Deadline Set for Deciding Fate of Fading Fish Species

The federal government must decide by Jan. 15 whether a once-common fish called the Santa Ana sucker should be declared an endangered species, an environmental group reported Wednesday.

The deadline was set in a legal settlement to be filed in federal court today, said Claudia Polsky, an attorney with the Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund, which sued on behalf of fish advocates. Several Los Angeles area projects could be affected if the fish is granted federal protection under the Endangered Species Act.

“This fish inhabits some of the only arguably wild streams in Los Angeles County,” Polsky said.

The sucker was once common in the Los Angeles, San Gabriel and Santa Ana rivers and smaller streams. But development and river channelization have pushed the fish inland, where it clings to life in a few areas, such as the Santa Ana River from Riverside to Yorba Linda.

Environmentalists have fought since 1994 to win endangered species status for the fish. But the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service concluded in 1997 that, while the sucker deserves such protection, more than 100 other West Coast plants and animals are even more threatened and should be dealt with first. Listing a species is costly and time-consuming, and officials are dealing with a big backlog of candidates for federal protection.

So fish advocates went to court last year to force the government’s hand with a lawsuit brought by the American Fisheries Society’s regional chapter and California Trout, a conservation group. They were represented by the Earthjustice fund, formerly the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund.

If the federal government decides the fish should be listed, public hearings would follow, and a final decision made by the end of 1999.