Lake County hears updates on Clear Lake hitch monitoring, conservation strategy and restoration work

Lake County officials on a recent meeting received a multi-agency update on monitoring, conservation planning and local restoration work to support the Clear Lake hitch, a fish listed as threatened under the California Endangered Species Act.

The presentations came from Filippo La Luz of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, Fred Fira of the U.S. Geological Survey and Chris Childers of the Lake County Watershed Protection District. Angela DiPalma Dow, program coordinator for the County of Lake Water Resources Department, opened the item and noted local staffing investments: "There's been 2 positions allocated for Clear Lake Clear Lake Hitch programs in water resources," she said.

Why it matters: agencies reported mixed signals in population indices since 2017 — a pronounced low in 2022, a large uptick in some 2023 surveys and lower numbers again in 2024 — and emphasized that the causes remain uncertain. That uncertainty affects whether the species will recover and how to prioritize restoration, monitoring and grant-funded projects across the watershed.

State and county monitoring methods and results

Filippo La Luz, senior environmental scientist for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), summarized three monitoring approaches used by his agency and its partners: a visual adult-count survey in tributaries (21 fixed locations in Big Valley, started 2014), an electrofishing-based lake-edge sampling program (four fixed transects, started 2019) and mark–recapture work used to produce relative population estimates. La Luz…