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New!
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Watch
the MOVIE!:
live footage (with sound!) of hitch migrating and spawning!
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Next
meeting September 22, 2010
The
Chi Council is taking the summer off. Our next meeting will be
held at 3:30PM on Wednesday September 22, at the Ag Center,
just off Lakeport Blvd at Highway 29. Please download a map
if you need directions.
If
you have not yet sent in your observations for the 2010 season,
please take a moment to do so as soon as possible. They can be
submitted by email to chicouncil@ lakelive.info,
by fax to (707) 263 6224 ; or by USPS to Chi Council, c/o Peter
Windrem, 7460 Kelsey Creek Dr, Kelseyville, CA 95451. For details
of our May 26 meeting, please check the minutes.
All
interested parties are invited to attend the Council's meetings.
For further information, to sign up for our email list, or to
volunteer for the monitoring program contact chicouncil@lakelive.info.
Observations
may be sent by email to chicouncil@lakelive.info
(either typed into the body of the message or as an attachment);
or by fax to (707) 263 6224; or by snail mail either to Victoria
Brandon, 15995 Lucy Circle, Lower Lake 95457; or Peter Windrem,
7460 Kelsey Creek Dr, Kelseyville 95451. Please remember that
negative observations (no chi seen) are just as valid and important
as positive ones, and that the minimum information needed for
an entry into the database is date, creek, and approximate number
of fish. Time of day, precise location, and additional comments
about weather, predators, etc are all very helpful but not essential.
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On
Tuesday April 28, 2009 the Board of Supervisors presented
the prestigious Conservationist of the Year
award to the Chi Council. This honor, which is awarded
on nomination of the Fish and Wildlife Advisory Committee and
memorialized by listing on a permanent plaque in the lobby of
the Courthouse in Lakeport, had not been given for the past ten
years. Photos and story here.
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The Chi Council is a coordinated
resource management and planning group dedicated to the study, protection,
and restoration of a viable population of Lavinia exilicauda chi
(the Clear Lake Hitch) within a healthy watershed ecosystem. Details
of the Council's goals, guidelines and organizational structure are
stated in the August 23, 2004 Memorandum of Understanding (updated August
23, 2009) which formally established it as an entity.
The hitch,
an ancient fish endemic to Clear Lake, live in deep in water most of
the time, but every spring the adults work their way up the tributary
creeks to spawn. In the words of biologist Rick Macedo, they used to
"mass by the thousands," in an annual ritual "as spectacular as any
salmon run on the Pacific coast . . . The tumultuous splashing . . .
and the appearance of herons, osprey, egrets, and bald eagles . . .
signify that the hitch are in." In recent years the population seems
to have declined precipitously, for reasons that are still poorly understood.
Streambed obstructions, predation by introduced fish, and food competition
all have been suggested as possible causes for their diminished numbers.
At the
present time the Council has formulated several immediate objectives:
- Coordinating
and training volunteer population monitoring teams
- Establishing
scientific protocols for the monitoring effort, and maintaining a
database of the information learned
- Encouraging
scientific research on hitch and their habitat
- Enhancing
public awareness of hitch and their habitat
- Gathering
and preserving information about hitch and their traditional uses
by the native peoples of the Clear Lake Basin
- Sponsoring
habitat restoration projects
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