Tag: Peter Moyle
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Ten realities for managing the Delta
This article was originally published Feb. 26, 2013 By Peter Moyle I have been working on Delta fishes for nearly 40 years. Increasingly, I have curmudgeonly thoughts about what is needed to make the ecosystem work better. Here I present these thoughts as “Ten Realities” – statements of the obvious that are often overlooked in…
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Ten ways the feds can help ease drought in the West
Since the onset of California’s drought emergency 16 months ago, federal agencies and Congress have been seeking to help the state through funding and new and existing legislation. Here are 10 recommendations for new federal actions. Although many focus on California, they are relevant to other western states facing similar challenges. Because droughts are a…
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Q & A on survival of California’s delta smelt
Four years of severe drought and decades of huge water diversions appears to have pushed delta smelt to the point of no return. State biologists netted only a single smelt last month in trawl of 40 sites in San Francisco Estuary, the species’ only home. The record-low catch came less than a month after UC…
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Water giveaways during a drought invite conflict
This article first ran in the San Francisco Chronicle on March 20, 2015. By Jay Lund and Peter Moyle When labor is scarce, people move to better jobs with higher wages.…
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Prepare for extinction of delta smelt
By Peter Moyle I saw my first delta smelt in 1972, during my first fall as an assistant professor at UC Davis. I was on a California Department of Fish and Wildlife trawl survey to learn about the fishes of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The survey then targeted young striped bass, but the trawl towed…
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Salmon finding a home in my backyard – Could it be?
By Peter Moyle The sound of splashing drew me to the stream. A dark finned back cut the surface. Salmon? The fish came into view and its snout was a giveaway, maroon-hued and curved like a hook. This was a spawning male Chinook salmon. It alternated between chasing another hooknose and two jacks, small males…
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Drought a ghost of Christmas past — and present
By Peter Moyle I love this cartoon because it says so much about water and droughts in California. Alan Marciochi drew this during the 1976-77 drought. He knew what he was drawing. A farm boy from Los Banos with a degree in biology, Alan worked for me studying endangered Modoc suckers in remote northeastern corner of…
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Flagging problem dams for fish survival
By Ted Grantham and Peter Moyle This drought year, as in those past, California water regulators have given away to cities and farms some river flows critical to fish and wildlife. It’s a dicey tradeoff considering most of our native fishes are in trouble even without the drought. There are, however, legal backstops to prevent…
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Modernizing drought water allocations
The State Water Resources Control Board recently solicited public comments on how to improve its drought curtailment of water rights. Here is a summary of insights and recommendations from a group of seven California water experts. By Ellen Hanak, Jeffrey Mount, Jay Lund, Greg Gartrell, Brian Gray, Richard Frank and Peter Moyle This past year’s severe drought…
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Drought Journal: Hope springs eternal
Is the drought hastening the decline of California’s native fish? Will they be able to recolonize once normal conditions return? To help find out, a team of researchers with the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences took the pulse of about 70 streams and rivers across northern and central California this summer, examining habitat conditions and recording the…
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Is shorting fish of water during drought good for water users?
By Jay Lund and Peter Moyle In drought years, California usually reduces “environmental water flows” — the amount of river flows needed to maintain aquatic ecosystems — to make more water available for farms and cities. The current drought has been no exception. Depriving fish of adequate river flows, however, might not be in the interests…
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Planning for the inevitable at Suisun Marsh
By Amber Manfree and Peter Moyle In Suisun Marsh, it seems, you can go back in time. You get a haunting sense of the vast marshes that once dominated central California’s lowlands. Sloughs flush with tule perch and Sacramento splittail bend back on themselves. Flocks of red-winged blackbirds rise from thickets of cattails and rushes with…
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Drought’s No. 1 lesson: Modernize water management
Jeff Mount, Ellen Hanak, Bruce Cain, Caitrin Chappelle, Richard Frank, Brian Gray, Richard Howitt, Katrina Jessoe, Jay Lund, Josué Medellín-Azuara, Peter Moyle, Leon Szeptycki and Buzz Thompson This year’s drought is testing how well California manages water during severe dry periods. As we head into spring and the major irrigation season, rainfall totals, snowpack, reservoir…
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Yurok stewardship of Klamath’s Blue Creek bodes well for fish
By Peter Moyle Last summer I had the privilege of camping overnight with members of the Yurok Tribe and Western Rivers Conservancy on Blue Creek, one of California’s loveliest streams and an important cold-water refuge for migrating salmon and steelhead. The creek tumbles down the misty Siskiyou Mountains not far from Redwood National Park. I…
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Saving California’s salmon during a severe drought
By Peter Moyle California is in one of the most severe droughts in recent years. This means water agencies are under great pressure to sacrifice river flows meant to sustain fish and wildlife for increased water delivery to farms and cities. Here are some questions decision-makers should consider in the tradeoff. Why save native fish?…
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The ESA, fish and me
“Nothing is more priceless and more worthy of preservation than the rich array of animal life with which our country has been blessed.” — President Richard Nixon upon signing the Endangered Species Act on Dec. 28, 1973 By Peter Moyle The Endangered Species Act turns 40 this week, and I…
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Are Central Valley steelhead really ‘threatened’?
By Peter Moyle The primary goal of the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) is to shorten the government’s list of “endangered” and “threatened” species. The American Peregrine falcon, the brown pelican, the eastern Steller sea lion and California populations of the gray whale are among the iconic creatures that have recovered to large populations and…
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Warmer water will kill off most of California’s native fishes
By Peter Moyle The peculiar pattern of rain California had this winter – virtually none in January and February – should remind us all that climate change is really happening now. “Abnormal” events will become increasingly frequent as our era of benign climate recedes. Dry winters are especially hard on native fishes that rely on…
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Large delta smelt population found south of Delta
UC Davis scientists have found large populations of the federally protected delta smelt growing extraordinarily large in three Southern California reservoirs, hundreds of miles from its native waters. The smelt presumably colonized the lakes after being pumped from the Delta though the California Aqueduct. The find, reported today (April 1) in the journal Pelagic Papers,…
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Reconciling wild things with tamed places – a future for native fish species in the Delta
Peter Moyle, William Bennett, John Durand, William Fleenor, Jay Lund, Jeffrey Mount, University of California – Davis Ellen Hanak, Public Policy Institute of California, San Francisco Brian Gray, University of California – Hastings School of Law Today, the Public Policy Institute of California released two reports that look at how California can better manage the…