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Ken Burton

WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM A LOT OF FRIENDS, THE TINY BOULDER DARTER BEGINS A PROMISING JOURNEY

Ken Burton
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Office of Public Affairs
Washington, DC

Boulder Darter (Etheostoma wapiti)

The tiny boulder darter, a shy, 3-inch long perch-like fish was once plentiful along most of the 200 miles of Tennessee's Elk River. But by 1988, dams, agricultural runoff, erosion and silt deposits moved the fish to the list of endangered species. Today, thanks to a lot of friends, the little fish is making its first hesitant steps on the road to recovery.

"This represents a new approach for working in watersheds with partners, to concentrate on the bigger picture, rather than individual species," said Andrew Currie of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "A few years ago, what we've done for the boulder darter would have been viewed as too 'out-of-the-box' or non-traditional," said Currie, who manages a national fish hatchery complex that includes Wolf Creek near Jamestown, Kentucky, and Dale Hollow near Celina, Tennessee.

Currie's hatcheries are just part of the mix that includes field offices that manage, among other things, the Endangered Species Act; four National Wildlife Refuges; a private corporation, Conservation Fisheries, Inc.; the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency and a state chapter of The Nature Conservancy.

The boulder darter's biggest problem was the disappearance of flat rocks, which provided two essentials for the fish: a place for their food to grow, and the essential hiding places they favor, both for cover and for spawning. Years of fluctuating tailwater releases from dams and agricultural runoff left much of the river's banks eroded and the bottom heavily
silted. As the darter's historic habitat began to disappear, the darter itself started down the same path.

The answer, Currie said, was to try to put some flat rocks back in the river. The first try employed concrete blocks, but they didn't work. A second try involved placing flat limestone rocks in the river - a physically demanding and labor intensive effort - and it worked.

"This is not only turning into a very effective effort for the boulder darter," Currie said, "but this is something that can eventually benefit sport fish. Crayfish like to get under those same rocks, and that's a meal for sport fish. Freshwater mussels will benefit. We've got multiple winners."

When Pat Rakes and JR Shute were graduate students at the University of Tennessee, (UT) they did a lot of work with imperiled fish. They took their interest and expertise with them when left UT and eventually founded Conservation Fisheries, Inc., (CFI) one of the few private non-profit corporations in the United States that exists to help recover troubled fish species, and operates its own hatchery.

Half the boulder darters restocked in Tennessee have come from CFI, and the other half, from the Chattahoochee Forest National Fish Hatchery near Suches, Ga. The CFI fish were stocked in Tennessee near Fayetteville, and the national hatchery fish, near Hamilton Mill.

Rakes is encouraged by what he has seen happen to the boulder darter at the Fayetteville site, the only location where the work with slab rock has been completed. He is the first to caution that the numbers are small; still, when an imperiled species shows any increase - from seeing 5 or 6 two years ago, to seeing a couple of dozen in the same place today - biologists consider the upswing significant.

"We've seen more darters in the area where we've stocked the fish, and those increases have been where we placed slab rock," said Rakes.

Both Rakes and Currie note that the boulder darter, a fish native to the Elk River, is one of those indicator species - one whose diminished presence can become Mother Nature's 9-1-1 call, telling scientists that something is amiss. "We help the darter, we help ourselves," said Currie. "These fish are in trouble for a reason. When they are thriving, we know that the river is thriving. Among other things, it also means clean water, and that's important for all of us."

For Currie, work with the boulder darter started in 1999. He is clearly proud of what the Service and all the agency's partners have accomplished so far. "It can take a long time in this line of work to see results. Sometimes you can work just as hard and see nothing. But when you can begin to see a payoff, it feels good. Conservation has real rewards. But it's not work for the short-winded," Currie said.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is the principal Federal agency responsible for conserving, protecting and enhancing fish, wildlife and plants and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the American people. The Service manages the nearly 95-million-acre National Wildlife Refuge System which encompasses more than 530 national wildlife refuges, thousands of small wetlands and other special management areas. It also operates 70 national fish hatcheries, 64 fishery resource offices and 78 ecological field stations. The agency enforces Federal wildlife laws, administers the Endangered Species Act, manages migratory bird populations, restores nationally significant fisheries, conserves and restores wildlife habitat such as wetlands, and helps foreign governments with their conservation efforts. It also oversees the Federal Aid program that distributes hundreds of millions of dollars in excise taxes on fishing and hunting equipment to state fish and wildlife agencies.