Clear Lake Tribal Co-Management | Saving the Sacred Hitch

Tribal Stewardship at Clear Lake

Seven tribes surrounding Clear Lake in Northern California signed a formal agreement on Friday to co-manage the watershed with state agencies and local governments. This marks the first pact of its kind under a state initiative to return land and water management to Indigenous nations. The goal is to stabilize a water body suffering from persistent environmental damage.

Clear Lake faces severe threats from mercury contamination, toxic algal blooms, and invasive fish populations that destroy native habitats. These factors have decimated the Clear Lake hitch, a rare fish known to local tribes as the chi. Historically, the chi served as a vital food source for the Pomo people, who gathered annually to harvest the fish in the creeks feeding the lake. The situation remains critical as the lake struggles with rising temperatures and oxygen depletion.

The Human and Ecological Cost

For decades, the health of the watershed has been in decline due to human interference. By the 1920s, mining operations left mercury in the lakebed, and settlers introduced nonnative fish species that now outcompete native life. The extinction of the Clear Lake splittail serves as a warning for the current state of the chi. Tribes have performed emergency interventions for years, including clearing debris from spawning streams, rescuing fish stranded in agricultural ditches, and monitoring water quality.

Jose Moke Simon III, chair of the Middletown Rancheria of Pomo Indians, remembers when the creeks ran black with fish during his childhood. Those days of abundance ended when developers and state policies pushed tribal nations off their ancestral lands. The federal government’s termination of rancheria reservations in the 1950s severed the tribes' legal connection to their resources. Today, this new agreement attempts to reverse that alienation by giving the tribes a seat at the table for resource management.

Future Strategies for Restoration

This agreement solidifies the ad hoc work tribes have conducted for years. The Big Valley Band of Pomo Indians continues to monitor water quality and clean spawning grounds. Meanwhile, the Robinson Rancheria of Pomo Indians prepares to use controlled burns on tule plants to improve shelter for the fish. The Habematolel Pomo of Upper Lake maintains a tagging program to track the movement and behavior of the remaining chi population.

State officials describe the collaboration as a shift toward shared decision-making. Geneva E.B. Thompson, deputy secretary for tribal affairs at the California Natural Resources Agency, noted that the document translates informal efforts into a formal stewardship strategy. The tribes look toward a future where they can restore the population of the chi to levels that allow for traditional harvesting. For leaders like Simon, the work is about preserving a cultural legacy for the next seven generations.