"A Predator Fish In California Has Lost Its White House Support"

"WASHINGTON -- A still-controversial 1992 law intended to boost California’s striped-bass population can be scaled back, the Obama administration now believes.

In a modest softening of the state’s polarized water debate, a top Interior Department official voiced sympathy Wednesday for a Republican-authored bill that would end the 1992 law’s stated goal of doubling the number of striped bass living in and around the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

“It makes sense to remove the striped bass from the doubling goals,” said Tom Iseman, deputy assistant secretary for water and science, adding that “the striped bass is a predator of native species.”

Maintaining the goal of doubling the predatory striped-bass population potentially undermines the 1992 law’s accompanying goals of doubling the populations of other fish that ascend the Delta and Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers. Striped bass forage on juvenile salmon, fisheries expert Charles H. Hanson told lawmakers Wednesday."

Michael Doyle reports for the McClatchy Washington Bureau April 20, 2016.