The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Thursday announced the availability of a $76,000 grant that will fund a study on how illegal marijuana cultivation in California might affect local fish.
“A difficult and sensitive study design is being developed to determine the real threat to northern California aquatic resources posed by illegal marijuana cultivation activities,” the agency said in its grant proposal.
It said step one is to define “potential stressors” on fish caused by marijuana production.
“Once the threats are defined relative to other land-use activities, the next step is to accompany law enforcement personnel to secured marijuana fields to measure water quality and physical habitat impacts using standardized procedures,” it said.
“Additional goals are to better understand the effect of marijuana cultivation on anadromous fish, identify and prioritize areas to protect and/or restore and to develop a process and/or data that can be used to quantify those effects,” it added.
The grant is open to state governments, and it all but acknowledges that it will go to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. It said the agency is “uniquely qualified for this project.”
