SAN BERNARDINO, Calif.— Conservation groups have reached an agreement with three Southern California counties and the federal government to help promote the recovery of the San Bernardino kangaroo rat and the Santa Ana sucker fish. The two species are found only in Southern California.
The agreement secures 400 acres of habitat rehabilitation for the imperiled species, who rely on federally designated critical habitat in the Santa Ana River Wash near the Seven Oaks Dam in San Bernardino County. Endangered plants such as the Santa Ana woolly-star will share in the benefits.
“Finally there’s good news for the San Bernardino kangaroo rat and the Santa Ana sucker, unique and imperiled species struggling because of habitat loss,” said John Buse, a senior counsel at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This agreement shows that with cooperation, we can achieve wildlife protection, water conservation and flood safeguards for Southern California’s largest watershed.”
The agreement follows a 2016 lawsuit filed by the Center and Endangered Habitat League against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for failing to consider harm to the two imperiled species when operating and managing the Seven Oaks Dam and other flood-control projects. Flood-control districts from San Bernardino, Riverside and Orange counties intervened in the lawsuit. Two other public agencies that have been affected by dam operations, the San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District and the San Bernardino Valley Water Conservation District, also joined the lawsuit aligned with the conservation groups.
“As a result of the settlement, we now have the opportunity to work collaboratively with several flood control and water districts to return water to hundreds of acres of endangered species habitat, while maintaining public safety and groundwater recharge,” said Dan Silver, executive director of Endangered Habitats League.
The 1999 construction of the flood-control dam and its subsequent management permanently altered the hydrology of the Santa Ana River and further imperiled the endangered San Bernardino kangaroo rat and the federally threatened Santa Ana sucker fish. Failure to consider the harm to these protected species and their habitat is a violation of the Endangered Species Act.
The agreement, finalized Aug. 29, ends 6 years of negotiations between the conservation groups and government agencies.
Background
The Santa Ana sucker is a small, olive-gray fish found in clear, cool, rocky pools of creeks, as well as gravelly bottoms of permanent streams with slight to swift currents. Many of these streams are naturally subject to severe seasonal flooding, which can decimate resident fish populations.
The Santa Ana sucker’s adaptations enable it to repopulate its birth streams rapidly after such unpredictable events. The fish mainly eats algae, which they search out with the large lips that gave them their common name. The fish were well distributed throughout the Los Angeles, San Gabriel and San Bernardino rivers historically, where they have vanished from nearly 95% of their historic range since the 1970s and are now relegated to only a few stream stretches.
San Bernardino kangaroo rats are a small, seed-eating animals with large hind legs that they use to hop around on like a kangaroo, which is how they got their name. They live along the banks of creeks and streams where they help to re-establish plants and habitat after floods by collecting and distributing seeds of local shrubs and flowers and trimming vegetation. They are found only in Riverside and San Bernardino counties, although they were much more widespread just 50 years ago. Much of their habitat has been developed, so they have been relegated to the flood channels and adjacent banks of unchannelized streams.
