PORTOLA, Calif. -- Four miles north of this High Sierra town, the front-porch gang at the Grizzly Store recently threw a shindig to ring out another fishing season at Lake Davis and curse the dreaded predator that has haunted these parts the past decade.
Folks came out of the hills, more than 200 strong, to enjoy bubbling beans, barbecued tri-tip and beer. Then, as the late-afternoon light crept up the conifers and dusk descended, they gathered on a gravel parking lot and ceremoniously torched a lath-sided wooden effigy of the saw-toothed fish that killed their beloved lake.
Death to the pike!
"We built it. We burned it," declared Sara Bensinger, the Grizzly's hale and hearty proprietor. "It was kind of like feeding the fish gods. Pleeeeease get rid of the pike."
State wildlife authorities are trying to do just that.
On Tuesday, for the second time in a decade, state Fish and Game Department crews will pour poison into the scenic Sierra reservoir in a bid to finish off the northern pike. The invader from the Midwest has established itself at the top of Lake Davis' food chain, devastating the trophy-size trout while proving immune to extermination.
Pike have turned the reservoir into what locals call a dead lake, undermining Portola's economy in the process. They pose an even bigger threat to fisheries throughout Central California.
If they ever escaped, the finned marauders could severely dent the state's fragile salmon and steelhead populations and even venture down into the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, imperiling water exports to Southern California.
In an attempt to prevent such a disaster, state wildlife officials plan to pour more than 16,000 gallons of the fish poison Rotenone into Lake Davis and the web of creeks, springs and seeps that feed its watershed.
The last time Fish and Game tried this extreme tactic was in 1997. It was an unfettered failure -- and a public relations disaster. Locals outraged by what they viewed as an environmentally incautious and bureaucratically imperious effort by the state won $9.2 million in damages. And the pike reappeared 18 months after the poisoning.
This time, Fish and Game officials have mounted a campaign heavy on ecological sensitivity, diplomacy and public education. Ed Pert, who heads the agency's pike-eradication push, said this effort is "a moon shot," far more sophisticated in style and substance than the previous one.
