did you ever wake up with bullfrogs on your mind?

You had to sit there laughin',
Laughin' just to keep from crying...

Sen John McCain

John McCain is my hero now....oh I know Senator John McCain from Arizona has been all over the place politically and he killed his chances to be president by picking Sarah Palin to be veep...but he seems like a level headed guy most of the time...

and I always like it when representatives try to cut wasteful spending and one of the biggest wastes is habitat restoration in California..specifically for the steelhead trout...the last time I looked, trout can't swim in dry creekbeds which is what happens most of the time in SB and Carpinteria..and maybe McCain can stop all these other crazy restorations that do more harm than good..and use tax money unwisely....

　
SENATORS JOHN McCAIN AND TOM COBURN ON WASTEFUL SPENDING IN THE CONTINUING RESOLUTION
March 12, 2013

As budget sequestration continues to level strain and uncertainty on the men and women of our nation’s armed forces, and as we draw closer to the ‘devastating’ effects on our military readiness as foreseen by our former Secretary of Defense, Members of Congress have an even more profound responsibility to account for every taxpayer dollar. Every dollar we waste through pork barrel spending today is a dollar not spent to support our troops and preserve our nation’s security.
"With this in mind, Senator Coburn and I last week made a standard request to be able to review for 72 hours the Continuing Resolution legislation coming before the Senate prior to moving forward and considering it on the Senate floor. Instead, we received the 587-page Continuing Resolution – which totals more than $1 trillion – at 9:00 p.m. last night, and the sponsors of the bill attempted to begin Senate consideration just hours later this afternoon – before anyone could have plausibly have read and considered the bill in its entirety.
"After reviewing this legislation for less than 24 hours, it is clear that our suspicions were well justified. The bill contains numerous examples of egregious pork barrel projects as well as hundreds of millions in spending that was never authorized by the appropriate Committee and not requested by the Administration.
"This is a preliminary, partial list of questionable spending that we have identified in the bill so far:

• Provides $65 million for Pacific Coast salmon restoration for states including Nevada, a program that even President Obama mocked in his 2011 State of the Union address.

the NOAA and the National Marine Fisheries Service has a bad plan for restoring the steelhead habitat...

Specific threats to steelhead populations include:

Blockage of access to 90 percent of historic spawning and rearing habitat above dams
Dewatering of streams by dams and diversions
Loss of riparian vegetation from agricultural, residential, and commercial development, and related flood control activities

Filling and degradation of estuarine habitat
Introduction of non-native, exotic fish and amphibians
Point and non-point pollution from up-slope land use practices

Priority recovery actions include:

•Establishing access above impassible barriers (road crossings, dams, debris basins)
•Restoring flow regimes for migration and over-summering habitat
•Reducing point and non-point pollution sources
•Developing and implementing a comprehensive habitat monitoring and stock assessment program
Restoring ecological estuarine functions to support steelhead rearing and acclimation

　
and don't forget the #1 threat to steelhead...no water in the creeks!!

and this is what pisses me of the most: they want to kill so called non-native amphibians like bullfrogs..BULLFROGS ARE NOW THE ENEMY!!! I love bullfrogs and their croaky music after it rains..I love it!!! I was raised with bullfrogs..running around the streams and creeks with my little friends, the bullfrogs...and the tadpoles eat insects like mosquitoes!!!

the Forest Service had a crazy plan to burn out the Sespe to kill "exotic" animals that "threatened" the steelhead: from the LA Times, 1997: another factor threatening the steelhead and their habitat is the presence of exotic plants and animals that were brought into the area from other locales. They include salt cedar, also known as tamarisk, bullfrogs, green sunfish and black bullhead catfish.

The fish and the bullfrogs will be sacrificed because there is an abundance of those populations, Garcia said.

Efforts are ongoing with volunteers to remove the tamarisk and take it to higher ground where it can dry out and die. If the tamarisk is not removed, it could potentially dry out the entire stream because it consumes water much faster than other surrounding vegetation, Garcia said.

The plan to restore the steelhead habitat by using controlled burns and by killing the other nonnative fish and bullfrogs met with support Monday from Russ Baggerly, president of Citizens to Preserve the Ojai.

"These are species that don't belong there and it will ruin the resource for the species that do belong there," Baggerly said. "The Sespe is such a prime habitat for steelhead and the Santa Clara River watershed is relatively unspoiled. I think its incumbent upon those of us who understand the need for species preservation to make sure that they have every chance possible to survive."

　
all of this is just bullshit..salt cedar is good and harms nothing and the bullfrogs...how can anyone hate bullfrogs??? to suggest that the bullfrogs "don't belong here" is nonsense and Ross Baggerly of Citizens to Preserve Ojai..these guys are now on my radar...
　

and they should read this: Although intended to help restore salmon habitat or habitat for other organisms, habitat restoration activities can be detrimental to salmon and their habitats. Inadequate, and often absent, analyses of habitat deficiencies and their causes can result in ineffective restoration efforts or habitat injury (Gregory and Bisson 1997, Kauffman et al. 1997, Roper et al. 1997). This should not discourage efforts to restore functional aquatic and riparian ecosystems, but efforts should be part of a watershed or basin conservation plan, carefully monitored and evaluated, and revised accordingly. Efforts should initially identify and eliminate the causes of habitat impairment, and only then consider active restoration techniques to accelerate habitat recovery (Bisson et al. 1997, Lawson 1997).

If restoration efforts are not undertaken with an understanding of the conditions in the watershed, not only may they be unsuccessful, but they may also create additional problems. For example, while stabilizing an eroding bank may improve local water quality, the same treatment may deflect water flow and create erosion elsewhere, thereby decreasing streambank cover, and constricting the natural dynamics of stream channels.

in other words, tread lightly when attempting any restorations....

and if you want to see some steelhead, go to Idaho