Outdoor Notes : Volunteers Help Preserve Land With Cleanups

Clearing a mile of overgrown trees and shrubs from a stream on a warm summer day is hardly anyone’s idea of fun.

So anglers fishing the West Fork of the San Gabriel River recently can thank 23 members of the Pasadena Casting Club for improved conditions, such as fewer overhanging branches to snag errant back-casts.

The West Fork is managed as a wild trout stream by the California Department of Fish and Game (catch and release, artificial lures and barbless hooks only) although it hasn’t been given that official status by the State Fish and Game Commission. But, being so close to Pasadena, it has been a pet project of the PCC since the late 70s.

Certainly, the club’s efforts benefit its members, but in a larger sense they represent a case of outdoor enthusiasts giving something back to the resource.

“They don’t just talk conservation,” says Jim Edmondson, the CalTrout Region 5 manager who participated in the work day.

There are other examples.

The Aguabonita Flyfishers of Ridgecrest will be working with Inyo National Forest personnel Saturday on rehabilitating Crooked Creek in the White Mountains near the Bristlecone Pine area, east of Big Pine on California 168. Free use of a campground is available. For more information, phone (619) 375-2231.

Another project is planned by the new South Coast chapter of Trout Unlimited at Fish Creek on the Kern Plateau of the Southern Sierra over Labor Day weekend, Sept. 2-5. Over-grazing of cattle has resulted in erosion of stream banks and sedimentation of the state’s original golden trout source.

The U.S. Forest Service will provide tools and materials, Trout Unlimited food. The area, which has a campground, is 33 miles west of U.S. 395 on the Kennedy Meadows turnoff near Little Lakes. For more information call Brian Botham at (714) 846-7608.

Eric Gerstrung, a DFG fishery biologist who is responsible for threatened trout species, said the South Fork Golden Trout is a pure strain of the official state fish that dates back 20,000 years, preceding the Ice Age that wiped out other Western fisheries.

“This stream has never been stocked,” Gerstrung said. “It’s a pure native population.”

Fish Creek, which flows four or five miles through meadowland to feed the South Fork of the Kern River, is only a few feet wide but will serve as a pilot project for what Gerstrung says is the most degraded area of fisheries in the state.

“If this catches on, there are all kinds of work we could do on the Kern Plateau,” he said.

Such projects are not unusual. Most hunting and fishing clubs are active in field conservation work. That aspect does not get much attention because it’s not very exciting--just hard work--but it’s an important stake in the future of the sport.

Two men were arrested at Los Angeles International Airport last weekend for illegal possession of bear parts for commercial use--a violation of the Fish and Game Code.

The parts were estimated by the California Department of Fish and Game to have a total resale value of about $12,440.

According to the DFG, Hal Glenn Taron, 28, of Terrace, Canada, was apprehended when he tried to claim the shipment he had sent to Ji Soo (Simon) Kim, 44, of Los Angeles. Kim was arrested when he was told the shipment had arrived and came to the airport to claim it.

Lt. Louise Fiorillo of the DFG’s regional office in Long Beach made the arrests, assisted by agents of U.S. Customs and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The men were booked at L.A. County Jail on bonds of $50,000 each.

Briefly

Assemblywoman Doris Allen (R-Cypress), losing patience with the slow movement of her Assembly Bill 1 to ban gill nets along the Southern California coast, has introduced Assembly Constitutional Amendment 14. The purpose, she said, is “to prevent the legislature from continuing to ignore the gill net issue and to cave in to the mounting pressure from the commercial fishing industry. (Supporters of AB 1) must be prepared to bypass the legislature and qualify an initiative for the statewide ballot” . . . Prospects are gloomy for California’s split dove season Sept. 1-15 and Nov. 11-Dec. 25. Few white-wings have been seen, and mourning doves, which started showing up in the Imperial Valley last week, are expected to stay around only if the weather remains fair.

The Los Angeles chapter of Quail Unlimited will offer a calling clinic Thursday night, 7 p.m. at the Long Beach Elks Lodge, 4101 E. Willow St. Mike Mathiot, Western Regional Director for the club, will preside . . . Department of Fish and Game wildlife biologist Denyse Racine will conduct a tule elk viewing tour Saturday at 8 a.m. from the posted “Wildlife Viewpoint” seven miles south of Lone Pine on U.S. 395 . . . DFG biologist Jim St. Amant warns tortoise owners not to return their pets to the wild and expose them to a current, virulent respiratory disease that would prove fatal. It is illegal to remove desert tortoises from their natural environment because they are listed as “endangered” by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and “threatened” by California Fish and Game Commission.