by Dan Bacher
John and Barbara Stephens-Lewallen, Mendocino County’s leading environmental activist couple, demanded that the Schwarzenegger administration stop the corrupt, fast-track Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative in a letter they presented to the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force for the North Coast Study Region on March 1. Their plea to halt the process was made the [...]
by Dan Bacher
The Pacific Fisheries Management Council (PFMC), a quasi-governmental body that manages West Coast fisheries, on February 11 released alarming numbers showing that California’s once most abundant salmon run collapsed to an all-time record low in 2009.
by Tim Stelloh
“Consensus” isn’t a word that comes to mind with the Marine Life Protection Act, Mendocino County branch.
by Tim Stelloh
It’s one of the career changes some of Mendo’s unemployed fishermen are pondering these days, according to a story about California’s non-existent commercial salmon industry–and what local fishermen are up to–in the LA Times today.
Coastal residents are protective of Mendocino County’s wild and rugged coastline — so protective that when the state announced a process for new marine protection zones, environmental groups and seafood harvesters started organizing.
The State of California is drafting rules which will restrict activity in new areas off the Mendocino, Del Norte and Humboldt county coast [...]
by Daniel Mintz
Government agencies throughout the North Coast are against a controversial plan to create marine reserves and the county’s Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District will try to unite the region’s opposition forces into one group.
Implementation of the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) is about to start in the North Coast region and the county’s Harbor District [...]
by Daniel Mintz
The implementers of the state’s controversial Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) told a suspicious audience at Eureka’s Wharfinger Building that influ ence can be exerted through participation in a uniquely inclusive public process.
That message, delivered at a June 22 workshop meeting, contradicts what’s been said locally in vari ous political and governmental arenas. In Humboldt County, [...]
by Bruce McEwen
The abalone fillet sizzled in a pan of seasoned butter. The wine was so cold the bottle sweated. A dash of brandy went into the pan, the alcohol caught and the chef flipped the fillet in a cloudlet of flame. An auspicious aroma escaped into the dining room where the tables were spread with linen, [...]
Assembly Bill 2121 (“Protecting North Coast Fisheries”) was signed into law in 2004. It called for the State Water Resources Control Board to issue a new draft North Coast Instream Flow Policy. (We discussed the poison pill in the new policy — watershed groups made up of moneyed diverters only — at length in these [...]
Late last month California’s Water Resources Control Board issued the final draft of their “Policy for Maintaining Instream Flows in Northern California Coastal Streams.”
The new policy was prepared in accordance with California Water Code Section 1259.4 which states that “On or before January 1, 2008, the board shall adopt principles and guidelines for maintaining instream [...]
