Re: NANFA-- Fishy Program

John Bongiovanni (bongi-in-cox-internet.com)
Mon, 3 May 2004 14:46:46 -0500

Ty,

The non-game fish may be included here
"The draft EIS will address fears that the poison could affect other aquatic life and will offer alternatives to using motor vehicles in the project." It'll be interesting to see what the proposal is. Ty, is this near you?

Its a shame that Rotenone has to be used. I spent most of Friday exploring an isolated pond in a local wildlife management area. We seined up two species of fish: Bluegill and Largemouth Bass. Not even a single Gambusia! I suspect this pond has seen Rotenone in the last 10 years. I've also collected-in-a local state park lake where the diversity was way below what we expected. Rotenone was confirmed as the culprit there.

I'm not a fisheries expert but it just can't be necessary to eradicate these ponds of all other fish just so you can grow lunkers in your pond. What is the logic behind this activity in Texas? Is it that by eradicating all the non-game fish you reduce the competion of the feeder fish of the bass (in this case the feederfish is bluegill and other sunfish). Thus more food for the bass.

I also live in the East Texas Oil patch. A friend of mine owns property that has the first producing East Texas Oil Well on it (The Daisy Bradford #3). There is a nearby stream that I went collecting in. Most of the 1300 acres of the property drains into this creek. After walking along this creek for two hours I saw one Gambusia and a dead worm. This creek witnessed a salt water spill (one of the "Hazards" of drilling) about 2 yrs ago. I got to thinking about how many spills have occured in the last 70 -80 years in which there was no clean up. No wonder vertebrate diversity is extremely low in this creek.

My point is that it is extremely important to catalogue the fish fauna in each creek if possible and that recovery from a catastrophic event such as Rotenone or Salt Water Spills may have extemely long term effects.

John
>
> From: Ty Hall <tyhall-in-mia.net>
> Date: 2004/05/03 Mon PM 01:24:35 CDT
> To: Nanfa <nanfa-in-aquaria.net>
> Subject: NANFA-- Fishy Program
>
> I was reading the article,-in-the link below, and the only thought that
> comes to my mind is, what about the native non-game fish killed in the
> poisoning? Is anyone going to restock them?
>
> http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1894&e=3&u=/ap/20040503/ap_on_sc/wilderness_fish
>
>
>
> Ty
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