Considering a major point of the poisoning is to protect the other connected waterways from the pike, it is curious, as this story reports, that no study has been done on what would happen if the pike got into those waterways.
No wonder some people in the Lake Davis area are upset.
New plan set to poison Lake Davis pike
By Jane Braxton Little - Bee Correspondent
Published 12:00 am PST Wednesday, January 24, 2007
After a seven-year effort to control the northern pike population, Department of Fish and Game Director Ryan Broddrick announced plans Tuesday to again treat Lake Davis with chemicals to eradicate the non-native species from California waters.
Calling invasive species the top challenge for the nation and the state, Broddrick said the $12 million project would begin sometime after Labor Day.
It will be the state's second attempt to rid the Plumas County reservoir of the pike first found there in 1994. A chemical treatment in 1997 cost the state about $20 million but failed to eradicate the voracious species, which feeds on trout and other fish.
This time careful planning and better communication with the community, the U.S. Forest Service and other agencies should assure success, said Ed Pert, Fish and Game pike project manager.
"If it's humanly possible to eradicate pike, we're going to get them this time," Pert said.
State officials fear pike from Lake Davis will migrate downstream into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, where they would pose a threat to native fisheries….
Opposition to the second treatment is far more muted. Fish and Game has never conducted a scientific study of the potential for pike to move downstream or what would happen if they did, said Harry Reeves, a Quincy angler who sued over the 1997 poisoning and a 1992 treatment of Frenchman Reservoir, the first California waters to contain pike.
Portola has not "signed off" on the potential economic or other impacts of the project, said Jim Murphy, city manager.
