LAKEORT >> Even in rough draft form the keel plate of Clear Lake’s sustainability is a conservation document with potential to make significant progress in its restoration. As the community refines this guiding document to help clean up algae overgrowth, a presentation brought forth impactful proposals to the Board of Supervisors chambers Tuesday.
Yet the current document lacks a logical reading order declared Angela DePalma Dow, a water resources professional. DePalma Dow directs the Aquatic Plant Management Program. Launched in 2017, the benefit of maintaining a community document is it allows flexibility she noted. But inherent in that flexibility is a responsibility that hasn’t really been clarified, she said. “There’s no instructional manual for writing this sort of document.” But with several surgical tweaks, the document could help restore Clear Lake closer to the nearly pristine condition it enjoyed in the 1850s, when European settlers began to arrive.
“There’s two processes we need to consider, first a state recovery plan, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW),” DePalma Dow said. This guidance document overseen by the state will begin accepting public commentary at the county website for April. However, there is also a federal recovery plan and the lake’s managers would like its plans to check both those boxes, so, they do not have to retrace steps and start operations again.
In the roll out of the May 20-24 draft, major revisions are recommended for the CFDW readership noted DePalma Dow with a slide show presentation including the Clear Lake Hitch; a freshwater fish and a subspecies of the Hitch. It is endemic to Clear Lake, but the Hitch population has been struggling due to drought and other impacts, It was listed as a threatened species in 2014 under the California Endangered Species Act 2. The Hitch is vital to the culture and diet of local Native American Tribes in the Clear Lake region. “When I think of the Hitch, it is a giant mess of overlapping, complex factors,” she said. “Everything from unhealthful algae blooms, water quality, water use, habitat productivity and invasive species.
The conservation document has some substantial organizational issues, DePalma Dow pointed out. “So, we need to sort this out, so when new supervisors come in, they can pick up this document and know what we are thinking,” she said. “It’s lacking a logical reading order, there were fragmented concepts.” What she’d like to do, is clarify what is affecting ‘X’ issue, take all the pieces and organize it in a more approachable manner. She likened the process to building a new building, but it requires a good blueprint and to demonstrate linkages between each thread, goals, criteria, actions in order to present it clearly and succinctly. “When we write these documents, we’re scientists and use a lot of jargon and we want to write it in a way that somebody who hasn’t worked on the Hitch for five years can understand it.”
“We want to have a target to work toward, she added. “So, as we check in regularly, we can say, how close are we to this goal? The scientific method, that’s how we are approaching this. It also lacks a timeline for update review. We have a verbal agreement do annual reports and five-year reviews and that wasn’t clarified in this document, but we want all these specifics. It’s being reviewed by some of our collaborators, but we need stakeholder input.” To that effort, DePalma Dow is working with the Farm Bureau and plans to present it to the Ag Commissioner and the Fish and Wildlife Advisory Committe, also the Land Trust to make sure the entire community has opportunity to offer feedback.”
As they populate the current draft, there’s a lot more information to add in a more approachable manner she stressed. As different sections are completed, they will employ a single author to ghostwrite the final draft so it is in the same style that avoids the varied writing styles of collaborative authors that can be jarring, she noted.
The document will cover basic biology, the status of the Hitch population, a recovery strategy, which would be the overarching goal that includes effort to ameliorate lake water quality, as well as to work on native species and plants. “The goal is to address nonnative species,” she said. “That could be Carp management, predation or competition. A specific action can be a Carp management program that is currently underway. Another goal is to develop a criteria to identify the biomass of the Carp and a means to remove them.
Various sections will include: basic biology, states of the Hitch population as well as a recovery strategy and finally, an implementation strategy outlining specific actions based on the document’s goals. For example, if the goal is addressing nonnative species, there could be a Carp management program, which is currently under way and comprises dealing with predation and competition., which aims to develop a criteria, to identify the biomass of the Carp in order to remove them.
“And as a reminder, this (document) could be an interim process,” she cautioned. “As we learn more, even of what is feasible, we may go back and revisit our goals, objectives and actions. And that will be on a five-year time step.”
