Featured Scientist

Farhat electrofishes Silver Creek in Mono County to remove non-native brook trout and restore the fishery for native Lahontan cutthroat trout.


Farhat and colleagues from the Heritage and Wild Trout Program, fly rods at the ready, prepare to survey the North Fork Mokelumne River to assess the quality of trout fishing.


Away from work, Farhat is an eclectic angler shown here holding a vermillion rockfish.


Farhat with the California state freshwater fish -- the golden trout.


As a teenager growing up in the Bay Area, Farhat discovered the joys of bass fishing.

Farhat Bajjaliya is the Statewide Inland Trout Coordinator for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW). Based out of the Fisheries Branch West Sacramento offices, Farhat oversees the high-profile Heritage and Wild Trout Program, the popular Heritage Trout Challenge, and supervises the staff who ensures CDFW’s trout stocking remains in environmental compliance.

A third-generation Palestinian-American, Farhat was born in Daly City and grew up in Concord. He studied both biology and environmental studies while earning bachelor’s degrees at Sonoma State and received his master’s degree in biological conservation from Sacramento State while working for CDFW.

Farhat joined CDFW as a scientific aid in the summer of 2007 operating rotary screw traps on the Sacramento River to survey juvenile Chinook salmon and assisted with CDFW’s second – and successful – effort to eradicate invasive northern pike from Lake Davis in Plumas County. Since then, he has held roles of increasing responsibility and leadership, including serving as the Steelhead Report and Restoration Card Coordinator and the Statewide Hatchery Coordinator before assuming his current position in 2019.

What brought you to CDFW?

I spent my childhood fishing with my father and uncles and gained a deep appreciation for the outdoors as a Boy Scout. When it came time to go to college, my father, who was a grocer at the time, encouraged me to choose a career path based on my passions, which led me to studying biology and environmental science. When I graduated, I saw that “Fish and Game” was hiring in Sacramento. The job sounded adventurous and aligned with my values, and I’ve been with the department ever since.

Where did you fish growing up?

The East Bay reservoirs – primarily San Pablo Dam and Lafayette. I spent most of my childhood plunking dough bait for trout and chicken livers for catfish. During my teenage years, I started tournament bass fishing casually with a local bass club. So, I kind of transitioned from trout and catfish to the bass world.

The head of CDFW’s Heritage and Wild Trout Program is a bass angler?

(Laughs) To be honest with you, I dabble in it all. I like to fish for trout, of course, but it really depends on the season. I really look forward to spring and early summer because striped bass are in the system, American shad start running, and black bass start warming up. I like to do it all.

What’s your vision for the Heritage and Wild Trout Program?

I think the Heritage and Wild Trout Program is one of the best programs within the department. Its mission strikes a unique balance between species conservation, resource management, angling, and public outreach. With that said, I do feel like certain aspects of the trout fishing world can be perceived as exclusionary at times. My vision includes maintaining our core mission while bolstering inclusivity. We are exploring options to rebrand and modernize the program a bit, while also providing anglers with more applicable information regarding our designated waters. I believe everyone should know about and have access to high quality heritage and wild trout angling opportunities. There is room for the purist, catch-and-release angler who only fly fishes. And, where it’s appropriate and where regulations allow, I don’t think there is necessarily anything wrong with being able to throw a lure or in some cases use bait.

What would you like trout anglers – or any angler for that matter – to know about the Heritage and Wild Trout Program today?

Take a look at our list of designated waters. Over the past 50 years, the program has identified some of the best trout spots in the state based on aesthetics, species present, fishing action and accessibility. Also, our Heritage Trout Challenge is an excellent way to explore California’s native trout within their historic ranges. Most of these fish can be caught roadside with a little research, but the more adventurous can plan day hikes or backcountry backpacking trips to find their fish. We also have a challenge guide on our website to get you started. Successful applicants receive a frameable, personalized poster and a hat. We’re nearing our 500th successful applicant and expect to reach that milestone this year.

