Advocates Want Tests for Key Fish

Hiking along a remote creek in the Santa Ana Mountains in 1999, Lee Waian made an unexpected discovery. Swimming in two small pools were 14 healthy fish with silvery sides, black dots and an orangish stripe.

He thought they looked a lot like endangered steelhead trout but knew they could be hatchery trout released years earlier by wildlife officials. Genetic tests would reveal the answer.

Waian, a retired ecologist who has helped state fish and game experts survey fish in creeks, carefully scooped each fish into his net and took tiny clippings from their fins before placing them back in the water. He bagged and labeled the samples, then handed them over to the state Department of Fish and Game, which he said promised to send them to a genetics lab in Santa Cruz.

Five years later, the samples are still sitting in storage at the Santa Cruz lab. There’s no estimate on when they’ll be tested.

“I thought it would be a couple of months at most,” said Waian, a fly fisherman who has spent years surveying creeks and pressing the state to test the samples. “I’m very frustrated that these have not been addressed yet.”

What environmentalists and scientists call a relatively simple procedure has instead become a quagmire, in their view. In addition to Waian’s samples, fin clippings collected in May 2003 from steelhead trout seen in Trabuco Creek have sat untested at the same lab for more than a year.

Conservationists say quick identification of the fish is critical to their efforts to pinpoint streams and creeks. Official designation of their habitat can often limit development and pollution that could harm it.

State officials say they’re at the mercy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, operator of the Santa Cruz lab, which determines, for instance, whether a fish is a wild steelhead or a more ordinary hatchery steelhead.

“They have just a huge backlog of samples to try to work up, and we got late in line, is what they’re telling us,” said John O’Brien, a state Fish and Game biologist.

Environmentalists and biologists agree that steelhead sightings are significant and raise hopes that the species -- once found throughout local watersheds but virtually absent since the 1960s -- will make a comeback.

Steelhead are rainbow trout that have left freshwater rivers or creeks for the sea, then return to spawn in fresh water. At sea, the fish turn a silvery hue and gain their signature stripe.

Unlike salmon, steelhead do not need to return to the stream where they hatched.

“The steelhead will take any creek of opportunity,” said Michael Hazzard, an environmental activist in south Orange County who collaborates with several organizations on trout preservation.

Sightings of 40 steelhead in San Mateo Creek in Orange County in 1998 prompted the federal government in 2002 to extend the range for their endangered status to the area from Malibu to the Mexican border. A year later, more steelhead were spotted in Trabuco Creek.

San Mateo, Trabuco and San Juan creeks form a network of waterways from the Santa Ana Mountains and along tracts of private property to the sea. Urban runoff often sullies the creek waters before they reach the ocean.

State wildlife officials say the lack of steelhead test results for areas such as Trabuco Creek, historically known to have steelhead, doesn’t interfere with their conservation work.

“We’re not waiting for genetic confirmation before any action can be taken,” O’Brien said. “We’re going full steam ahead with trying to restore watersheds because healthy watersheds have steelhead.”

But environmentalists say confirmation of steelhead trout would give them important leverage with developers to protect the species and its habitat. They also wonder how federal or state wildlife agencies can adequately protect endangered species if basic identification takes so long.

“It’s pretty incredible that the Department of Fish and Game would not prioritize genetic testing for a species ... rarely seen in the few streams that are left in Orange County,” said Andrew Wetzler, an attorney for the National Resources Defense Council.

Environmentalists also contend that prompt identification is all the more important because the Bush administration this week proposed rolling back protections for threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead.

Hazzard said he would not be discouraged by the proposed relaxation of safeguards for the fish. He says he’s in it for the long haul.

“We’ll just keep collecting data and wait for another administration,” he said. “It’s a tug o’ war. It always is.”

On Thursday afternoon, Hazzard stooped on a large rock next to San Mateo Creek in the Cleveland National Forest. Recent storms had produced a gurgling stream of cold, clear water and contiguous pools, some 20 feet wide and 5 feet deep. He cupped water in one hand, looking for insects and the quarter-sized gray tree frogs steelhead like to eat.

“You’ve got trees that give shade, you’ve got narrower areas that are shallow for bugs, and deep areas where they can stay cool or hide,” Hazzard said.

There are no steelhead here yet, and it may be a few more years before they venture this far up the creek, but the habitat is prime and ready, he said.

But Waian says he’s wasted valuable time awaiting the tests.

O’Brien, the Fish and Game biologist, said the fin clippings Waian provided languished on a Fish and Game biologist’s desk for several years before they were rediscovered and sent to Santa Cruz last fall, along with samples from Trabuco Creek.

Confirmation of the fish as native steelhead could have spurred forest rangers to take protective action, Waian said.

Right now, he said, “they’re vulnerable. People could go in and catch them and we couldn’t do anything to stop them.”

Katherine Bucklin, a geneticist and adjunct professor at Oregon State University, said testing of samples can be done quickly in some cases. Identifying a fish can take at little as 48 hours, she said.

The demand for wildlife genetic testing has soared in recent years, and there are only a few California labs equipped to do it.

As for Waian, he’ll keep waiting and bugging the agencies.

“It doesn’t stop us from continuing to try to get the fish back in our streams,” Waian said. “These steelhead are like hangers-on, like redwoods down near Big Sur. I give them points for toughness.”