Outdoor Notes / Earl Gustkey : Final Adoption of ’87 Fishing Regulations Expected Today
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Final adoption of 1987 sportfishing regulations is expected to occur at the Fish and Game Commission’s meeting in Long Beach today.
Among some unfinished commission business scheduled for the meeting is consideration of a request from an environmental group that the Sacramento River winter run king salmon be added to endangered species lists. The commission continued action on the subject at its meeting Nov. 7 to allow for comment from the state attorney general’s office.
The commission also will receive recommendations from the Department of Fish and Game for antlerless/either-sex deer hunts for 1987.
Also before the commission is a proposed policy that would require the DFG to protect and enhance wetland habitat and to oppose any project or action that would decrease wetland acreage or habitat values.
The public portion of today’s meeting will start at 9:30 a.m. at the Long Beach City Council Chambers, 333 W. Ocean Blvd., Long Beach.
Hector Cuellar of Guanajuato, Mexico, was awarded the Weatherby Big Game Trophy Wednesday night at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. Cuellar was chosen from among six nominees, the others being Dr. James Conklin, McKeesport, Pa.; Dante Marrocco, Palos Verdes Estates; Robert Chisolm, Wichita, Kan.; Robert Kubick, Anchorage, Alaska, and Andrew A. Samuels, Jr., Youngstown, Ohio.
Cuellar has taken 217 different big-game species on six continents, putting 93 of them in record books. He has been active in wildlife conservation programs, providing time, effort and funds for the controlling of poaching in the Central African Republic, and also supports the bighorn sheep program in Mexico.
For Christmas, the DFG suggests an indispensable item for the family angler--a 1987 California fishing license. Licenses are available at most sporting goods stores and all DFG offices. Cost for the inland-ocean license is $18.50, or $10.50 for the ocean-only license.
The DFG also advises hunters not to throw away their expired hunting licenses. Showing the old license when applying for a new one hastens the process, the DFG says.
The National Wildlife Federation, in the Thanksgiving-Christmas season, reminds Americans that had Benjamin Franklin had his way 200 years ago, the wild turkey, not the bald eagle, would adorn United States stamps, documents and currency today.
The NWF points out that the wild turkey represents one of the outstanding conservation stories of the 20th Century. There were fewer than 30,000 turkeys in the wild after World War II, the federation points out, yet today there are more than 2 million, found in every state but Alaska.
Domestic turkeys, the federation adds, are dumpier, shorter-legged, dim-witted cousins of the wild turkey introduced into Europe in the early 1500s by Cortez, after he conquered Mexico. Later, European colonists brought domesticated turkeys to North America.
Wild turkeys are far more agile than their barnyard cousins. Most large birds must go through long takeoffs, running and flapping, to become airborne. But a wild turkey is capable of instant, vertical flight, even though it may weigh as much as 25 pounds. And wild turkeys can achieve speeds of 38 to 42 m.p.h. in flight, roughly the same as a red-tailed hawk.
Briefly Thirty-one desert bighorn sheep have been transplanted from the Kofa Mountains of western Arizona to the Peloncillo Mountains in the southeast part of the state in a continuing effort to repopulate bighorns in their historic Arizona habitats. . . . Vern Goehring has been selected as the DFG’s new legislative coordinator for the 1987-88 session that began Dec. 1. . . . U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists on Maui have discovered for the first time a nest of the very rare Po’o-uli bird, a species discovered in 1973. . . . Showtime: Anaheim Sports, Vacation & RV Show at Anaheim Convention Center, Jan. 3-11.
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