A message from Peter Unmack, Arizona-Nevada NANFA Regional Representative

On the second weekend of October 1997 the Bay Area Killifish Association, Tropical FishKeepers Exchange and North American Native Fishes Association had their annual non-native stomping trip to Ash Meadows in southern Nevada.  Ash Meadows is a diverse group of desert springs which is best known for the Devil's Hole pupfish and the mighty battles waged to save it. Ash Meadows has a higher number of endemic species for its given area than anywhere else in the USA.

This was our best-attended outing so far, with around 15 adults and a group of 12 high school students that Royal Ingersoll brought along from his school in the Bay Area. We undertook four main activities over the weekend: regular trapping and dip netting of non-natives, seining and gill-netting for largemouth bass, thinning out dense Typha (cattail) stands, and undertaking a population count of pupfish (Cyprinodon nevadensis mionectes) in two springs. We broke into small groups and really hammered the springs, removing almost 7,000 non-native species. Most of these were damnbusia and crawdads. Smaller numbers of bullfrogs and mollies were removed along with 6 bass. While removing non-natives is somewhat futile in the long term as it requires constant attention, the results from our annual trips are encouraging; pupfish numbers are up in nearly all springs with record numbers being recorded from a couple.

We hold two trips per annun to southern Nevada in April and October with the October trip being to Ash Meadows. The location of the April trips varies. Everyone is encouraged and welcome to attend!

Tootles

Peter J Unmack