- Elizabeth Larson
- Posted On
Saving the Clear Lake hitch: Workshop explains complex factors affecting threatened native fish
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Community members had the chance to learn about both the Endangered Species Act listing process as well as a threatened native fish, the Clear Lake hitch, at a Dec. 3 workshop in Lakeport.
About 60 people were in attendance for the meeting, which took place last Monday evening in the board chambers of the Lake County Courthouse in Lakeport.
In September, the Center for Biological Diversity submitted Endangered Species Act listing petitions to both the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the California Department of Fish and Game for the Clear Lake hitch, as Lake County News has reported.
The process is expected to be a lengthy one, community members were told at the meeting.
The Chi Council for the Clear Lake Hitch hosted the workshop in response to the level of anxiety in the community, said Council Co-Chair Peter Windrem.
Windrem said the Clear Lake hitch and the listing process – referred to throughout the meeting as the “ESA” – are both huge subjects. “We will only scratch the surface tonight,” he said.
During the first part of the two-hour meeting, Windrem’s co-chair, Greg Giusti of the University of California Cooperative Extension, provided an overview of the hitch life cycle.
The hitch, said Giusti, spends a portion of its life in Clear Lake and another portion in local streams. Both parts of the fish’s life, he said, “are equally important to the well-being of the species.”
There have been relationships between fish and people for thousand of years, he said. There are the ancient relationships, such as those between the native peoples who originally lived in the Clear Lake basin and the hitch, to the more recent relationships developed over the past 100 years between white settlers and other fish in the lake.
Giusti acknowledged that some people at the meeting were interested in the hitch, others in the bass for which the lake in recent decades has become known. “You can’t separate the two,” he said. “They share the same space. They share the same environment.”
The one thing that can be said with certainty about the hitch, said Giusti, is “there are fewer now than there used to be.”
Giusti said he’s spoken with many people who witnessed the hitch runs over the years, who report that the numbers now are far lower. In a PowerPoint presentation, which can be seen below, he included a postcard from the late 1880s that showed tens of thousands of hitch stranded in a Big Valley stream after flood waters receded. During spawning runs now, maybe a few hundred fish are seen.
By 1872 a very thorough review had been completed of Clear Lake, which at that time was seen as an experimental lab for releasing new fish, said Giusti.
Native fishes identified in Clear Lake in 1872 were the Pacific lamprey, threespine stickleback, Sacramento perch, tule perch, prickly sculpin, the rainbow trout and the Cyprinidae, a taxonomic group of minnows that included the Clear Lake hitch, thicktail chub, Clear Lake splittail, Sacramento pikeminnow and Sacramento blackfish, according to Giusti.
He said the Pacific lamprey and rainbow trout are no longer in Clear Lake, most likely due to the Clear Lake dam preventing their migration. He said rainbow trout are still found in some local creeks.
The thicktail chub and Clear Lake splittail are now extinct, said Giusti. The thicktail chub was last caught in the lake in 1938 and is now globally extinct; the splittail was last seen in the 1970s.
Beginning in the 1880s a number of fish were introduced into the lake, with introductions taking place up until the 1980s.
Those introduced fish that established themselves included the brown bullhead, introduced in 1880; common carp, 1880; white catfish, 1880 and 1923; largemouth bass, 1888; smallmouth bass, 1895; golden shiner, 1896; bluegill, 1909-10; black crappie, 1915; mosquitofish, 1925; green sunfish, first appeared on record in 1941; channel catfish, 1950; white crappie, 1950s; goldfish, first appeared on record between 1950 and 1963; inland silverside, 1967; redear sunfish, 1973; and threadfin shad, 1985.
Giusti said that the issues with the health of Clear Lake and its fish were put in motion a long time ago, not just in the last decade.
He showed a list of key dates beginning with the 1840 arrival of European settlers in Lake County. Within 40 years new fish species were being introduced to Clear Lake.
Beginning in 1949 and continuing in 1954 and 1957, there were DDT treatments of Clear Lake to try to control the Clear Lake gnat. Also in 1949, it was reported that runs of “hitch” – most likely wrongly identified and actually Clear Lake splittail – had decreased, with squawfish almost extinct by 1951.
