Californias D12 Deer in trouble.........AGAIN/STILL!!
socal duckie
3/16/07 10:31am
thought i would pass this along.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/sports/outdo...s17gotodie.html
Agencies scrambling to protect deer from getting trapped in new, concrete-lined section of Coachella Canal
By Ed Zieralski
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
February 17, 2007
NILAND – It took Desert Wildlife Unlimited and the Department of Fish and Game more than 20 years to rebuild the desert mule deer herd after concrete lining of the Coachella Canal wiped out an estimated 175 deer in the early 1980s.
(see photo)
Desert mule deer, such as this one, get into the concrete-lined section of the Coachella Canal but are unable to climb out.
But that incredible conservation effort is on the verge of being washed out again as deer are dying almost daily in a new section of the Coachella Canal that has been lined with concrete to prevent costly water seepage.
An estimated 21 desert mule deer have died since Jan. 1 along a 33.4-mile stretch of the canal north of Niland, according to the DFG.
“We had a deer die (yesterday morning) and another drowned Wednesday,” said Brawley conservationist Leon Lesicka, founder of Desert Wildlife Unlimited. “They're going to die and they're going to keep on dying unless something is done.”
What happens is thirsty deer, seeking a sip of water, go through the many openings in the 8-foot-high fence that lines parts of the canal. They slip in and then can't get out because the concrete walls are too slippery.
Gruesome photographs show bloated, dead deer – does, bucks and yearlings – floating in the water. Examinations show they have bloody, worn hooves from trying to fight their way up the canal walls. Even if a deer makes it up the walls, the wear and tear on its hooves often proves fatal because their feet are too sore to walk.
In this latest canal project, an unknown amount of deer died last summer when the agencies involved constructed a fence along the new, concrete-lined canal. Lesicka said not enough water sources were in place at the time to serve deer accustomed to drinking from the old, more wildlife-friendly Coachella Canal that had dirt banks.
Lesicka said he tracked deer that walked to the fence, walked along it and then gave up and went back into the Chocolate Mountains without getting water.
“There's no telling how many of those deer died,” Lesicka said.
The Bureau of Reclamation together with the Coachella Valley Water District, the state of California and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and the San Diego County Water Authority have teamed up on this latest project.
In this effort, the concrete-lined canal will conserve approximately 26,000 acre feet of water a year and be available for San Diego County. It also will help “maintain the amount of Colorado River water available to California” and satisfy the goals of the California River Water Use Plan, according to environmental documents in the Federal Register.
Steve Robbins, general manager-chief engineer for the Coachella Valley Water District, said the project cost approximately $100 million, with $83.65 million coming from state funds. Dave Fogeson, senior engineer for the San Diego County Water Authority, said another $18 million or so will come from the state in the form of Proposition 84 money that also will fund the lining of the All American Canal if that project gets out of the courts. Thus far, the San Diego County Water Authority has not had to pay anything for the canal.
“Not to date we haven't, but we're at the point where we're going to have to put money in for the mitigation,” Fogeson said.
Robbins said approximately $7 million to $10 million is going to mitigation projects, with one being adding drinkers and more fencing to protect deer and other wildlife.
“It's really a question of how do you balance the benefit to humans and the impact on wildlife,” Robbins said. “It's a very tough call.”
Said Fogeson: “We're making a sincere effort to try and solve this problem and keep deer out of the canal and keep them from dying.”
Robbins said the conserved water – the 26,000 acre feet – will serve about 50,000 homes a year in San Diego County.
In 1980, the first 49-mile section of the Coachella Canal was lined, also to conserve water. That project spelled the death for at least 175 deer, according to Lesicka, and inspired him and others to form Desert Wildlife Unlimited, an organization that has built or improved hundreds of water sources for wildlife throughout the desert and Chocolate Mountains.
“They didn't learn from what happened in the past and now they're repeating their mistakes,” Lesicka said. “Now it's going to take many more years to get water out in the desert to bring this herd back again.”
The DFG estimates there are approximately 2,000 deer in the D-12 Zone, but Lesicka said it's difficult to say how many inhabit this section of the canal. If it's 200, then 10 percent of the deer have died in the past month and a half.
Robbins disputes the number of deer killed this year, saying it's “not quite into double digits.” But Kimberly Nicol, a senior environmentalist with the DFG, said Thursday that 20 deer have died in the canal since Jan. 1, and that was before yesterday's reported death of a buck.
