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Show Strawberry Reservoir clean up slowed by cocaine farmers By RAY REMUND, Information Manager, Springville A special report is hot off the press explaining the Division of Wildlife Resources' plan to remove chubs and suckers from Strawberry Reservoir and how events in Peru could stall the project until 1989. The report has been inserted in the 1988 fishing proclamation and is now available at all division offices and license agents throughout the state. Cocaine even enters the picture, according to Bruce Schmidt, Utah fisheries chief, who helped write the report. Rather than collect the rotenone root needed to remove rough fish from lakes and streams, ". . . the Peruvian workers are tempted to spend their time harvesting har-vesting other wild botanical products which bring more money, like the coca leaves used to produce cocaine." That shortage of rotenone could delay the treatment project until 1989 instead of August 1988. "Why treat the lake when fishing is so good?" is one of 17 questions answered in the Questions and Answers section of the report. Also answered are such frequently asked questions: "How safe is rotenone? Won't a lot of trout be wasted? Why not just stock predator fish and let them control the rough fish?" Dollars needed to stock fish in Strawberry after the project will decrease to one-twelfth of present costs. The future of the lake without treatment shows a $242,000 annual fish stocking bill. The future with treatment (chub and sucker domination gone) is calculated at $116,000 per year. But the highlight of the report is Strawberry's future after treatment and the restoration of its tributaries. Restoring the banks and bottoms of these inflowing in-flowing streams to a natural habitat will drop Strawberry's fish stocking costs to a mere $20,000 each year. That is only eight percent of what it costs now to keep a good trout fishery in Utah's most popular family fishing water. What most anglers want to know is when they can get back on Strawberry to fish after treatment. "The first spring following treatment" treat-ment" is the response from fisheries biologists. Fishing may be a little slow the year following treatment since only one year's stocking will be present. Fishing will be good the second year and excellent thereafter. |