Your Feet Kill up to 43% of Fish

This would be a funny joke, if it weren't for the millions of America's taxpayer dollars getting poured into comical organizations like the USFS Payette National Forest every year.

According to Clem Pope of the Payette National Forest and his cohorts, walking through a stream ONE TIME kills up to 43% of the fish eggs?

 In the off chance living creatures may have survived the toxic wastes dumped into the river by recent fires, now they have to worry about my size 16 salmon stompers?

I've had athlete's foot once or twice, which may have been responsible for killing up to 10% of the fish in the South Fork, but the other 33% were not my fault!

Click for larger image

Seen here: Over 1,000 cubic yards estimated dumped into the East Fork of the South Fork of the Salmon River. This blowout, the result of the 2007 wildfires the Payette National Forest refused to control. This is located approximately three miles downstream of Stibnite, Idaho. The sediment here is volcanic and likely contains high amounts of arsenic, mercury, stibnite, tungsten, lead, zinc, cadmium. In addition to benzene and other hazardous by-products generated naturally by burning wood and organic substances. Note: When cinnabar, otherwise known as mercury ore, is heated to roughly 450 F, it liberates mercury fumes directly into the air.
As seen here, the ore which contains up to 80% mercury by weight was heated, liberated and dumped into the river where it will form sulfuric acid and liquid mercury. It occured due to forest fires on ore bearing mountains where no mining has ever occured. The amount of heat it took to cause this catastrophe was un-natural, due to over-forestation. For a hundred years, the USFS, Civilian Conservation Corps, logging companies have planted excessive trees in this region. In the mid-1990s all logging was stopped, which would have lessened this type of catastrophic event. Yet the US Forest Service would have you believe it's simply taking your kids swimming that is the REAL fish killer!

Here's the best the US Forest Service could spend countless amounts of your tax-dollars on, given such short notice:

Payette National Forest report titled:

Biological Assessment for the Potential Effects of

Managing the Payette National Forest in

the Middle Fork Salmon River Tributaries NW and Main Salmon River Tributaries SE

Section 7 Watersheds on

Snake River Spring/Summer and Fall Chinook Salmon,

Snake River Steelhead, and Columbia River Bull Trout

and

Biological Evaluation for

Westslope Cutthroat Trout

Volume 11

Ongoing and New Actions

http://www.fs.fed.us/r4/payette/projects/2009monitor/MFT_BA11.pdf

Hidden on page 98 reads:

"9. TRAVEL PLAN

Potential effects of this action are: increased sedimentation in streams due to motorized and nonmotorized use at road and trail stream crossings, increased chances of petroleum spills, and physical harm to eggs that may be present in redds at fords and elsewhere. Soils on roads and trails at stream crossings can be delivered as sediment to streams via wind, water, and tires at fords. As described above (section V. A. 6.), this additional sediment can reduce habitat quality and adversely affect incubating eggs, and petroleum products can directly poison salmonids and their aquatic invertebrate food source (section V. A. 4.). Mortality of listed fish eggs (adverse effect) can occur should redds be trampled or driven over. Trampling can occur due to any foot or horse use in streams, including use from anglers, swimmers, people floating in watercraft, people hiking, and similar activities. There are approximately 34 road crossings and 20 stream trail crossings in the Upper Big Creek subwatershed of the MFSR subwatershed, of which an unknown number are fords. About 90 percent of these trail crossings are assumed to be fords (Clem Pope, Recreation Manager, Payette NF, McCall, ID). Fording frequently occurs in spawning habitat because these are often the easiest places to cross a stream. Roberts and White (1992), found that twice-daily wading throughout trout egg development killed up to 96% of trout eggs and pre-emergent fry, while a single wading just before hatching killed up to 43% of eggs."

From 34 road crossings, 20 stream/trail crossings, most of which are not in spawning beds, PEOPLE are the root cause of fish trampling?

What about grey wolves, deer, elk, bear, bald eagles, beaver, wolverine, mountain lion and linx which also use the stream crossings? Do they kill 43% of the eggs every time they walk across a creek?

Do the people writing this stuff, write it from a cubicle in McCall? Or simply make it up right on the spot? Do they plagerize it from Saturday Night Live? Or was it the result of a VERY GOOD mushroom season after these same people mismanaged an 850,000 acre fire?

Have they been drinking the bath water after soaking in bath salts again? Or are they simply institutionalized bureaucrats who are more busy looking for ways to keep their jobs than actually trying to figure out how to preserve the forests America has charged them with?

Sadly, we may never know............

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