Nicol said the big question is whether enough drinkers have been installed. She said two-thirds of the proposed 42 drinkers – 34 on the uphill East mountain side, eight on the downhill, west agricultural side – have been built. They are 10 feet by 20 feet and are fed a continual supply of canal water.
“We've met again with the water districts, and they have agreed to do more temporary fencing and put in more water sources,” Nicol said. “This is a No. 1 priority for us, to get this taken care of and make sure the mitigation is as robust as possible. The next step is to work with the water districts on monitoring and forming an adaptive management plan. With any mitigation, unless it's monitored, you don't know how successful it is.”
Lesicka said the monitoring should have been part of the planning stage. An expert tracker and authority on desert wildlife and drinkers, Lesicka has built water sources in countries as distant as Mongolia. He identified at least 12 more areas where drinkers must be built to prevent future deer fatalities in the Coachella Canal.
Robbins and Fogeson said the water agencies will comply and do whatever is necessary to keep deer from dying.
“Based on what we knew happened in the 1980s, we worked with the Fish and Game and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from the beginning to put together a plan that should have resolved this issue,” Robbins said. “We're as surprised as anyone that there has been this loss of deer.”
Robbins called the herd – zoned as D-12 by the DFG – an “artificial population” that wouldn't be as robust were it not for the original construction of the canal in the 1940s.
“But now that the population is there, it's our duty to protect it,” Robbins said. “We hate finding deer floating in the canal as much as anyone. Society has been responsible for building these water sources, so it's up to us to help wildlife around them survive.”
Lesicka said the original environmental impact report called for ridges, or rows of linear curves on the canal walls. The ridges would have allowed deer to get in and get out. A prototype section was tried, but the Bureau of Reclamation decided not to build it that way, just as it did in the early 1980s.
“It wasn't practical to build it,” Robbins said.
Lesicka, a retired contractor who often worked with concrete, doesn't buy it.
“They did that prototype section with the ridges, and it worked great,” Lesicka said. “They spent over $1 million on the prototype because the original environmental impact report said they were going to put those linear curves in there. But when they started the project, they disregarded the report. This all is one big royal screw-up by our great government.”
Agencies scrambling to protect deer from getting trapped in new, concrete-lined section of Coachella Canal
By Ed Zieralski
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
February 17, 2007
NILAND – It took Desert Wildlife Unlimited and the Department of Fish and Game more than 20 years to rebuild the desert mule deer herd after concrete lining of the Coachella Canal wiped out an estimated 175 deer in the early 1980s.
(see photo)
Desert mule deer, such as this one, get into the concrete-lined section of the Coachella Canal but are unable to climb out.
But that incredible conservation effort is on the verge of being washed out again as deer are dying almost daily in a new section of the Coachella Canal that has been lined with concrete to prevent costly water seepage.
An estimated 21 desert mule deer have died since Jan. 1 along a 33.4-mile stretch of the canal north of Niland, according to the DFG.
“We had a deer die (yesterday morning) and another drowned Wednesday,” said Brawley conservationist Leon Lesicka, founder of Desert Wildlife Unlimited. “They're going to die and they're going to keep on dying unless something is done.”
What happens is thirsty deer, seeking a sip of water, go through the many openings in the 8-foot-high fence that lines parts of the canal. They slip in and then can't get out because the concrete walls are too slippery.
Gruesome photographs show bloated, dead deer – does, bucks and yearlings – floating in the water. Examinations show they have bloody, worn hooves from trying to fight their way up the canal walls. Even if a deer makes it up the walls, the wear and tear on its hooves often proves fatal because their feet are too sore to walk.
In this latest canal project, an unknown amount of deer died last summer when the agencies involved constructed a fence along the new, concrete-lined canal. Lesicka said not enough water sources were in place at the time to serve deer accustomed to drinking from the old, more wildlife-friendly Coachella Canal that had dirt banks.
Lesicka said he tracked deer that walked to the fence, walked along it and then gave up and went back into the Chocolate Mountains without getting water.
“There's no telling how many of those deer died,” Lesicka said.
The Bureau of Reclamation together with the Coachella Valley Water District, the state of California and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and the San Diego County Water Authority have teamed up on this latest project.