In 1962, the hitch were still reported to be plentiful, according to the timeline. The following year, methyl parathion was applied three to four times on the lake, also to control the gnats. In 1966, the Sacramento perch were considered rare. By 1988, the once abundant crappie were in decline.
“You’re always playing catch up” in trying to track Clear Lake’s dynamic changes, said Giusti. “It’s like wrestling an octopus.”
Life of the hitch
The Clear Lake hitch spawns in late winter and early spring, with the females – larger than their male counterparts – having “the ability to make a lot of progeny,” said Giusti.
Females mature in their second or third year of life, while males reach maturity from their first through third years, he said.
According to Giusti’s presentation, hitch eggs hatch in about seven days, depending on water temperature. Within seven days of hatching, young hitch begin moving downstream, which they are hardwired to do.
They seek protection near structures like docks and in the native tule beds near the mouths of creeks. Giusti said they will stay near tule patches until they are about 2 inches long, a growth process that can take up to 90 days depending on available food sources.
Then they move into deeper parts of the lake, where they feed on a soup of microscopic organisms like chironomid larvae, or rice flies, which Giusti called “tasty little cheeseburgers.”
Hitch usually are between 4.3 and 6.6 inches long by the end of their first year and 5.9 to 11.8 inches by the end of their second year. They grow to a maximum size of about 14 inches, he said.
Once the hitch are in Clear Lake, little is known about what they do or where they go, said Giusti. It’s not known if they return to their natal streams for spawning.
The only thing known for sure is the hitch go from streams to Clear Lake. “After that it is pretty much a mystery of what is going on out there,” Giusti said.
Giusti said that, because Clear Lake is so biologically rich, the hitch that live in the lake tend to grow faster than hitch living in other water bodies.
Based on hitch observations from 2005 to 2010, Giusti said the hitch spent an average of 72 days a year in creeks.
When considering if predation is a major factor in the hitch’s decline, Giusti cautioned that predation is not linear, and that it involves multiple and complex interactions. He said there are other species eating the hitch, but it’s also important to consider “recruitment,” or the process of younger fishing replacing and surpassing the older population.
There also is the matter of competition, which redistributes food sources at multiple levels and creates behavior changes, Giusti said.
Giusti called the inland silverside and threadfin shad “game changers” in understanding the complex forces at work in hitch population changes.
The silverside was introduced in 1967, feeds almost exclusively on zooplankton and is now the lake’s most abundant species. The threadfin shad, introduced illegally in the 1980s, was known to have caused the collapse of the zooplankton Daphnia and can achieve very high densities in its cyclic population.
Giusti said that, when it comes to what is going on in Clear Lake due to competition, predation, pollution and introduced species, “Not much we can do here, what’s done is done.”
Rather, he suggested recruitment can be helped in local streams, where factors like drought, water diversion, gravel extraction, stream incision, premature stream drying, migration barriers and vegetation loss have been at play.
Another possible factor impacting the hitch is that, since 1969, Clear Lake has been getting clearer due to changes in phytoplankton – or algae – cycles, Giusti said.
There is also the matter of blue green algae. “The biggest change in the lake in the last five years is the presence of this new blue green algae, this lyngbya,” which Giusti said may be influenced by iron, phosphorous and atmospheric nitrogen.
“The ecology of the hitch in the lake today is the sum of multiple parts,” said Giusti.
Concerning population trends
Windrem said the Chi Council organized in 2004. He said “chi” and “hitch” are both Pomo words for the fish, and according to Pomo elder Nelson Hopper, chi was used to describe the hitch and hitch was used to describe the Clear Lake splittail.
“Be that as it may, what we're now talking about is hitch,” said Windrem.
He explained that agricultural water pumping in the Big Valley began extensively in the early 1940s due to pear orchard planting. As a result, water tables were lowered.
From the 1950s to the 1970s there was a lot of tule removal. Windrem said that exposed hitch fry to predation.
