Funds Drying Up Along With Land : Drought: Along with a lack of water, DFG officials must cope with cutbacks in state-supported programs.

A significant number of the state’s fish and wildlife are doomed because fisheries and habitats are drying up about as fast as the funds required to manage them, Pete Bontadelli, director of the Department of Fish and Game, told an Assembly committee Tuesday.

While the crises are not necessarily related, Bontadelli said: “Without a strong revenue base, we are hard-pressed to respond to the contingencies necessary to deal with the drought, and it will take us some time to facilitate recovery of fish and wildlife populations once the drought is over.

” . . . The natural production of game and non-game fish is way down. It will be several years before our lakes, reservoirs, rivers and streams recover.”

Coincidental with Bontadelli’s report to the Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee on the impact of the four-year, statewide drought was the disclosure that an Assembly budget committee is proposing to slash $12.6 million from Fish and Game programs to cover a projected budget shortfall of that amount in the fiscal year starting July 1.

The funds would come from the department’s Preservation Fund of non-dedicated fishing and hunting license revenue.

The cuts would hit the following programs:

--Wildlife management, down from $6.4 million to $1.4 million, making it difficult, if not impossible, to compile the environmental data required to justify traditional hunting programs--and raising the possibility that some hunts would be eliminated.

--Marine resources, down from $7.3 million to $3.9 million.

--Inland fisheries, down from $14.3 million to $12.5 million, forcing the closure of the Mojave and Imperial Valley hatcheries, the latter being the only catfish hatchery in the state.

--Law enforcement, down from $25 million to $24 million, eliminating the special operations unit that targets poachers.

The Senate proposes augmenting the cuts with $12.6 million from the state’s general fund to help pay for game wardens--about half of the DFG’s $141-million budget for 1990--but Gov. George Deukmejian has indicated that he will oppose this. The general fund already has a $3.6-billion shortfall.

Fish and Game, with a $6.9-million deficit in the current fiscal year, also is prohibited from using the general fund to assist hunting and sportfishing programs, which are supposed to be self-supported by license revenue.

But Bontadelli reminded the committee that license revenues have been dropping steadily in recent years, and the decline will be accelerated “as the public hears more and more about dry streams and reservoirs, wildlife dieoffs (and) dry marshes,” he said.

Only three or four of the 13 committee members heard Bontadelli, the others having commitments elsewhere. But all were provided with texts of his report, and none seemed to have the impression that he was crying wolf. The crises are real.

Bontadelli said deer herds have been hit by blue tongue disease, which is associated with the drying up of water holes, and fawn production is down. He said wetlands are drying up, coastal streams are severely low or already dry, and there was insufficient rain to refill artificial desert water holes--”guzzlers”--for animals such as bighorn sheep.

Bontadelli praised the help of the federal Bureau of Reclamation and the state Department of Water Resources for assistance in mitigating the impact.

But he did allude to a necessity to amend Section 711-C of the Fish and Game Code to allow use of the state general fund for hunting and sportfishing programs.

Bontadelli urged development of a drought contingency plan.