In this effort, the concrete-lined canal will conserve approximately 26,000 acre feet of water a year and be available for San Diego County. It also will help “maintain the amount of Colorado River water available to California” and satisfy the goals of the California River Water Use Plan, according to environmental documents in the Federal Register.
Steve Robbins, general manager-chief engineer for the Coachella Valley Water District, said the project cost approximately $100 million, with $83.65 million coming from state funds. Dave Fogeson, senior engineer for the San Diego County Water Authority, said another $18 million or so will come from the state in the form of Proposition 84 money that also will fund the lining of the All American Canal if that project gets out of the courts. Thus far, the San Diego County Water Authority has not had to pay anything for the canal.
“Not to date we haven't, but we're at the point where we're going to have to put money in for the mitigation,” Fogeson said.
Robbins said approximately $7 million to $10 million is going to mitigation projects, with one being adding drinkers and more fencing to protect deer and other wildlife.
“It's really a question of how do you balance the benefit to humans and the impact on wildlife,” Robbins said. “It's a very tough call.”
Said Fogeson: “We're making a sincere effort to try and solve this problem and keep deer out of the canal and keep them from dying.”
Robbins said the conserved water – the 26,000 acre feet – will serve about 50,000 homes a year in San Diego County.
In 1980, the first 49-mile section of the Coachella Canal was lined, also to conserve water. That project spelled the death for at least 175 deer, according to Lesicka, and inspired him and others to form Desert Wildlife Unlimited, an organization that has built or improved hundreds of water sources for wildlife throughout the desert and Chocolate Mountains.
“They didn't learn from what happened in the past and now they're repeating their mistakes,” Lesicka said. “Now it's going to take many more years to get water out in the desert to bring this herd back again.”
The DFG estimates there are approximately 2,000 deer in the D-12 Zone, but Lesicka said it's difficult to say how many inhabit this section of the canal. If it's 200, then 10 percent of the deer have died in the past month and a half.
Robbins disputes the number of deer killed this year, saying it's “not quite into double digits.” But Kimberly Nicol, a senior environmentalist with the DFG, said Thursday that 20 deer have died in the canal since Jan. 1, and that was before yesterday's reported death of a buck.
Nicol said the big question is whether enough drinkers have been installed. She said two-thirds of the proposed 42 drinkers – 34 on the uphill East mountain side, eight on the downhill, west agricultural side – have been built. They are 10 feet by 20 feet and are fed a continual supply of canal water.
“We've met again with the water districts, and they have agreed to do more temporary fencing and put in more water sources,” Nicol said. “This is a No. 1 priority for us, to get this taken care of and make sure the mitigation is as robust as possible. The next step is to work with the water districts on monitoring and forming an adaptive management plan. With any mitigation, unless it's monitored, you don't know how successful it is.”
Lesicka said the monitoring should have been part of the planning stage. An expert tracker and authority on desert wildlife and drinkers, Lesicka has built water sources in countries as distant as Mongolia. He identified at least 12 more areas where drinkers must be built to prevent future deer fatalities in the Coachella Canal.
Robbins and Fogeson said the water agencies will comply and do whatever is necessary to keep deer from dying.
“Based on what we knew happened in the 1980s, we worked with the Fish and Game and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from the beginning to put together a plan that should have resolved this issue,” Robbins said. “We're as surprised as anyone that there has been this loss of deer.”
Robbins called the herd – zoned as D-12 by the DFG – an “artificial population” that wouldn't be as robust were it not for the original construction of the canal in the 1940s.
“But now that the population is there, it's our duty to protect it,” Robbins said. “We hate finding deer floating in the canal as much as anyone. Society has been responsible for building these water sources, so it's up to us to help wildlife around them survive.”
Lesicka said the original environmental impact report called for ridges, or rows of linear curves on the canal walls. The ridges would have allowed deer to get in and get out. A prototype section was tried, but the Bureau of Reclamation decided not to build it that way, just as it did in the early 1980s.
“It wasn't practical to build it,” Robbins said.
Lesicka, a retired contractor who often worked with concrete, doesn't buy it.
“They did that prototype section with the ridges, and it worked great,” Lesicka said. “They spent over $1 million on the prototype because the original environmental impact report said they were going to put those linear curves in there. But when they started the project, they disregarded the report. This all is one big royal screw-up by our great government.”
5,219
oakbrush
Surely something can be done and quick.