Still Endangered After All These Years

Thirty-one years after the unarmored threespine stickleback landed on the federal list of endangered species, the beleaguered little fish continues to occupy a stretch of the Santa Clara River that runs through Soledad Canyon, just outside Santa Clarita.

But after more than three decades of federal protection, the stickleback faces a whole new set of threats, as well as most of those that endangered the fish in the first place.

The stickleback, an unusual subspecies that lacks the bony structures, or plates, typical of its kind, has outwitted one nemesis after another over the years, from giant clawed frogs to human neighbors who have cavalierly dynamited stretches of the river.

“I’m surprised, from what I’ve seen over the last 12 years, that it’s hung on so long,” said Shawna Bautista, 41, a ranger in the Angeles National Forest whose job includes tending the fish.

According to the team that wrote the stickleback’s official recovery plan in 1977 and revised it in 1985, the fish survives despite enemies, old and new--but just barely.

“It’s under more pressure now than it used to be,” said 51-year-old Tom Haglund of Sherman Oaks, an advisor to the six-person recovery team and an environmental consultant. Continuing urbanization is a major threat, especially development by such large landholders on the river as Newhall Land & Farming. So is the invasion of a predatory plant, giant reed or arundo donax, which grows more than 2 inches a day, spreads like kudzu and sucks up water.

But the greatest perils, Haglund said, may be the stickleback’s lack of charisma and its low public profile. Its ability to survive the occasional oil spill and other assaults on its habitat, he said, “may make us complacent, and there’s always a danger in complacency.”

Also worrisome to Haglund is that the recovery plan has not been revised for more than 15 years, despite developments that make the fish’s survival less likely. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is the federal agency that approved the original plan and its revision, but it has no plans for another revision, said Jane Hedron, a spokeswoman in its Carlsbad office.

But, as Haglund pointed out, the human population has boomed all around the fish’s refuge, putting it at greater risk. Between 1990 and 2000, the population of Santa Clarita jumped 35%, to more than 151,000. Moreover, recent studies indicate that the stickleback, one of 71 endangered animal species in California, is not as widespread as once thought.

When the recovery plan was revised, Haglund said, it was thought there were unarmored threespine sticklebacks in San Antonio Creek, on Vandenberg Air Force Base near Lompoc. Since then, genetic tests have revealed that those fish look like the unarmored stickleback in the Santa Clara River but are not close relatives genetically.

As a result, the Vandenberg look-alikes can’t help the local stickleback recover. “There was a time when we thought we had other populations, and now we don’t,” Haglund said.

Several of the recovery team’s recommendations have never been carried out, such as reintroducing the fish in areas where they once swam and creating a holding facility in case of a catastrophe. And Haglund said Fish and Wildlife no longer consults regularly with the recovery team. That worries Haglund because “there’s so much activity on the Santa Clara River now where the expertise of the recovery team would be valuable.”

Teams typically go inactive after delivering their recovery plans, a Fish and Wildlife spokesman said.

One of four fish native to the Santa Clara River, the stickleback is a tiny treasure to environmentalists. They marvel at the beauty of the courting males--silver fish no bigger than a child’s pinkie, with bright red throats and turquoise flanks and eyes. When full of eggs, the somewhat larger females are a golden olive color.

“They’re amazing little fish,” said Bautista, who does an annual sampling in Soledad Canyon to gauge how well the fish are doing. “They live in a harsh environment, for a fish,” she said. The Santa Clara has raging floods and sometimes dries to a trickle, she said, “and they still manage to hang on.”

Bautista, who has monitored the fish for 12 years, said its population trend is “downward, unfortunately.” Every July or August, she dips a net at 100-meter intervals into the mile-long stretch of the stream within the national forest, then counts the fish. In 1991, she found a record 784 stickleback; in 1998, only 23. Bautista said she does not know the total number of fish now in the protected habitat.

The plight of the stickleback is that of every endangered species that isn’t big, beautiful or awe-inspiring. “People like what I call ‘fuzzies,’ ” Haglund said. “They like cuddly things. You can put a panda up, and everybody has sympathy for the plight of the panda. When you’re talking about fish that are 1 1/2 inches long, people say, ‘So what?’ ”