Wild Outside: Racing the clock to save an endangered East Tennessee fish
The endangered minnow only lives in a handful of creeks above Spring City, Tennessee. When drought nearly wiped out the last of the species, local conservationists sprung into action, creating an “ark population.”
SPRING CITY, Tenn. (WVLT) - Beep. Beep. Beep. You’ve seen action movies where the hero has to battle a ticking time bomb, right? Well, it’s not a bank heist, but something similar just happened in our own backyard, all because of a drought: a rescue mission to save an endangered species from being totally wiped out before their home dried up.
“It was a very emotional day,” Dr. Anna George with the Tennessee Aquarium told WVLT after her team’s first day rescuing the laurel dace. That minnow only lives in a handful of tiny and crystal clear creeks on Walden’s Ridge. This the mountain separating the Sequatchie Valley from the Tennessee River Valley, sitting just west of Spring City, Tennessee.
The water at Stinging Fork Falls runs high after a big rain, but that’s not always the case. The water was almost gone last year, and the race was on to save half of a critically endangered fish population.
These dace were discovered less than 50 years ago. George said they scooped up half the population from, well, mud.
“We’re fairly certain that if we have not taken that recovery action and rescued the laurel dace from the creeks, we may not have any left,” she said.
“It is extremely remote,” Curt Brewer said of these rescue missions.
The crews moved some of the minnows into oxygenated backpacks to start an ‘ark’ population in Chattanooga. The goal is to preserve the species even if they go extinct in the wild, similar to Noah’s Ark. There’s another group doing the same on Sutherland Avenue in Knoxville’s Pond Gap and Bearden area.
“Right now we have 20 species of fish that we’re working with,” Bo Baxter said. Baxter is the director of Conservation Fisheries, and he said there’s more plaguing these imperiled fish than just drought. The long-time fisheries biologist said the nearly 9,000 dams in the region are splitting up habitat.
That’s on top of the over 200,000 road crossings and culverts. Those are things that are barriers to these fish moving around.
They call Curt Brewer “Doctor Dace.” He’s not actually a doctor, but he can work wonders with minnows. The team at CFI has saved many species from extinction, all in just few dozen aquariums. The demand is so great that they’ve needed to expand many times over from their current cinder block home in Pond Gap.
The groups are making a difference, one tiny fish at a time.
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