SB 1148

Bill Subjects

Abstract

(1) The Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley Wetlands Mitigation Bank Act of 1993 provides for the establishment of wetlands mitigation bank sites to increase the total wetlands acreage and values within the Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley. This bill would provide that no conservation bank, mitigation bank, or conservation and mitigation bank is operative, vested, or final, nor bank credits issued, until the Department of Fish and Game has approved the bank in writing and a conservation easement has been recorded on the site. The bill would require the department to follow certain procedures and authorize the department to charge and adjust specified fees to cover the reasonable costs of the department reviewing various documents when a person is interested in establishing a bank. The bill would require the department to deposit revenues of those fees in a separate dedicated account within the Fish and Game Preservation Fund. The bill would require the department to establish and maintain a database that includes certain information about banks and to make this data available on its Internet Web site or accessible by a link from the department's Internet Web site. The bill would require the department to adopt and amend guidelines and criteria to amend provisions relating to the department's review of a bank. (2) Under existing law, the changes in the Implicit Price Deflator for State and Local Government Purchases of Goods and Services is used as the index to determine an annual rate of increase or decrease in the fees for hunting and fishing licenses, stamps, permits, and tags. Under existing law, the department issues lifetime sportsman's licenses, hunting licenses, sport fishing ocean enhancement stamps, commercial fishing ocean enhancement stamps, commercial fishing ocean enhancement validations, commercial fishing licenses, commercial fish business licenses, commercial boat registrations, sport fishing ocean enhancement validations, trapping licenses, and sport fishing licenses, and existing law establishes base fees for those entitlements, adjusted annually pursuant to the index. This bill would require the Fish and Game Commission to adjust the base fees for lifetime sportsman's licenses, hunting licenses, sport fishing ocean enhancement stamps and validations, commercial fishing ocean enhancement stamps and validations, commercial fishing licenses, commercial fish business licenses, commercial boat registrations, trapping licenses, and sport fishing licenses, as necessary, to fully recover, but not exceed, all reasonable administrative and implementation costs of the department and the commission relating to those licenses. The bill would also authorize the department to establish fees and to adjust statutorily imposed fees by regulation for certain filings, permits, determinations, or other department actions. (3) Existing law relating to the Office of Planning and Research requires every officer, agency, department, or instrumentality of state government to cooperate in the preparation and maintenance of the State Environmental Goals and Policy Report and to ensure that their entity's functional plan is consistent with specified state planning priorities and annually demonstrate, when requesting infrastructure as specified, how the plans are consistent with those priorities. Existing law requires those entities to comply with any request for advice, assistance, information, or other material. This bill would specify that the subject entities include certain trustee agencies. (4) Existing law, the Trout and Steelhead Conservation and Management Planning Act of 1979, requires the department to determine whether a stream or lake should be managed as a wild trout fishery, or whether its management should involve the planting of native trout species to supplement wild trout populations. Existing law requires the commission to develop additional wild trout waters. Existing law requires the department to prepare a list each year of no less than 25 miles of stream or stream segments and at least one lake that it deems suitable for consideration as wild trout waters and to submit this list to the commission. Existing law requires the commission to annually submit a report to the Legislature that includes its reasons why any stream or lake listed by the department was or was not included in the program. Existing law requires the department to prepare and complete management plans for all wild trout waters not more than 3 years following their initial designation by the commission, and to update the management plan every 5 years following completion of the initial management plan. This bill would revise the findings and declarations of the act. The bill would require the department to maintain and continuously revise specified inventories prepared for each stream, stream system, or lake, with the goal of reviewing every watershed once per decade, and would require the department to make those inventories publicly available on the department's Internet Web site. The bill would require the commission, instead, to report to the Legislature regarding progress in implementing the wild trout program on even-numbered years and would require the report to be publicly available on the department's Internet Web site. The bill would require the department every 5 years to update the Strategic Plan for Trout Management published in November 2003 as necessary to guide the state's trout management. The bill would require the department to prepare and complete trout management plans consistent with the Strategic Plan for Trout Management for all wild trout waters, to be reviewed as prescribed, and to make the Strategic Plan for Trout Management and the trout management plans publicly available on the department's Internet Web site. The bill would require the department, by January 1, 2014, to form an intradepartmental strategic trout management team to provide statewide direction and trout management oversight and to be responsible for developing prescribed basin management plans. The bill would require the department to give priority to stocking native hatchery-produced species in California's waters where stocking is determined to be appropriate by the department. The bill would require the department to ensure that all trout stocked in waters of the state for recreational purposes, except as provided, are unable to reproduce through triploidy or other means. The bill would authorize the department to provide specified outreach to anglers to promote awareness, would authorize the department to develop, conduct, and respond to angler preference and satisfaction surveys, and would require educational programs utilizing the hatcheries to be encouraged. The bill would require the department to review angling regulations periodically and adjust those regulations to ensure consistency with the Strategic Plan for Trout Management. Existing law requires 3313% of the fees derived from the issuance of sport fishing licenses, with certain exceptions, to be deposited into the Hatchery and Inland Fisheries Fund within the State Treasury. Existing law authorizes moneys in the fund to be expended, upon appropriation, in support of department programs related to the management, maintenance, and capital improvement of California's fish hatcheries, the Heritage and Wild Trout Program, enforcement activities, and other activities eligible to be funded from revenue generated by sport fishing license fees. Existing law requires that those fund moneys be used for specified purposes, including the attainment of prescribed fish production and release goals for state hatcheries. This bill would instead authorize the expenditure of those moneys, consistent with specified existing law, to support programs of the department related to management, maintenance, and capital improvement of California's fish hatcheries, the Heritage and Wild Trout program, and enforcement activities related thereto, and to support other activities eligible to be funded from revenue generated by sport fishing license fees. The bill would require that the fees be used for the purposes of attaining a specified hatchery production goal, the Heritage and Wild Trout Program, the development of trout management plans, and staffing, as specified. The bill would require the department, on an annual basis, to invest in hatchery facility improvements and rehabilitation to ensure progress towards achievement of specified hatchery fish production targets. The bill would authorize the department, beginning January 1, 2015, to obtain California-based hatchery fish if specified criteria are satisfied. The bill would establish funding for "Heritage Trout Waters" as a priority for the fund. The bill would appropriate $1,000,000 from the Hatchery and Inland Fisheries Fund to the department for capital outlay expenditures necessary to improve state hatchery facility and system improvements to achieve specified hatchery fish production goals.