Save the California Delta Alliance (STCDA)

If you have been as dismayed as I have been about the recent attempts to eradicate the striped bass (erroneous claims that the bass, instead of excessive exporting of water from the Delta, are the cause of the decline of the salmon) then happily note that the Fish & Game Commissions yesterday voted unanimously to reject the Department of Fish and Game’s striped bass regulation change proposal.

The proposal was introduced by the DFG as a settlement agreement resulting from a 2008 lawsuit. In that lawsuit, the Coalition for a Sustainable Delta claimed that striped bass are “harming” native species, including endangered Central Valley chinook salmon and steelhead and Delta smelt.

But the slight-of-hand being attempted is clear when you find out that three executives of Stewart Resnick’s Paramount Farms in Kern County founded the Coalition for a Sustainable Delta. Resnick is the politically connected Beverly Hills billionaire who has made tens of millions of dollars annually from buying and reselling water back to the public for a big profit. It’s the same profiteers who are making millions from water that are behind efforts to build the Peripheral Canal and recent legislation to give Paramount Farms easier access to water contracts (causing more and more excessive exporting) and water rights over family farmers who have farmed for generations. And bass fisherman have been loud opponents to the Two Gates and Peripheral Canal efforts these millionaires want in order to increase exports.

The article concludes: “Hoorah to the integrity of the Fish and Game Commission to see through this ‘fishery management by lawsuit’ and defend the autonomy of the regulation process. Particular credit goes to outgoing Commission President Jim Kellogg who, as his last piece of business in his term, declared striped a native species,””

Read the entire article at http://blogs.alternet.org/danbacher/2012/02/02/commission-votes-against-pursuing-striped-bass-eradication-proposal/