Anglers might be familiar with some of the first designated waters, famous blue-ribbon trout streams such as Hat Creek and Fall River, even if they haven’t fished them. The California Fish and Game Commission adds new waters to the program every year based largely on your recommendations. Can you tell us about some of the more recent additions to the program we may not know as much about?

Sure. On the eastern side of the Sierra, we’ve recently added Wolf Creek. Up north, we’ve added the Fall River Complex, which includes a number of lakes, creeks and ponds within the Fall River Valley. We’ve added Butte Lake in Lassen County, and last year added the North Fork Mokelumne River. Last season was my first time going to the North Fork Mokelumne River. It has a good mixture of rainbow trout, brook trout and the occasional brown trout. Fishing there was pretty fun, and the action was pretty fast, too.

When a stream or lake is designated as a Heritage or Wild Trout Water, what changes? What does that mean?

It means it’s a unique place to fish and provides anglers with a unique experience. To qualify as a Wild Trout Water, the water has to be aesthetically pleasing, publicly accessible, provide a unique angling opportunity and does not receive a hatchery stocking allotment. Take the North Fork Mokelumne River. It received a Wild Trout Water Designation last year. That means it includes a self-sustaining population of non-native species such as brook trout or brown trout, as well as native species such as rainbow and occasional Lahontan cutthroat trout outside of their historic range. A Heritage Trout Water Designation requires a water to have only native species within their historic range. Rules and fishing regulations don’t necessarily change with either designation, but the department is required to write a management plan for the water and update that plan every five years.

What’s your favorite trout species?

My guilty pleasure are brook trout. They’re beautiful and a lot of fun to catch -- especially if you’d like to learn how to fly fish.

What advice would you give a young person interested in a career in fisheries, science or the outdoors?

If you’re fresh out of school or early on in your career, I highly recommend checking out the scientific aid positions we offer within the Heritage and Wild Trout Program. We advertise those positions on the CalCareers website around February and have a start date around the last week in May.

It’s a really unique experience to check out some backcountry locations and do some really great trout surveys. I wasn’t really aware of the scientific aid positions when I was in college, but even if you’re still in school and have the necessary units, you should think about applying so you can build that experience and be more prepared when you graduate. You get to do a lot of high-adventure field work while you’re still able to do it.

Tell us something about yourself people might be surprised to learn.

I love to deep-sea fish but get terribly seasick. It’s a struggle not having sea legs, but a patch helps and the payoff is worth it.

Jennifer Hemmert, Biologist


Survey to assess native rainbow trout at Marion Creek (left to right: Russell Barabe, Tawny Hoemke, Kerwin Russell (Riverside-Corona Resource Conservation District), Paul Nutting, Jennifer in water)


Loading native rainbows rescued from West Fork San Gabriel Creek (Jennifer in truck, Yoselin Caliz, Lauren Hall)


Adult native rainbow trout from Marion Creek


Offspring rainbow trout from Marion Creek

Jennifer Hemmert has taken an interesting route before landing with the Department of Fish and Wildlife as a wild trout biologist and experiencing a career highlight of saving a species of fire-threatened fish three different times. Born in Ohio and a graduate of Ohio State (yes, she is a huge fan of Ohio State football), she has worked in medical research and at a marine park in Hawaii called Dolphin Discovery.  Later she worked for the environmental non-profit group Sierra Nevada Alliance as an AmeriCorps member, UC Davis and the state Department of Water Resources. With CDFW since 2012, Jennifer’s trout biology work is done in Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

When did you first know science was a possibility for your career?

Believe it or not, it goes back to grade school. I had an incredible science teacher in the fourth grade, and I knew that biology was my passion. It was his encouragement because he said any student can follow their passion, and if that passion is in math, science, or engineering, one could really shape the future. And so, it goes back to my grade school teacher, Mr. Seas. As a kid, I thought I was going to be either a marine biologist or a veterinarian; I always knew I wanted to work with animals. Also, my focus on fisheries is integrated with my childhood of spending time up on a small lake on the border of Ohio and Indiana. We would spend our summers there fishing, boating and swimming.

