LAKEPORT, Calif. – The Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to send a letter to the state Fish and Game Commission asking for a delay in the discussion of an endangered species listing for the Clear Lake hitch.
The 5-0 vote was in anticipation of a meeting set to take place on Wednesday in Mt. Shasta, at which the commission will consider if the petition – submitted last September by the Center for Biological Diversity – is warranted.
If the commission were to make a decision on Wednesday that the listing is warranted, it would set it motion a yearlong status review process before a final listing decision would be made, according to the commission agenda.
The Clear Lake hitch, which is a native fish, currently is listed by the state as a species of concern due to its declining numbers.
Supervisor Rob Brown, who brought the matter to the board, said he believed there was a group of people working to push the matter forward based not so much on a scientific agenda but rather an emotional one.
Before the petition went much further, “We really need to evaluate this from a scientific perspective and a local perspective,” said Brown, who worried about the potential for unintended consequences.
Supervisor Denise Rushing said she didn't think the county could go wrong by relying on sound science or having a locally based effort to study the fish's situation.
She said it also was important that, whatever happens, the position must be taken that outside resources will be needed to help with Clear Lake's condition, although the lake's condition wasn't necessarily what caused the hitch's decline.
Supervisor Jim Comstock was concerned that a lot of information gathered about the hitch is based on “citizen science,” some of which is skewed or inaccurate. “We need to take the lead on this.”
Brown said people who grew up in Kelseyville tend to associate the hitch with Kelsey Creek, where their runs were once abundant. He said there is no question that their numbers have been significantly diminished.
He said there is local interest in studying the fish, pointing to the Chi Council for the Clear Lake Hitch. Such involvement, he said, gives the county a “good head start.”
Brown said he wanted the commission to base any decision regarding the hitch on science, and give the county time to form a group and come up with some of its own recommendations on what should be done to help the fish. He said they wouldn't need more laws if they enforced the ones they have.
There also is a school of thought, said Brown, that there will be money available if the listing petition is granted. But Brown cautioned that there are strings attached to such funds.
Rushing pointed to a recently released, peer-reviewed study of the impact of rodenticides in the region’s forests – which are affecting the Clear Lake fishery – as an example of outside forces’ impact on the hitch.
Tom Smythe, a county water resources engineer who is working with the Chi Council, said there have been projects to open up the hitch's historic spawning grounds. Every time the county replaces a bridge or does a similar project, the hitch has to be taken into account.
He said he was among a group of individuals planning to make the trip to the Wednesday commission meeting, although he and others questioned why the matter hadn't been scheduled for a more convenient meeting, such as in April, when the commission will meet in Santa Rosa.
He said the biggest need was to have good science on the fish.
Brown asked Smythe if it was reasonable to ask the state to defer the evaluation decision and give the county a year.
Smythe said the concern, again, was the available science, with no one really knowing what the hitch's life is like when it's in Clear Lake.
Lake County Farm Bureau Executive Director Claudia Street said her board of directors took a lot of time to put together a four-page letter to the Fish and Game Commission outlining their responses to the petition evaluation.
The Farm Bureau letter faults some of the petition's main conclusions for lack of a basis in science and minimizing “the unquestionably primary contributor of decreasing hitch populations - predation and competition from introduced species of fish.”
The letter also points out that “substantial efforts to improve hitch habitat” are currently under way in Lake County.
In addition, the Farm Bureau letter suggested four measures to reduce the threats to the hitch population: banning commercial harvesting of both adults and juvenile Clear Lake hitch; banning recreation hitch harvest; enforcing existing state streambed management regulations; and continuing to work with private landowners and municipalities on removing or modifying both public and private stream migration barriers and improving habitat for the hitch.
Finley resident Phil Murphy said he thought the Farm Bureau did a good job of critiquing the petition evaluation but had a flawed conclusion, and he raised issues of drawing water from local creeks when hitch fry are present and vulnerable.
“I believe listing the hitch as an endangered species is inevitable,” he said, adding that the fish are fairly easy to track.
He said that the board needed to have a deep, long discussion about possible ramifications and unintended consequences before signing on to any effort, adding that he wanted to see movement on things they already should be doing.
The board asked County Administrative Officer Matt Perry to draft a letter to the commission on Tuesday afternoon. Board Chair Jeff Smith wanted all board members to sign the letter.
Brown moved that the board authorize staff to write a letter identifying members' desire to defer the state decision, and allow them the opportunity to work with local partners in developing and researching the science, and coming up with a set of recommendations and solutions to best serve the hitch and the community.
The motion was approved 5-0.
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