Posted on 07/10/2006 1:05:29 PM PDT by spectr17
OUTDOOR COLUMN -- matthews-ONS -- 05jul06
Deer in peril by aqueduct, fencing work
By JIM MATTHEWS Outdoor News Service
A portion of the burro deer herd in Imperial and Riverside counties is being denied water during the scorching summer heat because of work being conducted by the Coachella Valley Water District (CVWD) on the Coachella Canal, located on the east side of the Salton Sea and Imperial Valley.
The canal, which has delivered Colorado River water to farm fields in the Imperial Valley for decades, is being replaced with a concrete lined canal to eliminate leakage. This will increase the amount of water that can now be delivered to the San Diego Water Authority, which has been purchasing Imperial Valley water rights to quench the thirst of San Diego's growing human population.
The new canal is being built adjacent to the existing earthen canal, and the Coachella Valley Water District began fencing 40 miles of the two canals in late July without providing water sources for wildlife which currently uses the old canal. Vast stretches of both canals were fenced with eight-foot tall, wildlife proof fencing, with openings only placed every mile or so, according to Leon Lesicka, founder of Desert Wildlife Unlimited (DWU) in Imperial County. This prevented many deer from reaching the canal to drink in their accustomed spots.
"The deer coming out of the desert hit the fence, walked 50 to 100 yards or so along it, and then their tracks would wander back out into the desert. There's no water in the desert, so you don't have to be a mental giant to figure out we've lost a bunch of deer out here," said Lesicka.
Portions of the new canal also were watered. This created a death trap for desert deer which can't climb out of the new canal like they can the old canal. Once a deer slides down the new canal's steep-sided, concrete embankment, they struggle to exhaustion trying to climb out and eventually drown.
"It's a bad deal," said Lesicka. "Back in the latter 1970s and early 80s, we lost a whole bunch of deer -- probably 125 to 150 during that go around with the CVWD [lining canals without providing a means of escape]."
But the California Department of Fish and Game (DFG) staff is more optimistic this "go around" won't be as bad.
"They've been very responsive and anything we've asked them to do, they've done it," said Kim Nicol, a senior environmental scientist with the DFG in its Bermuda Dunes office, of the water district. The DFG has been involved for about two weeks.
While one deer did drown when it entered the watered portion of the new canal, temporary berms have been installed in the new canal so deer can climb out on their own. Volunteers from Lesicka's group and monitors from the water district has since rescued several other deer and have provided water sources at all of the breaks in the fence and other key spots for wildlife -- at least 50 or 60 troughs, according to Lesicka.
Nicol said the water district wasn't supposed to build the fence until late fall or winter when the deer didn't need to come to water every day, like they do during the summer, but she said the agency has postponed any more fencing work until winter.
As part of its final mitigation package for the new canal, the CVWD also agreed to use portions of the old canal to put at least 31 drinkers in areas of high wildlife use, according to Nicol. But the drinkers weren't installed before the fence was erected, and Lesicka said there were not enough openings in the fence to allow access to the old canal.
Quick work by the DWU volunteers along with DFG and the water agency staff got emergency water troughs out in the desert along the fence line quickly, and the CVWD has taken over the responsible of filling the wildlife drinkers and monitoring the new canal for deer that have become trapped, herding them to the berms where they can climb out. "We would have liked more fence opening [and watering spots], and if monitoring shows there are not enough, the water district is committed to doing more," said Nicol. Lesicka just wishes they would have built the new canal with steps or curbs which would have allowed wildlife and people to enter and climb out of the new canal along its whole length. The steps or linear curbs were built into a test portion of a canal and found to work perfectly, but Lesicka said Bureau of Reclamation engineers feared for the canal's structural integrity with the steps. Lesicka said this decision was made without any engineering support, and the agency decided that fencing and off-canal watering sites would be cheaper and safer.
"With bureaucrats and engineers, they can give you reasons that sound good but don't make sense. I've been in construction my whole life, and it could have been done, but they don't like to work with non-agency people. And I'm a non-agency person. This is just another screw-up," said Lesicka.
How many deer could have perished before water was added? No one really knows for sure, and animals that do die of thirst are swallowed up by the desert quickly, making a survey for carcasses unrealistic -- and many of the deer might have wandered into the Chocolate Mountains Aerial Gunnery Range where it takes even special permission of the Department of Fish and Game to enter.
Everyone is just hoping the current stop-gap measures are enough to prevent any more deer losses this "go around."
Contact info to let the folks responsible for this goat rope know how you feel.
San Diego County Water Authority
Maureen Stapleton
4677 Overland Avenue
San Diego, Ca 92123
858 522-6500
Coachella Valley Water District
Michael Emerson
PO Box 1058
Coachella, Ca. 92236
760 398-2651 ext2362
760 398-3711 fax
memerson@cvwd.org
He's got plenty of water.
DEER?! Who cares. There are going to be deer in peril from my bow and arrows if they don't stay the hell out of my garden. I'll bet deer outnumber people in the USA now.
Problem #2: Deer are drowning.
Problem #3: There is NO problem number 3!
I thought deer can clear 12 foot fences. Higher if frightened.
INDOOR NEWS SERVICE -- July 10, 2006
What did the deer do before the aqueduct was buit?
I wouldn't know what deer can do when they're frightened because the ones around here never are. Snort challengingly at people who try to chase them out of the yards. Like horse-sized rats. Don't get me started on the traffic hazard and the diseased ticks they drop everywhere. I'm just getting over Lyme right now.
And these deer are entitled to use their traditional watering hole? The canal is manmade and just over a century old. Deer are just giant rats. I suppose next we should restore to mosquitos their ancestral watering tires?
Just an FYI, I'm a hunter who run a hunting publication. All the hunters in the valley are behind this to keep the water accessible to the deer AND bighorn sheep.
Water is life in the desert.
We ARE NOT antis.
Thank you
Deer are like flies.
They are just cuter since Bambi came out, and you need bigger fly swatters.
Oh, and they make GREAT pepperoni.
Nothing wrong with the deer pictured here, she`s just practicing her underwater breathing.
Three years ago, saw an elk in the Pacfic outside of Astoria doing the same thing. Sad, but stuff happens.
Who cares?
Deer are not giant rats! They are tasty giant rats!
This enviro activist isn't accepting a "structural integrity" answer from engineers trying to lay canal across desert wasteland and through earthquake and fault territory.
Gee.
Wonder what the deer drank in the desert BEFORE the old canal was laid?
Reports from fellow hunters who have visited the canal say there are no steps in the canal. Something the Water District promises they would do to prevent the drownings.
Just concerned hunters here, that is all. Yall can toss all them clueless labels as long as you want. Some of the ignorant replies here really make me wonder. I'm an enviro activist because some goobermint agency screwed the pooch for the 2nd times killing deer and bighorn sheep????? Love that line of logic
To the goof who claimed deer were everywhere, obviously you haven't spent much time around the desert. Seeing a deer or bighorn is not something you'll see everday like in the midwest, the deer densities are miniscule compared to whitetails.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.