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The massive Caldor Fire burning in California’s Sierra Nevada has forced the evacuation of thousands of people who live and work around Lake Tahoe, but biologists and nearby tribes also worry about the fate of the lake’s occupants. The fish, including an already imperiled species of trout, could suffer if ash and sediments begin to collect in the water.
Biologists are monitoring the ever-changing conditions for fish and the plants and smaller animals the fish depend on for food. The state and federal agencies and their tribal partners will also watch for possible effects on water quality and food supplies when accumulated ash and sediment wash into the lake during the winter rains and snowfall.
As of Wednesday, the Caldor Fire has burned across more than 204,000 acres, forcing evacuations in two states, and is about 20% contained.
Eight fish species, at least four found only within the Great Basin’s waters, are found in Lake Tahoe. One of those, the Lahontan cutthroat trout, is listed as threatened. Other non-native species have been introduced over the past century.
Lake Tahoe’s importance to Native peoples
Lake Tahoe is culturally important to Native peoples in the region, including the Maidu, the Paiute, the Shoshone and the Washoe. Paiute elder Gracie Numugrace described Lake Tahoe as a “joint use” area for the four cultures.
In precontact days, the Washoe and other Native peoples came to Tahoe, or “Da ow aga” in the Washoe language, to fish for trout, clams and other aquatic species for food, trade and other uses. Tribes throughout the Sierra and western Great Basin once spent springs and summers along the sparkling waters to fish and hunt and to gather for games, socializing and trade.
The tribes lost the lush, green forested lands and the pristine waters of Tahoe to gold miners, loggers and other development. Only small remnants of the once-vast lands held by Washoe, Paiute and Shoshone, Maidu and other Native peoples remain in the hands of tribes in Nevada and California.
Efforts to restore endangered fish
Along with land, many species the tribes subsisted on — and in many communities, still harvest — have grown scarce. The Lahontan cutthroat trout, Nevada’s state fish, went extinct in the Truckee River watershed from Lake Tahoe downstream to Pyramid Lake, around 1940. The Ice Age-era species, which had survived millennia in the basin, fell victim to dams, water diversions and overfishing.
Other fish species like the cui-ui, a species of sucker fish found only in Pyramid Lake and the lower Truckee River, have also become endangered. The Truckee is the only outlet for water from Lake Tahoe and winds about 121 miles until it reaches Pyramid Lake.
In the 1970s, Scientists discovered that some of the Lahontan trout had been transplanted to a small creek on the Nevada-Utah border. Some of those fish were used to recover the species in the two lakes and the Truckee River watershed.
Lisa Heki, project leader at the Lahontan National Fish Hatchery in Gardnerville, Nevada, said the Lahontan trout species include both a lake form and a stream form, which live in the Truckee River and the streams that flow into it.
“The lake form has a higher tolerance for salinity and alkalinity,” said Heki, who has said Heki, who has been with the trout recovery program since 1993. The lake variety can grow up to 40-60 pounds, while the river and stream population ranges up to 10 pounds.
The two lakes provide resilient habitat for the Lahontan cutthroat trout in the face of threats like fire and drought, Heki said.
The Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California is partnering with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to restore the Lahontan species. The Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe also maintains a Lahontan cutthroat trout spawning facility on the lower Truckee River, and the Fish and Wildlife Service releases stocks into Pyramid Lake.
“The Fish and Wildlife Service has worked in partnership with the Washoe Tribe since 2006 on Lahontan trout conservation and recovery,” Heki said. “They have supported our efforts to reintroduce the native strain of the trout into Lake Tahoe.”
Caldor Fire: Famously beautiful and blue Lake Tahoe threatened by massive wildfire
How Caldor Fire could affect fish
Heki said the Fish and Wildlife Service, along with other agencies, will be monitoring the impacts of the Caldor Fire on water quality in Lake Tahoe.
Echoing Heki, Travis Hawks, regional fisheries biologist at the Nevada Department of Wildlife, said his agency is monitoring both the lake and streams for ash and sediment. Hawks said the ash from the fire is blowing away from the crest of the Sierras and dispersing in the valleys below.
Hawks believes that some of the trout in the streams that feed the Truckee may be affected.
The smaller river- and stream-dwelling trout population were reintroduced about 20 to 30 years ago at the same time they were put back into Pyramid Lake. However, the river and stream trout are mostly likely lost, Hawks said. The anticipated fish deaths could be due to ash, sediment and possibly even firefighting chemicals discharged into the streams that feed the Truckee.
The Lahontan cutthroat trout that have been released on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe since 2017 don’t seem to be affected so far. And the trout at Pyramid Lake continue to thrive.
Hawks is more optimistic about the immediate effects of the fire on lake water quality.
“Lake Tahoe is such an enormous, enormous body of water,” Hawks said. “There may be a few localized issues.”
The larger effects of the fire will be felt later: “There is going to be runoff,” Hawks said. “The bigger concern is going to be next winter, when we get snow and rain on top of everything that’s burned.”
That precipitation will wash a lot of sediment and some ash into the lake system.
“Lake Tahoe has a special meaning to the Washoe,” said Washoe tribal elder Dabert Wyatt in 1997, after President Bill Clinton returned more than 400 acres of land near and on the shore of Lake Tahoe to tribal control. “Each family has a special place where they camped and summered. Those things were erased when the land was bought up and the ‘no trespassing’ signs came in.
“I don’t have many years left, but at least I can say it happened in my lifetime. There are Washoe kids who have probably never been up here. Now they can come up and enjoy Lake Tahoe like the old people did.”
Washoe tribal officials did not respond to requests for comment. An official from the Nevada Indian Commission said that the tribe is dealing with the aftermath of the Tamarack Fire, which destroyed homes in the Hung A Lel Ti community near Woodfords, California, in July, and with possible evacuations in some of its Nevada communities due to the encroachment of the Caldor Fire.
Debra Krol reports on Indigenous communities at the confluence of climate, culture and commerce in Arizona and the Intermountain West. Reach Krol at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter at @debkrol.
Coverage of Indigenous issues at the intersection of climate, culture and commerce is supported by the Catena Foundation.
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