ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT PROFILE

PROTECTION STATUS: Not federally listed; listed as a threatened species under the California Endangered Species Act

PETITIONED: Petitioned in 2012; also petitioned in 2012 under California Endangered Species Act

RANGE: Clear Lake hitch are endemic to Clear Lake and its tributary streams, in Lake County, California

THREATS: Water diversions, loss of spawning habitat and nursery areas, migration barriers that block passage to spawning grounds, alteration of creek habitat, in-channel mining, predation by and competition from introduced invasive fish, the impacts of pollutants, climate change and drought

POPULATION TREND: Spawning numbers of hitch have gone from estimated millions historically, to hundreds of thousands in the 1970s, to the low tens of thousands through the 1990s, to the low thousands today.

Clear Lake hitch photo courtesy Richard Macedo, California Fish and Game