When the state attached endangered species status to the iconic Southern California steelhead trout last week, it was like giving an aging Hollywood starlet new billing. But will the klieg lights bring attention, money and fame, or ready them for their final close-up?
Known simply as Southern California steelhead, they once teemed in the tens of thousands in streams and rivers from Santa Barbara to the Mexican border. But after rivers were mummified in concrete, dams were erected and habitat turned into roads and housing tracts, their numbers dwindled, with a recent survey verifying only 177 in existence.
Nonetheless, from the biologists at the California Fish and Game Commission who granted the status under the California Endangered Species Act, and the folks at California Trout who successfully petitioned for it, to historians, tribal leaders and fish lovers in general, the recognition brings a chance for a happy ending to this fish story.
The fish originally was listed by the federal government as an endangered species since 1997. But CalTrout leaders in 2020 began the petition to the state after seeing little progress. “Now is the time to empower the state agencies to lead the way to make sure this species doesn’t go extinct,” said Russell Marlow, senior project manager in the South Coast region for California Trout.
Last year, Marlow saw a picture of a Southern steelhead swimming in the Santa Ynez River north of Santa Barbara and he doubled down on the state petition application. “I thought, is this the picture of the last fish observed?” he said last week. “We’ve seen only a handful returning to any of the major rivers in the past couple of years.”
Gut-punch moments like that one peppered the group’s petition that pushed the buttons of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to proclaim they will help this fish survive by putting money into stream restoration and dam-removal projects that block the fish from spawning and maturing…
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