Friday January 27, 2023
Lake County Record-Bee —
Members of the California State Water Board, Department of Water Resources, Fish and Wildlife and the Big Valley Rancheria met Wednesday at Adobe Creek in Kelseyville to exchange resources and train staff in order to gain more data in hopes of saving the endangered Clear Lake Hitch.
Since 2014, when the state of California listed the Hitch as endangered, continuous efforts have been made to list the Hitch as endangered at the federal level. Big Valley Rancheria Environmental Director Sara Ryan explained some of the complications faced over the past several years.
“It has been a long process with the feds, but their own studies say to put in on the endangered list,” she said. Ryan reviewed the timeline of the requests made, which were originally submitted by the Center for Bio-Diversity in 2015 but were not officially denied until 2020. The CBD accused the federal government of not following the Endangered Species Act and filed a lawsuit in 2021 against the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service. In 2022 the suit was settled and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service requested two more years of data.