber-world and will be our voice to the future. And what should be appropriate nom de plume? In 1971 the great Theodor Suess Geisel writing as Dr. Suess introduced a curmudgeon-like character:

“He was shortish. And oldish.

And brownish. And mossy.

And he spoke with a voice that was sharpish and bossy.

"Mister!" he said with a sawdusty sneeze,

"I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees.

I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.”

        While most of the Dr. Suess books have been relegated to cartoon voice-over opportunities for Jim Carey and other hyper-active comedians, “The Lorax” holds the unique place of honor of having been banned in the Laytonville (California) School District on the grounds that it "criminalized the forestry industry." On the on-line alphabetized list of “banned” books, it is sandwiched between “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” and “Mein Kampf.”

      In fact the Lorax’s message was considered so subversive that several timber industry groups, including the Hardwood Forest Foundation and the National Oak Flooring Manufacturers Association, engaged in counter-programming by financing  the creation of a children’s book called “The Truax” to counter Dr. Suess’ message of environmental consequences. At the end of the book, the land denuded, the water polluted and the forest that once teemed with life now quiet and foreboding, the Lorax sounds his alarm:

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better, it’s not!”

      I have always been haunted by those words and this self-indulgent blog is my personal response to that challenge….

      The Lorax now speaks:

      One of the most interesting phenomena of our 24-hour news cycle is that institutional memories often fade and that by careful applications of professional public relations, reality can be re-written and the passage of time can allow persons with a questionable history to re-create themselves by cleansing themselves of their checkered past.

      Recently there has been an enthusiastic outcry among many of the symbionts who write outdoor columns in the state’s largest newspapers in support of appointing former Mono County Supervisor Tim Alpers as Director of the California Department of Fish and Game. Most of the outdoor columnists only know Mr. Alpers in his recent reincarnation as hatchery operator extraordinaire. He served three terms as Mono County supervisor and was a member of the Inyo-Mono Fish and Game Advisory Commission, the Bureau of Land Management's Central California Resource Advisory Council, a local sub-committee of the California Energy Commission and the Lahonton Regional Water Quality Control Board. But it is the brand-name “Alpers Trout” raised on the ranch he owned on the Owens River near Mammoth that has been his primary source of notoriety.

      Trout hatcheries of course are the panacea created by water agencies and dam builders to “offset” the destruction of natural spawning habitat by creating an aquatic lottery in the form of a few photogenic over-sized trout to create the impression that all is fine in the fishing universe. The Lorax will speak to the “blue smoke and mirrors” of trout hatcheries in future rant, but today is a history lesson….

      Long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away, the Lorax recalls another Tim Alpers who was a Mono County Supervisor faced with a vote on whether the Bonneville-Pacific Corporation would be given permission by the county to construct transmission lines along Hot Creek leading to their power plant. Their lobbyist on the ground, Andy Weisner, was trying to defuse the opposition by financially “recruiting” allies including California Trout and the Mammoth Flyrodders by offering up to $300,000 in “donations” for local fish projects. The night before the vote that Tim Alpers of yore was re-contacted one final time before the vote by the fishing folks and assured them that he was voting against B-P.

      The following day the vote occurred and the audience was stunned when Supervisor Tim Alpers voted in favor of Bonneville-Pacific’s transmission lines.

Representatives of California Trout and the Mammoth Flyrodders were stunned and drove up to the Alpers Ranch to find out what had happened. When they arrived, Mr. Alper’s elderly mother re-directed them to an old, non-descript shack built from weathered board siding about 200 yards from the house at the base of the falls near the springs.

      They first noticed a new large gray diversion pipe that lead away from the top of the falls and entered the old weathered shack. They knocked on the door and when there was no response, they opened the creaky door. The interior of the decrepit shack was well-lit with a shiny-new polished gray floor and installed on that floor, humming away, was a state of the art hydro-electric generator…. Standing next to the generator was an ashen-faced Tim Alpers staring wide-eyed at his surprise visitors. The cost of such an installation? Probably somewhere near $300,000…. And it was only after the discovery that the necessary permits and licenses appeared.

      But that was such a long, long time ago that it couldn’t possibly be the same Tim Alpers who in 2005 received an Environmental Heroes Award from the Wilderness Society…. Or could it?