To the editor:
Anyone who knows anything about southern Utah will tell you that in times of drought, all kinds of pestilence emerge. In normal years, floods and high waters will eradicate them, but stagnant or slow-moving water encourage their reappearance.The furor over the appearance of whirling disease fails to take into consideration that we are in a five-year drought cycle and this organism, which admittedly lives in mud for generations, has probably done just that, only to emerge now in this condition.
It is convenient for the Division of Wildlife Resources to use the discovery of this insignificant organism as their opportunity to use the private grower as a whipping boy or cover themselves in a much deeper dilemma. I refer to the management that has caused the worst fishing in southern Utah in my lifetime. We used to take quiet pride in our fisheries, none of which are natural but depend upon planted trout. There is no cause for pride in them now.
In my experience as a general contractor, I have had the opportunity to build fish-growing facilities. It has been my observation that private growers produce at a much greater capacity with infinitely fewer personnel and less equipment than state-run hatcheries. Their efficiencies far surpass those of the DWR.
The way the present system is set up, the DWR is like the fox guarding the chicken coop. They are quick to point the finger at a private grower before they investigate any of their own facilities. And they have the power to regulate the private grower right out of business. Since the DWR seems to prefer to be gun toters instead of fish growers, it would seem a superb solution for the state to buy their trout from private growers on a bid basis and get three times as many for the money.
In view of the recent discovery that Mill Meadow Reservoir, managed for years by the DWR, is at least one source of the famous new disease, it would also seem prudent to hire private, unaffiliated fish pathologists to fairly test both the DWR and private hatcheries. That would relieve the private grower from the threat of being the DWR's whipping boy.
Steve Kunz
Cedar City