What’s a typical day for a wild trout biologist in California?

I work under the Heritage and Wild Trout Program and our mission is to protect the habitats and fish populations within our designated areas throughout the state. We also create recreational opportunities for anglers related to trout fishing. The work is weather-dependent, and in the winter months I am working on reports. There is a seven to eight month window that starts in the spring for field work and we go out in crews of four to six people to do fisheries and habitat assessments on streams in San Bernardino and Riverside counties. We have backpacks that use electric shock, to stun the fish in the streams, and crew members net the fish and place them into buckets. Then we take weight and length measurements on those fish before returning them to the waterway. We are checking on not just the size but also the health and condition of the fish. Through a larger survey, we block the stream with nets and we use the collected electrofishing data to arrive at population estimates.

People might think of those areas as being in the desert. How prevalent are trout and streams in those counties?

As we head south in the state, the quantity of water decreases due to the arid nature. But in the higher elevation streams, there once was historical connectivity for fish to the ocean before humans changed the landscape for the conveyance of water. There were native populations of trout in waters before humans began creating dams and concreting waterways. Some of those populations still exist here in the State and Southern California. The department also creates recreational opportunities by raising trout in two large hatcheries nearby and placing them into waters for anglers. We have two streams designated as wild trout streams. There is Bear Creek, a tributary out of Big Bear Lake, which connects with the Santa Ana River. The second wild trout stream is Deep Creek, which is in the San Bernardino National Mountains and meets up with the Mojave River.

What's the biggest challenge for fish being able to do well, grow and thrive in your region?

A lot of it has to with quantity and quality of water. For fish to thrive, they need cold water and enough water. In times of drought, they can survive extreme and severe habitat changes caused by climate change, but sometimes they need a little help from our staff. Fish are resilient to adapt. They often are challenged by habitat problems that are related to forest fires in fire affected areas.

Since you brought that up, can you talk about an amazing achievement following the Holy Fire in 2018?

The Holy Fire was located in Riverside and Orange counties. Although I’m a fish biologist, I watch forest fires intently and weather forecasts – things not necessarily related to fish, or the biology and species themselves.  There had not been a fire in that area for 30 or 40 years, and a lot of vegetation had grown in and was extremely dry. Since the practice of keeping record of where fires burn, there is no information available that Coldwater Canyon had ever had a forest fire. We knew this was an area that would burn very hot and very fast. This fire moved from ridgeline to ridgeline throughout the stream corridor. We work closely with the Forest Service, which studies the amount of sediment that will move through a watershed during a large rain event. It was determined there would be up to hundreds of thousands of cubic yards that would move within most of the surrounding canyons burned by the fire in both Riverside and Orange counties.  We needed to move fish from that corridor into our hatchery system.

Which stream did you need to move fish from?

The fish were moved from Coldwater Creek in the Cleveland National Forest, where there was a native trout population.  Pre-drought, the population was estimated between 1,000-1,500 trout, and post drought about half of that number survived after four years of these dry conditions. The population estimate was between 400 and 500 fish post-fire, so it was determined we would remove half of the fish from the stream, taking everything we could safely electroshock, and move them into the Mojave River Hatchery.

Did that area have the displacement of debris they were anticipating?

Yes, there was a very large rain event that moved a lot of material into the waterway, as the canyon hillsides had no living vegetation to stabilize now exposed soils. That stream had a chocolate milk appearance after the heavy rain and these fish would have struggled to survive because they would be overwhelmed by the debris. Fish suffocate due insufficient oxygen passing across their gills and the floating sand particles in the water disorientate the fish.

These fish were moved more than once and that’s pretty unusual isn’t it?

