LAKE PLACID, NY - The California Department of Fish and Game (DFG) has been battling northern pike since 1988, and officials will soon tell the world what they've learned. Two key members of DFG's Lake Davis Pike Eradication Project will be making presentations here at the first-ever International Northern Pike Symposia as part of the American Fisheries Society's 136th Annual Meeting.

"This will be an excellent opportunity to share the information we have gained from doing important on-the-ground northern pike research in Plumas County," said DFG Director Ryan Broddrick.

Dr. Ed Pert, DFG's former Fisheries Programs Branch Chief and currently the Pike Eradication Project Manager, and Julie Cunningham, a Staff Environmental Scientist in the Portola Field Office since 2000, will make separate presentations at the symposia on Sept. 13 and 14. Presenters will be from across the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.

?Į?ĮPert, a former assistant professor at the University of Arkansas, Pine Bluff, will discuss managing pike in California: lessons learned and current plans. He'll bring the audience up to date on DFG's proposed Lake Davis Pike Eradication Project, and some of the many lessons the DFG learned during and after the treatment at Lake Davis in 1997.

Cunningham will cover the history of northern pike in California from the 1800s, to when they were first discovered in Frenchman Lake in 1988, the treatment at Lake Davis in 1997, through the recent release of a draft Environment Impact Report for DFG's proposed eradication project, which could occur sometime in 2007.