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Recreation
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- Written by: Bonnie Thompson
LOWER LAKE, Calif. – The Redbud Audubon bird walk for November will be at Anderson Marsh State Historic Park on Saturday, Nov. 21.
Meet in the parking lot at 8:45 a.m. for a 9 a.m. walk start. There should be some songbirds, raptors and wildfowl, and they will stroll the mostly flat, but scenic trails of the park.
Don’t be surprised to see black-shouldered kites and red-tailed hawks.
Bring water and lunch to share in the Anderson Marsh Ranch House yard after the walk.
Anderson Marsh State Historic Park is located on Highway 53 between Lower Lake and Clearlake. It is on the west side of the highway off of Anderson Marsh Parkway.
Please be prepared to pay the $4 parking fee if you plan to park in the ranch house parking lot.
For more information, call Pat Harmon at 707-263-4977.
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- Written by: Editor
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) seeks public comment on its nine draft companion plans, which will supplement the recently revised 2015 State Wildlife Action Plan (SWAP).
The public review period will run from Nov. 16, 2015, through Jan. 15, 2016.
In addition, CDFW will hold a public meeting to present the plans and answer questions on Nov. 30, 2015, from 1 to 3 p.m. in the Natural Resources Building auditorium, 1416 Ninth Street, Sacramento.
The companion plans focus on specific over-arching issues that have a significant impact on the state’s fish and wildlife resources.
The plan categories are agriculture, consumptive and recreational users, energy development, forests and rangeland, land-use planning, transportation planning, tribal lands, water management and marine resources.
CDFW created these supplemental plans to provide more specificity and flexibility to the overall SWAP.
Because these documents focus on a single issue, they can be easily adapted as new information is obtained and new management strategies developed.
The goal of the SWAP is to examine the health of the state’s fish and wildlife resources and to prescribe actions to conserve these resources before they become endangered and more costly to protect.
The plan also promotes wildlife conservation while furthering responsible development and addressing the needs of a growing human population.
As mandated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), CDFW revises the SWAP every 10 years. This process was completed in October 2015 and the plan is currently under review by USFWS.
The draft companion plans and comment form are available online at www.wildlife.ca.gov/swap .
Comments may also be emailed to
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- Written by: California Department of Fish and Wildlife
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) has completed its annual sturgeon tagging program, catching and releasing nearly 400 sturgeon in Bay Area waters.
Many of the tags are eligible for a reward if returned to CDFW by anglers.
The tagging operation is used to help manage California’s green and white sturgeon populations. Information received from anglers about tagged sturgeon complements the details submitted on sturgeon fishing report cards as well as data from party boats, creel surveys, surveys for juvenile sturgeon and various special studies.
CDFW offers monetary rewards for the return of certain marked tags. The tags are smaller than a dime and located behind the rear dorsal fin.
Anglers who return a tag will also receive a certificate of appreciation from CDFW. Additional information and the form for returning tags can be found on the CDFW Web site.
“Protecting the white sturgeon fishery and the sturgeon populations requires research, collaboration, adaptive management and enforcement,” said CDFW Program Manager Marty Gingras. “Angler participation is a vital component of the information-gathering process – we rely on them to help us complete the loop.”
Working in Suisun and San Pablo bays from August through October, crews collected information on 18 green sturgeon, tagged 190 white sturgeon, and collected information on 169 white sturgeon that were either too small or too large to tag.
In an ongoing collaboration with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and a new collaboration with San Francisco Estuary Institute, USFWS staff was also on board CDFW boats to collect various tissues as part of an age-and-growth study and a study monitoring selenium concentrations in white sturgeon.
The Sacramento-San Joaquin river system is the southernmost spawning grounds for both white sturgeon and green sturgeon. Sturgeon in California can live more than 100 years and weigh over 500 pounds, but anglers most often catch sturgeon 3 to 4 feet in length. The sturgeon fishery in California was once closed for decades due to overfishing.
Today, commercial harvest of white sturgeon is not allowed, and recreational harvest of white sturgeon is regulated by size limit, daily bag limit and annual bag limit. Green sturgeon is a threatened species and neither commercial nor recreational harvest of those fish is allowed.
Serialized tags are provided with each sturgeon fishing report card to help enforce the bag limits. To enable law enforcement to cross-reference the tag with a particular card, anglers must permanently fix a tag to each kept white sturgeon until the fish is processed for consumption.
Anglers are required to return their 2015 sturgeon fishing report cards by Jan. 31, 2016.
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- Written by: Editor
Upland game hunters statewide are gearing up for the opportunity to bag their Thanksgiving dinner, as California's 2015 general fall wild turkey hunting season opens statewide on Saturday, Nov. 14.
The season extends through Sunday, Dec. 13, with a bag limit of one turkey (either sex) per day and no more than two per season.
"Wild turkey is very healthy alternative to store bought turkey, as it's low in fat and has no additives. You can't get much more natural than that," said Scott Gardner, manager of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife's (CDFW) Upland Game Program. "It's harder to hunt it than buy one in a store, but any hunter will tell you it's worth the extra effort."
Wild turkeys are found in most counties in California, with the top five for fall harvest being Placer, El Dorado, Shasta, Sonoma and Tehama.
Both a hunting license and upland game bird stamp are required to hunt turkeys, although an upland stamp is not required for hunters with junior licenses.
Rio Grande turkeys are the most widespread wild turkey subspecies in California, occupying much of the mixed oak and pine woodlands of the coast ranges, Central Valley, Sierra Nevada and Cascade foothills.
Merriam's turkeys can be found in habitats dominated by pines in northeastern California, but can also be found in the Transverse Range in Kern County. The eastern subspecies can be found in isolated pockets along the northern coast and eastern/Rio Grande hybrids from the Midwest inhabit areas along the south coast.
Today the statewide population of wild turkeys is estimated at about 250,000 birds. The fall season is open statewide for wild turkeys and CDFW estimates that about 20,000 hunters bagged about 10,000 turkeys last fall.
Many populations range on private land, but turkeys can be found on public lands administered by CDFW, the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. A list of state wildlife areas and ecological reserves can be found on the CDFW Web site.
Upland game hunters are reminded that as of July 1, 2015, nonlead ammunition is required when hunting on these properties. For more information please see the CDFW nonlead ammunition page.
For places to hunt turkeys and additional tips and information, hunters should refer to the "Guide to Hunting Wild Turkeys in California" on CDFW's upland game hunting Web page.