Yes, it is unusual. A lot of times fish are taken to a nearby watershed that is not burned. In this case, due to the severity of this fire the nearby habitat was not suitable, so we moved them to the hatchery. Those fish stayed there for about six months before we had a few mechanical issues and had to do an emergency evacuation into Marion Creek in Riverside County, near the town of Idyllwild. We were monitoring the fish in Marion Creek, and were ecstatic to see that they had enough gravel for spawning and were able to naturally reproduce. But it was another dry year and we knew the stream water was significantly decreasing, so in early November we moved them back into Coldwater Creek. The habitat had improved and was suitable again for the fish to be moved back to their home.

How are they doing back at Coldwater Creek?

The habitat is repaired. We have aquatic invertebrates, and we have a lot of willows and vegetation that provide shade, so water temperatures are cold. This year we are looking forward to seeing if we have reproduction and we will assess what the population numbers look like. I want to add that this was done by an entire team of biologists and others from Fish and Wildlife, the Forest Service from both the Cleveland and San Bernardino National Forests, and Riverside Corona Resource Conservation District.

Changing gears a bit, if you weren’t a fisheries biologist what would you have done for a career?

I have always wanted to be a scuba instructor. In my personal life, I scuba dive off the coast of California, Mexico and Hawaii. I always thought I might live and work on an island, where I can have my toes in the sand, watch the sunrise and sunset, and swim with sea life. I have traveled to Honduras twice to scuba dive, plus have done dives in freshwater lakes since I was certified. Alternatively, I also wanted to be a boat captain on possibly a sailboat/dive vessel. After I retire, who knows what and where my next work adventure will take me, but I am sure it will involve water.

What’s the thrill that comes with scuba diving?

A lot of scuba divers like to see the big apex predators that are in the water. But for me, it is all the little fish and little invertebrates, and to be quite honest, seahorses are my favorite. I mean turtles are awesome to see as well as stingrays and sharks, but for me, it is all the little fish. I like seahorses the most.

What’s the attraction to sea horses?

As a child I would always draw seahorses, it was kind of an obsession. I would doodle them all over my notebooks. I am fascinated with how they sway with the currents. They attach themselves with their tails to grasses and their mate and just wave with the currents. They can be camouflaged, colorful and beautiful and are just intriguing to me. Fun facts are that they eat constantly, are horrible swimmers, and mate for life. While these points make seahorses more fascinating as a species, one more critical fact to remember is that ecosystems for all marine life need to be healthy and protected. Pressing threats, such as increasing ocean temperatures and trash as our global marine debris accelerates, continue to be growing problems.

CDFW Photos

Shoshone pupfish habitat in the Amargosa River.


Shoshone pupfish from the Amargosa River.


Nick in the Amargosa River following green sunfish removal.

CDFW environmental scientist Nick Buckmaster works as a biologist in the Heritage and Wild Trout program. Based in Bishop (in the northern part of Inyo County), he’s far from where he grew up in San Diego County, but he couldn’t be closer to what he loves: California’s natural resources.

As a member of the team managing heritage and wild trout, Nick helps protect and restore native trout and habitats through field studies and data analysis. He initially joined CDFW six years ago to work in habitat conservation, moving over to his current assignment about a year ago. He’s a graduate of UC Davis with Bachelor’s degrees in Wildlife Fisheries Conservation and Geology. His Master’s degree is in Ecology.

Tell us about your current assignment – what to you do?

I’m the heritage and wild trout biologist for Inyo and Mono counties; which is really about managing the Eastern Sierra fisheries in a sustainable fashion. Rather than relying on stocking, we work to manage the populations to ensure good fishing into the future. That allows me to work on two different threatened trout species that occur out here – Lahontan cutthroat trout and Paiute cutthroat trout – as well as manage some of the most iconic trout fisheries anywhere in California, if not the United States. On a day-to-day basis, I could be anywhere from 11,000 feet up in the High Sierra, to the desert streams of the Owens River Valley. It’s a pretty sweet setup. When I got the job offer to come out here, I didn’t think twice. I packed up and lived out of my car for a couple of weeks, until I found a place to rent.

So you’re checking on the health of a fish in a particular body of water to make sure it’s doing well, and that tells you other fish in that area are doing well?

