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A labor of love.
Photo by Pat Joseph

by Pat Joseph
Exhibits

The guys at the booth of the California Department of Fish and Game are eager to show off their baby, the Atlas of the Biodiversity of California. Except for the wildlife illustrations by Dugald Stermer, the publication was an in-house project from start to finish, a real labor of love. The Atlas features page after page of beautiful GIS maps, photos and explanatory text, all packaged and put together by DFG employees in their spare hours.

The maps alone are worth the cover price, each one covering a different aspect of the Golden State's geography or wildlife, from the coastal kelp forests to the inland deserts, reptiles to migratory birds. Looking at the map of anadromous salmonid ranges, I'm surprised to see steelhead habitat as far south as the border with Mexico. Steelhead are an ocean going rainbow trout more commonly associated with the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, and like all the salmonids, their numbers have been in declining. Are there still steelhead that far down the coast?

"Yeah. We've even seen them in San Diego-area streams in recent years," says Floerke Robert, clearly excited to share some good news about the state's fisheries. "I think of steelhead as the coyotes of salmonids. You just give them a little habitat and they'll capitalize on it." And how are the Sacramento King salmon doing, I ask. Floerke sticks two thumbs up. And what about the Klamath River? Any developments there?

The Klamath was the site of a major fish kill in 2002. After the Bush Administration decreased flows in the river, (sending water to irrigators upstream instead of sending it downriver), more than 30,000 fish, including untold numbers of threatened Coho salmon, died in the river. The case has pitted state and federal agencies against each other, not to mention irrigators and fishermen. It has also highlighted the Bush Administration's disdain for science.

Robert's colleague spoke up. "The Klamath?" he said, with an air of disgust. "There's no biology at play there. No science. It's all politics. Society will have to decide what it wants to do on that river."

"It's been an interesting case to watch," I say.

"Interesting? More like tragic."

-- 09/10/2005 Sat
4pm