I don't argue that.
I am going to shift gears here just a bit, to use actual examples to
hopefully try to explain what I am getting at.
I think fish like the slender madtom here should be listed in WI. They are
probably only found in one river, and probably not even there anymore. That
is serious, and an edge of the range thing. I have been to this "river" and
it is still impacted heavily by run off. Listing did not stop that. Even at
low flow during this summers drought, it still was chocolate milk.
The longear sunfish though, has rebounded in most areas, if it ever was
rare, after carp eradication efforts in the 70's. It did not come back I
guess in some metro areas, due to pollution and habitat destruction. But
these are sunfish, and do what sunfish do. All the sites I have found them
in the Lake Michigan drainage, they were either the most common sunfish, or
right up there. I have not been able to make it up north to check out those
sites. Locally here in the Mississippi drainage I catch a few , and they are
rare. These may trickle down from sites up north, which most are in the
Mississippi drainage. These are not an edge of the range thing, but the
distribution of high density populations follows the eastern edge of the
state, and supposedly cuts across the north into MN. As far as I know MN
doesn't list them. There range in MN is just as small and oddly shaped as it
is here. In other words, they are not in every lake and river like
bluegills.
Fundlus dispar is the one WI fish I have the problem with. Like Bruce
mentioned, these guys can be tough to find. I think their greatest risk is
global cooling, the onset of another ice age. I doubt they are very tolerant
of our winters. But nothing listing will do will improve our climate, or
stop the most hellish winter from doing them in. I believe dams are the only
thing that are problems with this specie. If they were not blocking them,
they would spread out on favorable years, and on bad years the population
would shrink.
I guess I want to know, why are fish found in several bodies of water, in
bands around the state listed? The madtom makes sense, one small area, one
small impact could do something to damage the entire WI population. The
entire southeast corner of WI could sink into Lake Michigan, and there would
still be longears and dispar further north or to the west respectivly. If
something that ridiculous has to happen to take away only a third of the
habitat of both these fishes ( the ranges over lap there), then why are they
listed?
Ray
> I must have lost the idea on the thread but to answer your question on
> how a species can be protected in one side of the line and not the other
> does not necessarily refer to the edge of the range. It has to do
primarily
> with habitat loss and use of land in the state. By listing an animal it
> *should* afford some protection to stressors of that species- collection
or
> disruption of the habitat. No?
>
> Nick Zarlinga
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