Fisheries monitoring can include a number of things. A lot of it can be quick reconnaissance assessments -- looking at population structure and relative weight of the fish. From there you can drill down into habitat specifics and stream production. What’s the stream temperature, are your pools deep enough, is there enough food for the fish to grow, are they growing fast enough, are they reaching the size we want? Are there other potential stressors, like drought, flood or upstream water diversions?

How did you come to decide on ecology – and fisheries, specifically – as a profession?

I grew up in a small town (Descanso) playing in the mountains and hills every day, hunting and fishing. When I took biology in high school, there was a brief section on ecology, where we talked about lakes and how the various fisheries are supported, and I was a huge fisherman when I was younger, and it just clicked. All of a sudden, fishing became a science for me. Science was something I was already passionate about. I always loved the outdoors, ecology and nature.

How do you balance the need to preserve our resources in their natural state, and the idea that we can or should take action to assist species?

One of the things I did previously out there was work a lot with pupfish in lower elevation areas. Those are species that only persist because of human intervention. The Owens pupfish was rescued by a fish and game biologist from extinction in 1969 – if he hadn’t put them in a bucket, they would have blanked out. At the end of the day, conservation always requires some measure of management.

In 1910, humans brought largemouth bass into the Owens Basin. That drove the Owens pupfish to the brink of extinction. If humans hadn’t also stepped in and removed the bass, the Owens pupfish would have been wiped out. There was a similar situation with cutthroat trout in the Walker Basin (Kern County), where a lot of the habitat had been impacted by logging in the late 1920s. The habitat still hasn’t recovered, so it’s up to us as a management agency to go in and try to take that ecosystem-based approach to restore the stream and the fishery.

Almost every habitat I’ve encountered out here has been so profoundly impacted by humans … it’s not necessarily a question of whether to intervene, but how to intervene in the most appropriate way.

Is there a particular project you’ve worked on in which you saw the results and realized you made a difference?

Last August we had green sunfish invade the Shoshone Springs on the other side of Death Valley. Springs in the desert are a lot like islands in the ocean. They’re the only habitats like them for tens or hundreds of miles. In this case, Shoshone Springs has an endemic pupfish called the Shoshone pupfish. All pupfish, at least in the desert southwest, are highly susceptible to non-native predation. These non-native predators can eliminate a pupfish population in less than six months in some cases. So in early August, we had the non-native green sunfish show up in the only known habitat for Shoshone pupfish. They had washed down from Crystal Reservoir in Nevada during a heavy rain season – typically it’s a dry riverbed. Another employee and I went out and worked in 110 degree weather, for two weeks, to remove the sunfish from the pupfish habitat. Within the course of just two weeks, we removed what can only be described as an existential threat to the Shoshone pupfish. Those efforts secured the species going forward. At the end, I don’t think I’ve ever felt more satisfied with my job.

If you had an unlimited budget and unlimited time, what project would you like to tackle?

I’d probably try to restore cutthroat trout in the Walker Basin. It’s one of the most distinct cutthroat trout on the face of the planet. They’ve been in that basin for millions of years. They’re very rare at this time, but if left to their own devices they get really large. They’re fantastic fish to catch – they’re just beautiful. I would probably put them back. We all love catching big cutthroat trout at Pyramid Lake (Nevada), and I’d like to see that in Eastern Sierra. A project like that would fit with my passions of conservation, native fish management and recreation.

Can you describe a typical day of work?

Today I’m working from home on a couple of reports involving analysis of fish population data. On a field day, I would be hiking into the high country or back country to conduct some level of fisheries assessment. Office days involve typical tasks like answering emails, data analysis or writing summary reports. To be honest, I really like the balance that I have. While it’s critical to do field work in order to collect the information necessary to make decisions as natural resources agency, it’s also important to answer emails and maintain relationships with the public, co-workers and management. If you collect all the data in the world, and don’t share it, you might as well not have collected it at all.

CDFW Photos