NEW COMMITTEE MEETING DAY & TIME: Meetings will now be held on the 1^st Tuesday of the month at 7:00 PM. They will be held at the Round Table Pizza in Granite Bay, Douglas Blvd at Auburn Folsom. Thank you to Mike Laing and John Carroz for attending the October meeting. I hope that more members will be able to attend in the future.

SPECIAL PROJECTS

Emergency Fish Rescue / Volunteer Survey Team: We currently have 9 members on this list (including those that signed up at the October general meeting). I hope that this will become more popular as we participate in more rescues and surveys. The idea is to have a large enough list of people to call at any given time to get 5-10 members participating in these events as they come up. We generally only have a few days notice, so we need as many members as possible to have diversity. I’ve begun requesting availability, so that we can call those that would usually be available when these events occur (e.g. weekends vs. weekdays). Hopefully this will help the guilt factor (having to say no if we call you) and increase the names available on the list. This worked out really well for the Upper Truckee Electro-fishing survey that we helped with recently.

North Mokelumne Project with Sac-Sierra Trout Unlimited

Barbara Bania reports that the original location of this project will be changed due to the presence of too many negative influences in the area (e.g. lots of kids and kayaks) that would undo the planned riparian habitat installation. A smaller creek that feeds into the North Mokelumne near the same area is currently being considered.

Caples Lake Fish Rescue (Aug 26-29)

There were a couple of members that signed up for this, but when they arrived to help, there were already too many people there. They had more than enough help. Thank you to Mike Howes for volunteering his valuable time to make an appearance on behalf of GBF!

Upper Truckee Electro-fishing Survey (Sept 9-12)

As mentioned above, we utilized our newly implemented Emergency Fish Rescue / Volunteer Survey Team (FRV Team?) and we were able to have 2 members participate in this survey with DFG. Thank you to Mel Odemar and Bill Templin for volunteering their valuable time and representing GBF’s conservation committee at this event.

STATUS REPORT on current legislation

AB1806 Schwarzenegger vetoed this bill, claiming it is unnecessary and duplicates authority already conferred to the Department by existing laws and regulations for mitigation for fish and wildlife impacts and coordination between federal, state and local agencies. Additionally, the burdensome process that this bill would create could potentially inhibit restoration activities initiated in association with flood control projects (taken from CSPA Article: http://www.calsport.org/9-30-08a.htm).

AB2175 As of 9/30/08:  Re-referred to the Senate Rules Committee.

AB2938 As of 9/30/08, in Senate Appropriations - This bill would require the department, upon funding being made available in the annual Budget Act, to design and implement a prescribed monitoring program to evaluate the potential effects that diversions of water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, as defined, may have on fish species residing in, or migrating through, the Delta.

For status updates on open legislation in the State Assembly, go to:

http://www.assembly.ca.gov/acs/acsframeset2text.htm

Well, that’s all for now. The next conservation committee meeting will be held on Tuesday, November 4^th at 7:00 PM at the Round Table Pizza in Granite Bay (Douglas Blvd at Auburn Folsom).

All are welcome to attend. Come see what we have in store!

~Robin, (916) 396-0030 Tggr514@yahoo.com

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