Memorandum
Date: January 10, 2023
To: The Honorable Lake County Board of Supervisors
From: Michael S. Green, District 4 Supervisor
Eddie "E.J." Crandell, District 3 Supervisor
Subject: Consideration of Proclamation Declaring the Existence of a Local Emergency Due to Persistent Drought, Habitat Loss and Potential Extinction of Clear Lake Hitch
Executive Summary:
On Dec. 8, 2022, an emergency summit was convened at Big Valley Rancheria through the cooperative efforts of local tribes, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and other state and federal agencies. The subject of the summit was the Clear Lake hitch, or chi, a native fish species whose rapid decline has been accelerated by the drought emergency, competing water demands, legacy environmental impacts, predation by non-native fish, and other complex factors.
Evidence of the Clear Lake hitch's precarious state was presented in great detail by tribal council members, elders and staff. While efforts to improve the health of Clear Lake and its sensitive fish populations are ongoing, those assorted efforts span multiple agencies and revenue streams. Short-term programs, inter-agency partnerships and/or funding sources that can be immediately utilized to protect the chi's 2023 spawning season are not easily identified or accessed. While the chi was listed as "threatened" in 2014 under the California Endangered Species Act, that listing and subsequent state/federal/local actions have not been sufficient to protect the fishery.
In late 2022, four of Lake County's sovereign nations, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the California Fish and Game Commission petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ("FWS") to list the Clear Lake hitch as being "endangered" on an emergency basis. These requests followed an April 2022 stipulated settlement agreement and federal court order, under which FWS agreed to reconsider its 2020 decision that listing the chi as "endangered" under the federal Enda...
Click here for full text