Jose “Moke” Simon III recalls as a child in the ‘70s watching the creeks that flow into Clear Lake in Northern California turn black with fish — a fish found only in these waters — as they made their springtime run.

Someone would call from the neighboring reservation with the news: “The hitch are running!” Everybody would grab their ice chests and pile into cars.

“They ran so thick in the rivers, you didn’t even need a pole,” said Simon, now chair of the Middletown Rancheria of Pomo Indians. “You’d just get in there and splash them out of the river, or catch them in your shirt.”

But those days are gone. As Clear Lake faces mercury contamination, toxic algal blooms and predatory invasive fish, the Clear Lake hitch — known by local tribes as the chi — are in serious trouble. Another fish unique to the watershed, the Clear Lake splittail, is already extinct.

After years of advocacy and on-the-ground work to save the fish, the seven tribes around the lake signed an agreement with state agencies and local governments Friday to formally co-manage the troubled body of water. Nearly two centuries after Europeans took over these lands, it’s a literal watershed: the first agreement governing a watershed since the state launched an initiative to bring 7% of California’s lands and waters under the care of tribes.

The tribes hope it will turn their ad hoc emergency work — which has coincided with an increase of chi in the lake — into a lasting strategy to protect the fish.

“I really hope it’s going to solidify the long-term success and vitality of this fish for the next seven generations,” Simon said, who described the signing as the most government agencies he’s ever seen come together in the region.

As far back as stories go, the chi have been vital for the region’s Indigenous people. Every year, Pomo nations would gather at the south end of the lake to catch and dry the fish that would sustain them throughout the year, Simon said.

But nearly two centuries ago, European settlers started fracturing this relationship.

Settlers began arriving by the 1840s. A pair of particularly brutal white ranchers enslaved and starved Pomo villagers, murdered men on a whim and raped women and children. Eventually, the Indigenous locals rose up and killed them. In response, on May 15, 1850, armed vigilantes and the U.S. Army slaughtered hundreds of tribal members.

The following year, the U.S. government promised the tribes reservations but failed to create them. What they got instead, decades later, were much were smaller “rancheria” reservations that the government again terminated in 1950s. Without oversight of the land, protecting the chi has been an upstream battle.

“We don’t own the land, but we certainly feel like we have an immense responsibility to be good stewards and caretakers of the land,” said Danielle Cirelli, chair of the Habematolel Pomo of Upper Lake.

As for fish, settlers had begun introducing non-native species by the late 1800s for sport fishing. They proved to be invasive. Today there are more than 20 introduced species still in the lake that kick up sediment, destroy the plants the chi live among and eat their eggs.

In the 1920s, a modest mercury mine grew into a large open-pit operation, contaminating the watershed with the toxic metal. The mercury made its way into the fish, posing a risk to tribal members who relied on the chi for food.

To make matters worse, Clear Lake has struggled with dramatic blooms of toxic algae, spurred by stretches of hot summer days with little wind. As the warm water sits still at the top, oxygen no longer circulates to the bottom. This sets off a chemical reaction freeing phosphorus, a primary nutrient for the algae, from the lake floor. The heat, low oxygen and toxic algae all harm the chi.

Globally, these kinds of blooms are increasingly common as human-caused emissions continue to warm the Earth.

It’s “death by a thousand cuts,” said Steve Sadro, UC Davis environmental science and policy department chair who works on Clear Lake rehabilitation.

In 2017, Clear Lake’s dire condition led the state to establish a blue ribbon commission, with tribal participation, focused on cleaning up the lake to bolster the local boating and fishing economy. But drought struck the region in the early 2020s — shrinking the streams where the chi spawn. The tribes began sounding the alarm and the state set up a Clear Lake Hitch Task Force with the tribes.

The result has been a surge of activity in recent years, much of it spearheaded by the tribes.

UC Davis developed a device that pumps oxygen from a tank onshore to the bottom of the lake to combat the algae problem. The Big Valley Band of Pomo Indians monitors water quality for algal blooms and cleans up spawning creeks that get clogged with sediment and trash.

The Robinson Rancheria of Pomo Indians tracks and removes invasive fish like carp and goldfish and now plans to start setting fire to tule — a giant grass-like plant that the chi rely on for shelter — to help it grow better. The Habematolel Pomo of Upper Lake catch and tag the chi to better understand their behavior.

The tribes also have worked together after rains to orchestrate rescue missions for chi that are trapped in puddles, offshoots and agricultural ditches.

“This co-management agreement is really putting pen to paper on what is already happening on the ground,” said Geneva E.B. Thompson, deputy secretary for tribal affairs at the California Natural Resources Agency. It’s “a beautiful example of what shared decision making can look like for a watershed, for a fish species.”

Simon hopes it moves the tribes one step closer to freely catching the chi again, like he did as a child.

“That would be something to see,” he said, “before I’m back in the earth.”

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