Re: NANFA-- Re: TRADING POST

Dave Neely (rheopresbe_at_hotmail.com)
Tue, 02 Nov 1999 20:16:00 CST

Ray,

>This is one of the problems with how the system is set up. there >aren't
>always ways to find out this information...

as mentioned in the previous post, the NANFA home page has both Federal and
state lists. It bugs me too that good-intentioned aquarists get blamed for a
lot of the bad effects of introduced taxa, and potential impacts on
endangered taxa. A single dam will kill more darters than all NANFA members
or ichthyologists could ever dream of seining up.

>I would think promoting our own resources as "pets" would be better >than
>scarring other countries fish fauna for theirs. Who knows the >status of
>certain tetras, cichlids, and cory cats in their home >country? the
>agencies in those countries (if there are any) may not >even care or know

You might be surprised. My office mate just got back from Brazil, where he's
working on a project on tetra conservation biology. Some of the tropicals
are actually better known than the fish fauna in our own backyards- Bruce
Stallsmith's post re: sawfin shiners is a good example of that.

>This posting made it aware to any one who reads it the trouble those
> >species are in. I was aware a couple of madtoms were limited to
>distribution and scarce, but did not know that that many were. So,
> >without asking, none of this would have been known. Knowledge is >the
>best tool to help.

Knowledge is always power. With better data, such travesties like the
rotenone treatments of the Green River (UT, 1960s) and Abrams Creek (TN,
1950s) wouldn't have happened.

>Now the other side of the coin on this issue that bothers me. What >is
>actually being done to protect these fish, other than "you can't >catch any
>and keep them"? That really doesnt help them in my >opinion. What does is
>habitat protection, reestablishing habitat, >and putting these fish back in
>areas that they may have been pushed >from for one reason or another. you
>can lock all these fish away so >no one can touch them, but they will still
>die out if they haven't a >home.

I agree with your point about habitat conservation; it's the number one way
to preserve not only cool fishes, but the intact watershed ecosystems that
they (and we) depend on. Anything else are second-rate substitutes. The
Shute's (CFI) are doing some really neat stuff, some of which I agree with
(reintroduction of E. monacha, N. flavipinnis, and N. baileyi into Abrams
Creek), and some of which I don't (reintroduction of E. cinereum into the
middle Tennessee River). Habitat protection organizations like TNC are doing
a bang-up job... in some cases. There's still a long way to go, and there
is no easy path. I disagree on your point about endangered status- it at
least makes developers think twice about proposals before they dump a lot of
money into a project that might impact T&E taxa.

For my part, I'm currently working on several manuscripts - species
descriptions and phylogenetic analyses of southeastern madtoms and sculpins,
and several new spp of Cottus from the Western US. Knowledge IS power, and
if people don't know they aren't something different, they won't care.

Cheers,
Dave

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