Stunning “Viewpoint” piece about Tahoe’s frail trout population – and how California plans to give the lake’s sole remaining spawning habitat away for use as… a golf course??
Does the state need another golf course this badly?
Derby Dam blocked the Truckee River
and killed the huge run of trout that had, for thousands of years, come
from Pyramid Lake upriver to Tahoe. That first year, the new dam
blocked tons of huge trout trying to spawn while the dam’s beneficiaries
– desert hay farmers – pitchforked wagonloads of fish, which they used
as fertilizer.
Back then, lovely Lake Tahoe had such a large
trout population that it supported a commercial fishery. Dams like Derby
disrupted that.
Unfortunately, today’s remaining frail population of Lake Tahoe’s
trout is under threat again. This time a politically motivated golf course expansion threatens to take over the Washoe Meadows State Park, threatening the Upper Truckee, the only spawning river left for the lake’s fragile trout population.
The trouble with golf courses on a spawning stream is they are a large source of trout-killing poisonous pollutants.
Read more here:
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Other than downhill skiing I’m hard pressed to think of any other recreation or land (and water) use more destructive than golf. Tahoe has enough of both. To use State Park property that was set aside as wetland habitat for a golf course is enough to make me want to puke. According to the Sporting Goods Manufacture’s Association, the popularity of golf is on a steep decline and a glut of golf courses is on the market.
I agree with Huey Johnson, but he has somewhat shot his credibility in the foot by comparing a golf course with Derby Dam and by stating that the Upper Truckee River is Lake Tahoe’s “sole remaining spawning habitat”. Ward, Blackwood, General, Meeks, and Taylor Creeks are only some of Tahoe’s active and viable spawning tributaries. He doesn’t need to embellish the facts, the facts alone are good enough to stop the project in its tracks.
Ralph C(Quote)
Several years ago, I read that golf courses are the second biggest consumer of herbicides/pesticides/fertilizers in the USA (behind only agriculture). They’re also huge consumers of water.
The “only” viable habitat thing was a little rich, but I thought Derby Dam was a good illustration of what’s already happened, albeit a long time ago. Sometimes we do have to reminded of what we lost (as in Rivers of a Lost Coast), else we begin accepting the current sad state as “normal.”
Tom Chandler(Quote)
This is quite simply terrible. I am from California, and nothing makes me more upset to see how my home state mismanages its resources. The place is already broke, is another golf course going to fix that? No…
I guess that’s why I moved to Atlanta.
Josh(Quote)
The Tahoe region has more than enough golf courses, yet we in California and Nevada continue to live in complete ignorance of the arid conditions in which we reside. Like Ralph points out, Huey Johnson does indulge in a bit of hyperbole (comparing Tahoe trout to the herds of bison on the Great Plains?) and he also fails to mention the wanton waste of water that most golf courses practice. No one seems to want to admit we live in a state of perpetual drought, despite years of heavy precip such as 2009-2010.
Nonetheless, this is similar to the Pebble Mine boondoggle, on a much, much smaller scale.
Ralph, you funding the anti-golf course (ala anti-Pebble Mine) stickers?
Professor(Quote)
Let’s compromise. Let’s removed only half of the current golf courses and turn them back into native landscape. That’s what they call being reasonable.
Smarter and Better Looking Brother(Quote)
“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”
Ed Abbey
This was on Yuba Net last week: Fertilizer chemicals linked to animal developmental woes
http://yubanet.com/enviro/Fertilizer-chemicals-linked-to-animal-developmental-woes.php
Dan(Quote)
Unfortunately, it’s also the ideology of capitalism.
professor(Quote)
Yep. Two measures: gross and net.
Dan(Quote)