I took a drive out to Little Rock last weekend and it appears to be closed. Gate was locked and no one around. Since I'm new to the forum maybe this is not new.
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I took a drive out to Little Rock last weekend and it appears to be closed. Gate was locked and no one around. Since I'm new to the forum maybe this is not new.
Army Cor engineers are planed to dredge the lake base of dam.
Thanks:Smile:
Little Rock Creek has all but dried up. There are some pools in an isolated part of the wilderness but they are no longer connected to any source of water and are drying up quickly. Fish? Fish in that area were killed to protect the Yellow Legged Frogs. That worked for a while but now the drought looks like it will kill them anyway.
The creek still holds native fish. Hard to get to but those who know , know. There are pools that have servived fish way before the dam was built.
A USGS survey oarty went in regarding the health and habitat of the frogs and how they were faring. There are some pools with frogs but they are not connected to the stream any more and are about a month away from drying up like a majority of Little Rock Creek. The fish are located in pools, nearby, but they are in the same boat. No springs and no connection to any source of water. There is no free running creek anymore. They almost look like Vernal Pools.
Big Rock is dry and dead as far as fish above the campground. The dam has nothing to do with providing water to Little Rock Creek. It is miles below the last remaining wild fish. The Angeles National Forest creeks and streams are at a critical juncture if we don't get significant and continuous rain...soon. Between the fires and drought, almost all of the Angeles creeks and streams are dust or filled with acid laden ash. Once these fish are gone, they will not be replaced with other then radiated Triploids that do not reproduce and only where the can drive the truck.
Best deal know is more rain then we know what to do with.
I'm really beginning to wonder how our 'native' fish ever survived hundreds, if not thousands of years living in this type of climate.Quote:
Originally Posted by Viejo
Obviously, since the climate hasn't changed :Cool:, is it pretty obvious that humans are the cause of the decline, and ultimately are responsible for the eradication of native populations in SoCal?
I mean, these same fish were plentiful 40 years ago in the same ranges in which they are hardly surviving in this day in age, right? What's changed to have these fish suffer this fate?
I truly believe the primary cause is the drought. If you look at rainfall amounts over the past 45 years, we are in a significant drought now. Where I live, the Manzanita and Oak are flat dying in droves. Springs that have run since I came here are now dry. The local water company wells have gone from 700 gallons a minute to 60. There is simply no recovery in these stressed environments. The pools I spoke of are not ten feet deep but more like a foot and a half.
. Add the the fires that fire hotter then centuries before because they are extinguished quicker then when they would mosaic that would keep fires smaller naturally. They are making the soil hydrophobic and type converting the vegetation to more flashy fuels. The ash runs off in the creeks during the few rains we do get and moonscapes it. The locals I used to fish are now shadows of their former self with inches of water where I could barely wade less then ten years ago.
I have no doubt that human greed has played role as well. The San Bernardino, Angeles and Cleavland are within an hours drive from 25 million people plus.
Steelhead used to run to the highest sources of water and they were pretty much eliminated.
Around the turn of the century, thousands of folks went to the mountains to recreate and the pictures of the fish camps on the San Gabriel had several hundred fish displayed from one days fishing. The National Forest preserve was created to protect the rampant poaching of game and fish, taking lumber and grazing meadows to dust with sheep and folks just claiming land for themselves. By the 1900's, there were no fish per se locally and trains were brought out from back East with trout fry and hauled to the high country by mule back and milk cans to repopulate the creeks. Today with millions more people wanting to come to the mountains and recreate, our mountains are being loved to death.
I have no answers other then profound sadness for something that had been so special for over 60 years. Unless something changes, I will not be able to show my Great Grand children what a wild trout looks like other in a picture.