DFG Budget Cuts Would Hurt Family Fishing

Family fishing in California faces a setback if budget cuts proposed within the California Department of Fish and Game go the limit.

Ken Hashagen, the DFG’s hatchery chief in Sacramento, confirmed that each division had been told to produce scenarios for cuts of 10%, 20% and 30% in the next fiscal year as a result of declining license sales and revenue lost from the state’s General Fund.

For hatcheries, depending on the degree of cuts, that could mean reducing planting, closing hatcheries or laying off personnel.

“I’d prefer not to go into details at this point,� Hashagen said. “These are only scenarios if the cuts go that deep.�

The state runs 13 hatcheries for trout and eight for salmon and steelhead.

That prospect comes soon after DFG proposals to reduce its marine-enforcement patrol. The sale of annual sportfishing licenses plummeted from 2.3 million in 1982 to 1.4 million in ’92 and, Hashagen said, “we’re not having much luck finding another funding source.�

None of that would happen, Russ Izor says, if California were receiving its fair share of Wallop-Breaux money from the 1984 federal legislation establishing the Aquatic Resources Trust Fund intended to funnel taxes on fishing tackle directly back to the sport.

Says Izor, owner of Izorline International in Gardena and a former charter boat operator: “We (California) are 13% of the nation’s population . . . (but) Wallop-Breaux decided that a 5% cap (on revenue distributed to any one state) was fair.�

Also, Izor says, there is a giant loophole that fails to tax fishing tackle sold for other uses--for example, the new braided synthetic line sold as kite string or tackle boxes sold as tool boxes.

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A tough break for tiny Green Valley Lake. The 10-acre pond in the San Bernardino Mountains had been producing some of the largest trout in the state recently until it was suddenly closed by state agencies because of a sewage spill last Friday.

Jim Allison, the concessionaire, said the closure wasn’t necessary once tests confirmed that there was no serious contamination of the lake. The trouble is they were his tests, performed by a private laboratory from samples he took himself. The bureaucracy moves much slower.

Said a distraught Allison Tuesday morning: “This could wipe me out.�

However, by Tuesday afternoon George Pfiffner of the state Department of Health Services decided that official tests done by the state Regional Water Quality Control Board regional office in Victorville cleared the lake for fishing, if not for swimming, pending further tests.

Allison said the problem started last Friday morning when a sewer line broke, allowing about 1,500 gallons to run into the lake before he and others could dig a trench to divert it into a holding pond and treat the lake with chlorine. Then he took his samples to the Clinical Lab of San Bernardino, where co-director Carol Jolliff said they showed two parts per 100 million milliliters of fecal coliform.

“That’s below (acceptable) drinking water level,� Jolliff said. “I personally don’t see a problem.�

Neither did the DHS. It simply took a little longer.

Briefly

LEGISLATION--Gov. Pete Wilson Monday signed Senate Bill 779 by Tim Leslie (R-Auburn) intended to protect private property rights by restricting access to private lands by California Department of Fish and Game personnel, except for wardens, or non-wardens (e.g., biologists) responding to emergencies such as oil spills and animal attacks on humans. The DFG seems satisfied with the bill and further conditions to be stipulated in clarifying follow-up legislation promised by Leslie, as a condition of Wilson’s signature.

HUNTING--The DFG is offering the best prospects for quail since 1980 for the opening of the upland game season Saturday. Gambel’s, valley and mountain quail and chukar are said to be in good numbers in Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Riverside and Imperial counties.

* FISHING REPORT: C7