MONITORING
conservation and offer a roadmap for others. In recent years, Pulliam has helped facilitate ongoing efforts to stabilize stream banks on Huzzah Creek, a tributary to the Meramec River and an important part of the biodiverse watershed. Two projects—backed by National Resource Damage Assessment funding with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Forest Service and Missouri Department of Natural Resources acting as trustees—rebuilt roughly 3,400 feet of streambank in Crawford County. The Ozark Land Trust also helped fund one of the projects. Jennifer Girondo, fisheries management biologist for the Missouri Department of Conservation, sampled gamefish populations before and after the Huzzah stabilization projects. In a report released in June, she noted the stream featured deeper pools and better cover after the projects. She also saw signs of improvement in the fish population—either more juveniles, larger adults or more overall numbers in most species. “Project installation appears to be having a positive effect on gamefish populations,” Girondo wrote. The results are not conclusive, but they point in the right direction as the team of collaborators prepares for more projects along the Huzzah. They also match broadly with ever-growing research that may seem like common sense: When we take care of streams, the fish (and people) who depend on them benefit. TNC typically works with partners on monitoring, either building assessments into agreements with contractors or collaborating with researchers from government agencies or universities. It allows the
Conservancy to work with specialists attuned to specific projects. At Little Creek, the University of Missouri researchers have begun multiyear monitoring projects with support from the Missouri Department of Conservation and TNC. In April, Dr. Jacob Westhoff, assistant unit leader of the U.S. Geological Survey Missouri Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, and doctoral student Seth Callahan outfitted 235 fish from nine different species with passive integrated transponder (PIT) tags near the newly installed underwater ramps. The tags use microchip technology, making them detectable as they swim over or within 18 inches of the antennas. It’s a little like cars passing through electronic toll booths on a highway. The MU researchers also marked another 305 with visible implant elastomers (VIE) tags at the same time. Instead of pinging an antenna, the VIE tags are little bands of color, coded to specific areas where fish were released. Any fish caught later in different areas will help researchers determine how far they have traveled through Little Creek. The results are only preliminary but seem promising. “Tag detection data collected by PIT tag arrays positioned at the upstream and downstream ends of the rock ramps has already shown fish passage through both forks of Little Creek,” Callahan wrote in a June summary of their early findings. Updates on the VIE tagged fish have proven harder to come by. Seining in May turned up only a handful of fish, a fact that Callahan attributes to the difficulty of physically capturing the fish. That too is a
valuable lesson they will factor into the design of future monitoring. The project will continue as the researchers learn more about how the restoration work affects fish, such as the Topeka shiner, a native prairie minnow placed on the endangered list more than 25 years ago. TNC started the restoration to help the shiner. Now, the progress of the little minnow will help teach us about conservation methods we can use far beyond this stream.
THIS PAGE TOP Tagging fish at Little Creek. © Seth Callahan THIS PAGE BOTTOM Connor Church and Seth Callahan seining fish. © Jamey Decoske
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