The state Department of Fish and Game announced in late November that Upper Blue Lake, Cache Creek, Indian Valley Reservoir and Pillsbury Reservoir would not be included in the agency's fish stocking program this year, as Lake County News has reported.
On Dec. 9 the board adopted a proclamation declaring a local emergency in response to that decision.
For decades Fish and Game has stocked Indian Valley Reservoir with Kokanee fingerlings, placed brown trout fingerlings in Cache Creek, and catchable rainbow trout in Upper Blue Lake and Lake Pillsbury, according to Stafford Lehr, a senior environmental scientist in Fish and Game's North Central Region.
However, a lawsuit brought in Sacramento Superior Court by the Pacific Rivers Council and the Center for Biological Diversity, caused the fish stocking program to be shut down in certain lakes and reservoirs until Fish and Game completes an environmental impact report.
The suit arose over concerns about the impact of nonnative fish on native fish and amphibians, such as the hardhead minnow, spring- and winter-run chinook salmon, California red-legged frog, arroyo toad and foothill yellow-legged frog, according to court documents.
Concerned over having the program cut off and what it could mean to the county's businesses and to bird life that feeds on the fish, the board passed the resolution in the hope that Fish and Game would reconsider and add local lakes and Cache Creek back on the list of waters to be stocked.
A Fish and Game official told Lake County News that any decision to update the list would need to be approved by the case plaintiffs.
On Tuesday, Greg Giusti, county director for the University of California Cooperative Extension, said that the message got through to the state.
As of Monday, the state had received the resolution and reacted by removing both Indian Valley Reservoir and Lake Pillsbury from the list of lakes that won't be stocked, said Giusti.
“Those lakes are back to status quo,” he said.
Cache Creek and Upper Blue Lake, however, still won't be stocked. Giusti said Upper Blue Lake is the county's highest priority when it comes to the stocking question.
Upper Blue Lake could still be stocked, said Giusti.
Fish and Game is going to conduct surveys of the lake to look for the hardhead minnow and red-legged frog. If the surveys, due to be completed by March, don't find those species there, Fish and Game will recommend to US Fish and Wildlife that Upper Blue Lake be removed from the list.
Giusti said the probability of finding the hardhead minnow in Upper Blue Lake is small.
He added, however, that Cache Creek may never be removed from the list of lakes that won't be stocked because of the red-legged frog.
Supervisor Jim Comstock asked how long the exemption is good for if it's granted. Giusti said it would be a final decision and wouldn't have to be renewed.
County County Anita Grant advised the board that it needed to decide if the current circumstances justified continuing the emergency ordinance, which they did.
Supervisor Rob Brown moved to find that the emergency still existed, a motion seconded by Supervisor Anthony Farrington and approved unanimously by the entire board.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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