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There are a lot of people out there busting their hump working with hand managers, building trail, rerouting trail so it will be more ecologically friendly, etc. It only takes on jerk to flush all that work of many down the toilet. If we don't stop this within our own ranks we won't have any trails left (can you blame them) and without trails there is no endurance rides. Land mangers are going to care less if this was a good guy "endurance rider" or a bad guy "renagade" trail rider.  We gain and lose trail together.

Truman

bechack@xxxxxxx wrote:

Too bad they didn't work together and build bridges instead.


---- Original Message ----
From: trails@xxxxxxxxx
To: ridecamp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: [RC]   Cutting Fence can cost all of use trails!
Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 09:00:09 -0800

  

Horse-riding





vandals ruin

hatchery eggs



By Christine Vovakes

BEE CORRESPONDENT

SISKIYOU COUNTY - Horseback-riding van­dals cut fences protecting
pristine
mountain water that funnels into Mount Shasta Fish 'Hatchery,
trampled
through streambeds and sent a flood of silt into incubators where
more than
a half-million brown trout eggs died.



The vandalism forced hatchery crews to re-sort to an old-fashioned,
labor-intensive incu­bation method to continue the annual produc­tion
of 11
million eggs, said Stephen Sanders, manager of the state Department
of Fish
and Game hatchery.



"The eggs were completely silted in. We had a 100 percent loss," he
said.
"The lucky part is that we're still spawning. They were the first
batch."

Last year, hatchery workers noticed that horse riders were getting
into
streambeds and creating erosion. Crews repaired existing fences and
erected
several new ones.



"People came through and cut every single one we put up," he said.
"Sounds
like someone was really upset with us for putting up the fenc­ing.

Officials suspect the vandalism happened the first week of January
when
heavy rains turned the damaged creek banks into cascad­ing silt.
Since eggs
can't be checked during the first 30 days of the incubation process,
work­ers couldn't confirm the deadly toll until this week, Sanders
said.



A conservation crew is expected to begin re-pairs Monday. In the
meantime,
hatchery workers are incubating eggs in baskets made of woven mesh
screens
and set into troughs where water filters through them. The
labor-in­tensive
process takes up more space and is less efficient, officials said.



Calling the actions "very willful, vandal-ism," Sanders said the
perpetrators "may not have understood the potential damage to the
fish, but
they did understand what they were doing to the fences."



The incident is being investigated by the Siskiyou County Sheriff's
Department, said spokeswoman Susan Gravenkamp.

Bill Tate, a local outdoor columnist and owner of Dunsmuir Fly
Fishing Co.,
surveyed the damage.



"It's just a shame," he said. "It's just vandal-ism to serve
someone's
personal pleasure."



Whoever pulled the fence posts out and cut the wire so horses could
trample
through stre­ambeds might have thought they were only doing a little
damage
to the stream, he said, "but the consequences are a lot larger than
they
ap­pear on the surface.





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Becky and the gang


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 Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net.
 Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp
 Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/logon.asp

 Ride Long and Ride Safe!!

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