RE: NANFA-L-- The myth of restoration?

Chip Rinehart (crin-in-glassmaster.com)
Fri, 6 May 2005 06:44:44 -0400

While it's not a restoration project, this really makes me appreciate the little stream Dustin, David Smith and I visited a few weeks ago. We were visiting an area just outside of the Savannah River Site, and stopped-in-this nice stream with a sandy bottom, clear, cool flowing water, and healthy looking vegetation along the edges. We stated dipping on the downstream side of the bridge and immediately found madtoms, pirate perch, and Savannah darters. Neat looking crayfish of-in-least a couple varieties were there along with some type of salamanders. I decided to move upstream of the bridge a bit and as I emerged into the sunlight on the other side, I saw a school of shiners. Dustin and I had visited here before so I was pretty certain they were yellowfins. Then, as I looked down to ease my way closer, I saw it.......a spawning aggregation of yellowfins! Right-in-my feet! This was the first time I've been lucky enough to witness this and I was blown away-in-the coloration and n
umbers. Bright, blood red bodies with golden dorsal stripes and heads & fins that looked to be creamy white......thousands of them, a swarming mass of color covering several mounds of pebbles! Just upstream of them were several larger fish that appeared to be some type of chub or sucker. We netting some to take pictures of but left them mostly undisturbed.

Heading farther upstream, we continued on, gradually moving into the woods. The canopy formed a tunnel with an eerie quality to it. Caught more Savannah darters and started getting blackbanded sunfish and some nice looking redfin and chain pickerel. Nearly lost control of my bladder when a large pickerel, close to 2 feet long, darted between my legs!

I'll have to look-in-our notes for a more detailed list of what we found. A thunderstorm was moving in so we decided it was time to call it a day headed back to the vehicles. As we were loading our equipment, a lady stopped by to inquire what we were doing. They owned the land on one side of the stream and had been having trouble with people trespassing and hunting on their land. We explained what we were doing and showed her the fish we had caught. Needless to say, she was blown away by the breeding yellowfin shiners and Savannah darters. She said we were welcome to come on their property and sample farther downstream anytime. About that time the storm hit so we all dashed to our vehicles and headed out. Days like this make it all worthwhile.

Chip in SC

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-nanfa-l-in-nanfa.org [owner-nanfa-l-in-nanfa.org]On Behalf
Of Dave Neely
Sent: Thursday, May 05, 2005 6:15 PM
To: nanfa-l-in-nanfa.org
Subject: NANFA-L-- The myth of restoration?

...so this morning I dragged some gear out to a small nature center here in
St. Louis to do a fish inventory as a favor for a friend. The center is
nice, and doing some really neat stuff with native plants, but happens to be
along a heavily degraded urban stream. The stream was clear, and flow was
extremely low (~ 0.5 cfs). Substrate included some nice cobble, chert
gravel, silt, and intricately shaped bedrock; sparse mud/clay in deeper
pools. There were some sparse patches of Justicia and a lot of funky greyish
algal mats (I don't even want to think about what the fecal coliform levels
were like). We rounded up a grand total of seven species, not including a
bullfrog and a large snapping turtle. The list was a who's-who of tolerant
taxa - central stoneroller, red shiner, fathead minnow, creek chub, white
sucker, green sunfish, and bluegill. No darters, no fun minners, not even a
silly bullhead!! The banks were blown out to-in-least 2 m higher than the
water level, and there was recent flood debris even higher. Outside curves
were scoured clean, with a lot of bare mud. Not the worst I've ever seen,
but certainly not good.

When you're constrained by only having access to a bit of downstream area
along a creek, how can you expect to make any meaningful restoration to a
stream channel? Yeah, you might be able to stabilize the banks a little, but
only if you can get stuff growing between storm events. Even if you do,
what's the point of having perfectly Rosgen-balanced channels when your
water chemistry is totally screwed up? How do you fix water chemistry when
50% of your upstream watershed is impervious surfaces - shopping malls,
highways, and asphalt parking lots? Seven species is a lot when you consider
this stream probably gets a 20 degree temp shock with every midsummer storm
event. We managed to do a fun little show for a couple of school groups who
happened to be touring the grounds, but I'm just depressed and a little
angry. The contrast between the really nice nature center and the crappy
stream was just too stark. Systems like this aren't going to get fixed on a
timescale that's reasonable to any of us, and certainly not on the
mythological EPA "swimmable waters" timescale.

Sorry to be so down. One thing's for sure - playing in that cesspool today
will certainly make me appreciate the crystal streams of the 'Zarks next
month that much more...

cheers,
Dave

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/ visit http://www.nanfa.org Please make sure all posts to nanfa-l are
/ consistent with the guidelines as per
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