CDFW Meeting Thursday, April 9 8:30am

[Mahigeer]

I got this email to day.





April 2020

Beyond Lemonade

With Rights Come Responsibilities.

A few weeks ago you heard a little bit about making lemonade while we dealt with the deadly serious pandemic facing our nation. My suggestion was to A) follow all social distancing and personal hygiene criteria, but instead of sitting at home to B) get outside and take the opportunity to hike, bike, grab a rod and fish, but enjoy our great outdoors. In the intervening weeks, the enormity of the task ahead (and some of us not strictly following social distance guidelines) has quite unfortunately changed our playing field. Beaches, lakes, many parking lots and hiking trails are now closed. These closures are in response to the seriousness of our situation and the danger that even small crowds present.
On this coming Wednesday, like this past Wednesday, the California Fish and Game Commission will hold a special session devoted to a request that originated in the Eastern Sierra. Normally, the end of April brings warming weather and the opening of the trout season there. While the Highway 395 corridor normally handles a huge incursion of eager anglers, it is woefully unprepared for potential C-19 emergencies that might just hitch along. Despite this being their largest influx of anglers and tourist dollars, Inyo and Mono counties asked for a delay in opening up fishing. Chuck Bonham and the Department of Fish and Wildlife and the California Fish and Game Commission stepped up and took this on. Thus the special Commission meeting. They put out the following fact sheet to clearly let us fishermen know what, how and why they are asking for the ability to temporarily, tightly control some of our fishing. Please carefully read the following. I believe it is in everyone’s best interest and I fully support their effort.

Fact Sheet
About Responding to County and Tribal Requests on Recreational Fishing During Public Health Emergency - April 11, 2020:
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW)confirms the following facts:
•Neither CDFW nor the Fish and Game Commission has proposed a statewide closure of recreational fishing. Neither intends to do so.
•The proposal is based on formal requests from local counties to consider restrictions to address health and safety concerns associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.
•Given the dynamic nature of this public health emergency, CDFW and the Commission simply seek a faster, streamlined ability to be responsive to local counties and Tribes.
•The proposal is specific and narrowly tailored. For a short time (only until May 31, 2020), CDFW would have an improved ability with limited authority from the Commission to respond to local counties and Tribes. This emergency regulation would expire far sooner than emergency regulations are typically effective (which is 180 days).
• The CDFW Director could only act in consultation with the Commission President, and only after considering public health and safety guidance from local and Tribal governments.
•After all those criteria, CDFW could temporarily suspend, restrict or delay sport (recreational) fishing. That’s it. Temporarily.
•If CDFW used this limited ability, it is required to report back to the Commission and the public in the Commission’s April and May 2020 meetings.
•This proposal is based on specific requests from counties concerned about the April 25, 2020 trout season opener, which is an annual event that typically draws many thousands of people to Inyo, Mono and other counties in the Eastern Sierra. This situation raises a legitimate concern at the local level regarding potential transmission of COVID-19 from outside areas, especially considering the limited health infrastructure in the small towns hosting these openers. Please see letters from Alpine, Inyo and Mono counties.
•If the Commission approves the emergency regulation for this limited effort, the CDFW Director has been clear that the focus is on being responsive to these three counties.
•It would be irresponsible for the CDFW and Commission to NOT be responsive to local needs in this public health emergency, where we must do all we can as Californians to help each other make it through this emergency together.
•CDFW has taken NO steps to limit any current hunting seasons nor would this regulation allow that.
•CDFW would act to reopen any suspended or delayed fishing seasons promptly, based on the same commitment to local, county and Tribal public health and safety input.
•Similar emergency ability during droughts has been in place since 2015 that also allows CDFW, in consultation with the Commission, to close fisheries based on environmental and fish population-based criteria. Since then, CDFW has only invoked one closure (Merced River) as the use of that authority is taken very seriously and only used as a last resort.
•The angling community has risen together before to do the right thing. We know that we can count on them now too.

Tight lines,
Tom


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