SPECIES SURVIVE WINTER STORMS.

Byline: Patricia Farrell Aidem Staff Writer

ANGELES NATIONAL FOREST - As the winter's relentless rainstorms pelted the forest and turned lazy streams into raging rivers, biologists grimly joked that the rare fish and amphibians found in those creeks were now swimming the Pacific.

Not so, according to a recent study by the U.S. Geological Survey of Bouquet and San Francisquito creeks in the Angeles National Forest. Both creeks feed the Santa Clara River, which runs to the ocean at Oxnard.

``Everyone kept telling me they've been swept away, but the USGS confirmed they are still there,'' said Cid Morgan, district ranger for a wide swath of the Angeles that borders the Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys. ``They must have taken shelter under rocks while the flood waters charged through.''

In 2002, biologists from the U.S. Forest Service and the USGS found a relative abundance of the red-legged frog in San Francisquito Creek, several weeks after fire swept through the canyon of the same name. Flames actually cleared brush from sections of the creek that had been tough to study, allowing scientists to search for the frog listed by the federal government as endangered. They estimated 300 lived in the creek bed.

San Francisquito and Bouquet also are habitat for the three-spined unarmored stickleback, a tiny fish long on the endangered list.

Both species were found in the recent survey, organized after the most recent round of storms. About 40 inches of rain has fallen on the forest since Oct. 1, more than twice the annual average.

`'They did confirm they are still there,'' Morgan said. ``They found stickleback in Bouquet Creek they found red-legged frogs in San Fran.''