WASHINGTON, DC >> The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will announce that protecting the Clear Lake hitch — found only in Clear Lake and it tributaries — under the Endangered Species Act may be warranted, according to a statement by the Center for Biological Diversity. The Fish and Wildlife Service will conduct a one-year status review and make a final determination whether to protect hitch under the federal act.
Clear Lake hitch migrate each spring, when adults make their way upstream in tributaries of Clear Lake to spawn before they return to the lake. The spawning runs in 2013 and 2014 were the worst in recorded history, with only a few hundred fish spawning in two streams. In 2014 the California Fish and Game Commission designated the Clear Lake hitch as a threatened species under California’s state Endangered Species Act. Numbers of spawning hitch in 2015 are also very low.
Should the federal government decide to list the hitch, there could be potential ripples throughout the local economy.
“We don’t know what the ramifications would be,” said Terry Knight, Record-Bee outdoors writer. “They could stop sports fishing — that’s the fear.”
Suggestions have also be made in the past that limits on sports fishing be removed, in order to deplete the bass population. That pipes taking water from the lake be covered with grates to prevent the fish from entering is another possibility.
The Center for Biological Diversity submitted petitions in 2012 to protect the hitch under both the federal and state Endangered Species Acts. The petitions were supported by the Habematolel Pomo of Upper Lake, Big Valley Rancheria Band of Pomo Indians, Scotts Valley Band of Pomo Indians, elders from the Robinson Rancheria Band of Pomo Indians, California Indian Environmental Alliance and California native fish expert Dr. Peter Moyle of U.C. Davis.
“The entire Clear Lake ecosystem will benefit if we can restore stream habitat and recover these unique fish,” said Jeff Miller of the Center for Biological Diversity. “Federal Endangered Species Act protection is crucial to ensuring minimum flows for hitch spawning streams, fixing fish passage barriers, reducing pollution and restoring wetlands.”
Clear Lake hitch, a subspecies of hitch unique to the lake, were once so plentiful they were a staple food for the original Pomo inhabitants of the Clear Lake region, but have declined to near extinction due to water diversions, drought, degradation of spawning habitat, migration barriers, pollution and invasive fish species.
“Hitch have been here 10,000 years — or longer,” Knight said.
Hitch once spawned in every tributary to Clear Lake but have disappeared from most former spawning streams. Now fewer than a thousand fish regularly spawn in only two streams — Kelsey and Adobe creeks south of Clear Lake.
