Over the last week, EPIC has been working with fishing and conservation groups across Northern California and the Pacific Northwest to build resistance to California Senator Dianne Feinstein’s proposal to suspend Endangered Species Act protections for endangered salmon and other wildlife in California’s Sacramento Delta. Senator Feinstein’s proposal would send more water from Northern California’s Trinity and Sacramento Rivers to the Westlands Water District, despite the harm to crashing salmon populations and the people and ecosystems that depend on healthy fisheries.

Feinstein’s attempt to place a “rider” on the pending Senate jobs bill would benefit fabulously wealthy campaign contributors like Hollywood billionaire Stewart Resnick, owner of Paramount Farms and controller of most of the nation’s almond and pistachio crops, at the expense of the already-decimated salmon industry on the West Coast. It would establish a horrible precedent that environmental laws don’t apply when wealthy and powerful interests like the Westlands Water District object.

“Senator Feinstein’s cynical attempt to suspend Endangered Species Act protections for truly imperiled Sacramento River salmon is not only an ecological disaster in the making,” said Scott Greacen, executive director of EPIC. “It would put at risk ten times as many jobs in fishing as it would protect for farmworkers, give the Trinity River’s water to the corporate agribusiness that has been trying to steal it since the 1960s, and establish the horrible precedent that our crucial environmental laws don’t apply to wealthy funders of powerful politicians.”

The good news is that North Coast Congressman Mike Thompson has taken a politically courageous stand for salmon and the salmon fishing industry by co-authoring a very strong letter to Senator Feinstein opposing her rider.

Please call Senator Barbara Boxer’s office in Washington D.C. at 202-224-3553 or in San Francisco at 415-403-0100 and ask her to oppose Feinstein’s water grab.

If you have an extra moment, please call salmon defenders including Mike Thompson’s Washington D.C. office at 202-225-3311 or his Napa District office at 707-226-9898, and thank them for their efforts to defend Northern California’s water and fish.

An example of one of the signs the County of Del Norte has put up around Tolowa Dunes State Park and the Lake Earl Wildlife Area.

Take Action Now! Send a letter to California State Parks and the Department of Fish and Game.

It looks like the County of Del Norte likes to disregard the law and play by its own rules. A series of signs designating county roads as combined use—allowing both cars and off highway vehicles (OHVs)—have been placed within the Pacific Shores subdivision providing easy access to adjacent Tolowa Dunes State Park and the Lake Earl Wildlife Area north of Crescent City, California. The only problem is, the County needs a permit from the California Coastal Commission before any development or road designations can be made. In other words, the combined use road signs are patently illegal. The County’s facilitation of ongoing illegal trespass, which is destroying wetlands and dunes, is doubly disturbing.

For years, illegal OHV use in Tolowa Dunes State Park and the Lake Earl Wildlife Area has caused extensive damage to sensitive habitats, hurting endangered and threatened wildlife species. The recently posted signs are yet another attempt to subvert the law and unlawfully operate OHVs in these areas. The signs stem from a May 2009 Del Norte County Supervisors meeting where a resolution was approved to designate the roads in question as combined use. The supervisors skipped the essential step of procuring a permit from the Coastal Commission to legally make the road designations and quietly slipped this item through without public hearing.

James Baskin, coastal planner for the California Coastal Commission, has sent a letter to the County of Del Norte alerting the county of the illegal signs and road designations. Baskin warns the County that if it does not remove the signs and continues allowing the roads in question to be designated as combined use, the County will face fines.

Damage similar to crop circles caused by OHVs at Egret Slough in Tolowa Dunes State Park.

Unfortunately California State Parks and the California Department of Fish and Game (DFG) have failed to effectively enforce laws prohibiting OHV use in state parks and wildlife areas. While the Coastal Commission has responded rapidly and warned the county of the illegality of the road designations, State Parks and DFG are not calling the county to task.

Send an electronic letter to Ruth Coleman, Director of California State Parks, and John McCamman, Director of the California Department of Fish and Game, and demand that they enforce the law and end the illegal use of OHVs in Tolowa Dunes State Park and the Lake Earl Wildlife Area.

“The timber industry’s effort to force delisting was always ludicrous, basically exactly the opposite of what conservation science has been telling us about the murrelet’s actual status,” said Scott Greacen, EPIC’s executive director. “What’s needed now is for USFWS to stop responding to the industry’s cynical, anti-science agenda and start taking concrete steps that will actually improve the murrelet’s chances of survival.”

The threatened marbled murrelet is a small seabird that flies inland to nest on the mossy limbs of old-growth trees. During the past century, California’s murrelet population dropped from 60,000 to approximately 4,000 individuals. Humboldt Redwood Company’s (formerly Pacific Lumber) ancient redwood groves in Humboldt County are one of three remaining nesting areas in California.

Read the USFWS press release on the marbled murrelet’s threatened status.