PROPOSAL TO OVERHAUL DFG MISSES THE TARGET.

Byline: BILL BECHER Outdoors

Tom Stienstra, the noted veteran outdoors writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, stirred up the folks in Sacramento with a column suggesting radical changes in the Department of Fish and Game (DFG) and the Fish and Game Commission.

``Turn the place upside down, shake it up completely,'' Stienstra said. He even wants to make the game wardens part of the highway patrol. We might be hearing, ``Do you know how fast your trout was going?'' if Stienstra gets his way.

Stienstra cited the salmon deaths on the Klamath River, the recently enacted Channel Islands marine reserves and the high price of a fishing license measured against reduced hatchery operations as reasons why changes are needed.

Stienstra wants to take the power to appoint the DFG Director and Fish and Game commission members away from the ``latest governor from Southern California'' and give it to a committee appointed by the legislature. That ought to put fishing rights up for sale to the biggest campaign contributors to our state's notoriously special interest-friendly legislators.

Bob Hight, the DFG director, didn't return a phone call from Stienstra, and that's what seems to peeve him the most. Good thing Stienstra's not trying to pitch a script in Hollywood.

Unfortunately, Stienstra is talking through his signature leather hat.

The fish kill on the Klamath was created when the federal government, siding with Oregon's agricultural interests, pressured federal scientists to falsify their findings on the amount of water needed to preserve salmon runs. The California DFG spoke clearly and directly against the feds' findings in favor of adequate water for the fish, but the farmers won and the fish died after the federal biologists were forced to lie.

The marine reserves at the Channel Islands are a complex and difficult issue. But two commissioners found the courage to look out for future anglers by creating no-take zones after hearing overwhelming scientific evidence that the reserves are necessary as a part of ecosystem-based fisheries management. That's a sign the system is working, not failing.

Stienstra wants to pare down the DFG and move its conservation duties elsewhere. He wants to change the name to the ``Department of Fishing and Hunting.''

The bottom line is that Stienstra just doesn't get it. The problem isn't in a name. Our wildlife belongs to all Californians, not just those who hunt and fish. The DFG has to balance the needs and desires of all users of the outdoors. With an exploding population and finite outdoor recreational resources, Californians will have to learn to be better conservationists if they want their kids to have the same opportunities they enjoy.

``A good game fish is too valuable to be caught only once,'' Lee Wulff wrote in 1938 and that's even more true today.

Professional bass anglers get it - they promote catch and release at their tournaments. And while you can't shoot and release a bird, hunters get it. Ducks Unlimited is in the forefront of avian conservation, raising a lot of money to improve bird habitat.

California Trout gets it, working with the environmental organizations to restore steelhead runs, even if it means Cal Trout members have to give up fishing coastal streams for a couple of generations.

Many sport saltwater anglers just don't get it. They blame everyone but themselves for the decline in fishing and claim a constitutional right to kill everything in the ocean. But some do get it. It was Steve Roberson, a sport angler and diver, who first proposed the Channel Islands marine reserves.

Former commercial fisherman-turned-Sierra trout fishing guide Tom Loe gets it.

Roberson and Loe cite improved technology as part of the problem. Like powerful fish-finding sonar that can track a quarter flipped in the ocean to 100 fathoms and tell you the year it was minted. Or precise electronic navigation aids that allowed Loe to return to the same spot again and again until it was devoid of rockfish. Loe says he saw Southern California commercial sport fishing boats use the same technology to pound reefs day after day.

According to landing statistics, the recreational catch of nearshore fish species such as rockfish and sheepshead was nearly twice what market anglers took in California in the 1990s. So stop blaming the commercial fishermen, as Stienstra does in his column.

What biologists are learning is that nature is a complex web of interrelations. Remove one plant or animal from the web and you affect many other creatures. You can't manage fishing and hunting resources in a vacuum without knowing the impacts on other nongame species.

And of course you can't hunt or fish at all if the creatures are gone.

Although the DFG is far from perfect, a better suggestion might be to rename it the Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation and focus on making sure future generations have the opportunity to enjoy California's outdoors, whether they hunt, fish or just look.