photo credit: Richard Macedo/California Department of Fish and Wildlife

The future for a threatened fish native to Clear Lake could soon be decided in a courtroom. 

Known to the Pomo peoples as the chi - the Clear Lake hitch is a small minnow fish native to Clear Lake and the surrounding tributaries in Lake County.

Habitat loss, invasive species, and dried up creeks and streams have depleted the once abundant population of hitch.

Now, Meg Townsend, and the Center for Biological Diversity, is hoping the courts, or at least the threat of a court battle, can help the hitch.

"Despite the clear scientific evidence that the hitch are facing the threat of extinction, federal protections for the hitch have repeatedly been delayed," Townsend, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, said.

The Center has been pushing for federal endangered species protection for the hitch for over a decade.

"This is a fish that is found nowhere else on Earth," Townsend said. "Each spring adult hitch migrate from Clear Lake into the tributary streams to spawn, but while historically millions of hitch made these runs, supporting the lake's ecosystem and sustaining the Pomo indigenous cultures for generations, today in a good year only a few thousand fish are returning and in recent drought years even fewer."

California recognized the small fish as threatened in 2014.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed to do the same last January.

"Under the Endangered Species Act, the final rule listing the hitch as a threatened species was due this January, but that didn't happen," Townsend said.

That is the reason Townsend said the Center for Biological Diversity is prepared to go to court.

"There is kind of an all hands-on-deck effort going on to save the hitch, but this final piece of federal listing will really ensure that the hitch and its habitat are protected into the future," Townsend said.

Tribal groups, like the Big Valley Band of Pomo Indians, have been leading restoration efforts, along with community groups like the Lake County Land Trust and Farm Bureau, to protect and restore hitch populations.

"There been a lot of fish passage projects that have been completed and invasive carp are being removed, which is all great," Townsend said. "On top of that, tribal advocacy has prompted state review of excessive water pumping in the area."

The hitch isn't the first native Clear Lake fish under such threat. The Clear Lake Splittail, a similar minnow fish, went extinct by 1969, due to similar pressures facing the hitch.

The splittail was the last species to go extinct in California.

"The goal of of an endangered species act listing isn't to be on the list forever," Townsend said. "It's actually to get off the list."

The Center for Biological Diversity said its plans to file suit against the federal government, as soon as early April, if the Fish and Wildlife Service does not take immediate steps to protect the Clear Lake hitch.