California Legislator Wants Striped Bass Eradicated

State assemblywoman Jean Fuller from the agriculture-based district of Bakersfield, California — which receives a large portion of piped-in water from other parts of the state — has introduced a bill that would remove protections given to striped bass in recent years. Bill AB 1253 is designed, in part: ” to establish an effective program to prevent additional striped bass from entering the state, to discourage the promotion of the San Francisco Bay-Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta as a striped bass sport fishery, to immediately end any existing program for the enhancement, expansion, or improvement of striped bass populations and their habitat, and to eliminate any and all legal restrictions regarding the size or number of striped bass that may be taken.”
The move has raised a collective howl from conservationists and virtually every west coast sportsman organization, who are enraged by Fuller’s attempts to eradicate striped bass, a fish most consider to be a primary indicator of the health of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The great irony here is that supporters of AB 1253 claim that striped bass predation is a direct cause of the dramatic declined in salmon numbers, while most scientists agree that decades of poor water management and the dewatering of spawning streams and rivers has been a more real and measurable factor.
You can help the efforts of organizations like the California Sportsfishing Protection Alliance and the newly formed Save Our Stripers by going to www.saveourstripers.org and signing their letter to the Committee on Water, Parks and Wildlife before April 24.