Also stressing hitch habitat was the extensive gravel mining in creeks for the purpose of road and highway construction, and channeling of stream mouths, such as was done at Clear Lake State Park for the purpose of creating a campground, he said.
Gravel was stripped out two miles upstream from Highway 29, with the effect being to degrade spawning beds, Windrem explained.
It also degraded the underpinnings of the bridge over Kelsey Creek on Main Street in Kelseyville; Windrem said the downstream gravel mining threatened at one point to cause that bridge to tip over.
As a result, a barrier was installed at the bridge’s base; that barrier also prevents hitch from moving upstream, Windrem said.
Looking at hitch spawning from 2004 through this past spring, Windrem said hitch population is trending downward. “That is the source of a great concern to the Chi Council, obviously,” said Windrem who, like Giusti, suggested resources can be best focused on spawning grounds.
Biologist Jonathan Ambrose explained the listing process, noting there are five factors to consider: present or threatened destruction; overutilization for commercial, recreational, scientific or educational uses; disease or predation; inadequacy of existing regulatory mechanisms; and other natural or manmade factors affecting the specie’s continued existence.
At the end of the petition period, the government will make a decision on whether or not a full listing is warranted. If it is, Ambrose said a recovery plan will be created and critical habitat designated.
He said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service currently is working on listing petitions for 260 species, and so the process could face significant delay.
Ambrose said he has been surprised at how much concern and trepidation there is in the community in response to the hitch’s potential endangered listing.
While he acknowledged potential downsides to the listing, there also are positives, including the opportunity to get funding to fix the bridge barriers hampering hitch movements.
Panelists offer perspectives on the issue
In a panel discussion at the end of the meeting, Jeff Miller of the Center for Biological Diversity, the main author on the hitch listing petitions, explained, “Our goal is to protect endangered wildlife and the habitats they depend upon.”
He said the hitch came onto the group’s radar some time ago when it was listed as a species of concern.
When asked how many petitions the center files, Miller responded, “Not enough,” adding that rates of extinction are now thousands of times faster than previously seen.
“We’re filing a very small percentage of the petitions that should be filed” if they are to keep life around on the planet, said Miller, adding that they have an agreement with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to address the listing backlog.
Windrem noted during the panel discussion that having the hitch listed as an endangered species could help with the restoration of the Middle Creek wetland area, which is meant to return 1,650 acres of land to the lake. “Perhaps this is a positive relationship that we’re going to have as a result of this.”
Panelists Paula Britton and Sarah Ryan, environmental directors for the Habematolel Pomo of Upper Lake and Big Valley Rancheria, respectively, have participated in some of the most involved and extensive studies of Clear Lake hitch.
Britton said hitch have been seen as far upstream as the Clear Lake dam. “They will go as far as they can go when the amount of water is in the stream.”
Ryan said that during their study of the fish they have noticed that most hitch have an anchor worm parasite, which usually occurs in a highly stressed environment.
The parasite causes the hitch to act strange. “It changes their behavior,” she said.
Due to reduced marshlands, the fish also have less chance to protect themselves from predators, Ryan explained. She said more water in streams can help the fish.
Ryan said if a listing results, “It shouldn’t be too much of a huge change for people.”
Britton explained that in 2009 local tribes partnered on a study that involved water quality, tagging hitch and creating a hitch fishery to reestablish the fish. Since then, they have been competing for funds to sustain the program.
The Scotts Valley tribe is doing a major headlands restoration project to benefit the fish while Britton said she has continued her tagging work.
She confirmed Ryan’s statements about the conditions of the fish, noting that 100 percent of the fish Habematolel tagged in 2011 were found to have parasites or a fungus. Thirteen percent of the tagged fish had injuries or abnormalities, including an unusual scaling pattern near the back fin.
“I will tell you, I have a lot of respect for these fish, that they are even able to survive,” said Britton, explaining that only the “Olympic swimmers” are able to get over the manmade barriers in creeks.
Britton added of the hitch and their challenges, “There’s a lot we don’t know but I think we’re beginning to get a handle on this.”
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The Ecology of the Clear Lake Hitch (