The Dusky Tail Darter chronicles & return of Levels to 723!
Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2014 1:56 pm
I've not put much on here about the Dusky Tail Darter other than the first article on the 705 Levels but it seems more steam has built up on it. IMO it is indeed a issue since places like Fishing Creek Rec Area and Pulaski County park are still not optimal even at 705.
http://lakecumberlandboaters.com/forum/ ... f=3&t=6696 (705 article)
Below are some other stories from recent:
http://lakecumberlandboaters.com/forum/ ... f=3&t=6696 (705 article)
Below are some other stories from recent:
http://www.lakenews.com/News.asp?ID=E51 ... teID=KY005
Raise Lake Cumberland's water levels; bureaucrats ignore that tourism, endangered fish coexist
Kentucky.com - 3/23/2014 11:53:00 PM
This column was signed by state Sens. Chris Girdler and Sara Beth Gregory; Clinton County Judge-Executive Lyle K. Huff; Russell County Judge-Executive Gary D. Robertson; Burnside Mayor Ronald Jones; Pulaski County Judge-Executive Barty Bullock ...
Raise Lake Cumberland's water levels; bureaucrats ignore that tourism, endangered fish coexist
March 24, 2014
Lee's Ford Marina Resort on Lake Cumberland in Pulaski County.This column was signed by state Sens. Chris Girdler and Sara Beth Gregory; Clinton County Judge-Executive Lyle K. Huff; Russell County Judge-Executive Gary D. Robertson; Burnside Mayor Ronald Jones; Pulaski County Judge-Executive Barty Bullock; Bobby Clue, executive director of Somerset-Puaski County Chamber of Commerce; and Rick Mercader, chairman of the Clinton County Chamber of Commerce.
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At issue: Feb. 11 Herald-Leader editorial, "Rogers' reason vs. McConnell fuming; Endangered fish won't hurt Lake Cumberland http://www.kentucky.com/2014/02/11/3080 ... ink=relast
Since 1952, the Lake Cumberland regional economy has drawn as many visitors annually as the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone National Park. Consequently, it has become our region's Toyota plant, our main economic engine.
In the automobile industry, brand damage deters customers. Lake Cumberland and local tourism are no different.
Unfortunately, this economic engine's branding as a tourist destination has been severely damaged in recent years due to perceived inadequate water levels and the imminent risk of failure of the Wolf Creek Dam.
In fact, the dam's potential failure was prominently featured on the History Channel's Mega-Disasters — not exactly the kind of media attention that says "ideal vacation spot."
Stakeholders and state leaders have been trying to address this economic disaster created by low water levels since it began in 2007. Even though Kentucky leaders from both parties in Congress, state government and the five local governments contiguous to the lake have all weighed in to stop this economic disaster, all attempts have been largely ignored by the Obama administration.
Some of the approaches proposed real and meaningful solutions, especially Gov. Steve Beshear's Lake Cumberland Economic Security Plan.
However, nothing has gotten the administration's attention thus far, reaffirming the notion for folks that President Barack Obama's war on Eastern and rural Kentucky truly does exist.
As the Herald-Leader editorialized on Dec. 25, 2012; "The Corps of Engineers has formally committed to mitigating economic effects of the drawdown, yet has shown little concern — some would say, it's shown animosity — toward the businesses that are going under."
We completely agree, despite the entire state of Kentucky speaking with one bipartisan voice, the only relief has been the Corps' 2013 announcement that the dam had finally been fixed and that normal water levels would return in 2014 after seven long years.
Now, the mere confirmation by a final survey that fish (including the duskytail darter) do in fact swim downstream has triggered an enormous amount of red tape for the Army Corps and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and has delayed the return of normal water levels at Lake Cumberland — yet again plunging its people, their livelihoods and futures into uncertainty and turmoil.
However, Lake Cumberland's economy and the duskytail darter had previously thrived in peace and harmony since 1952. The darters' pristine habitat on the Big South Fork River begins at Blue Heron and runs upriver to Station Camp, Tenn.
The river's elevation at Blue Heron is 734 feet and the river bed is 723 feet, the normal summer pool for the lake. Therefore it is, and has always been, impossible for normal lake level operations to harm the darter. Nevertheless, the federal agencies say we can't normalize the water levels.
Sen. Mitch McConnell, using his stature as Senate minority leader, has done a brilliant job of exposing this absurdity and we fully support his actions, but the lesson to be drawn is much larger. It is about the devastating impacts large federal bureaucracies with unchecked power and insane amounts of red tape are having on our nation's economy.
"Every day," as Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told Obama in the first weeks of his presidency, "someone, somewhere, in the federal government is screwing up."
Federal government agencies have become too big to be responsive to the people. It's so pervasive that even when red tape absurdity is exposed by our elected officials on a national scale, these officials must continue to hound away publicly before agencies eventually listen and we see results. This cannot be how our government was intended to work — against the people.
The right solution to fix this dam problem is clear. Keep the federal government's written word to the people and the fish: they coexisted for 55 years before this disaster. Immediately cut the red tape, mitigate the darter issue, announce the return to normal water levels and mitigate the economic damage by committing to fully implement Beshear's plan.
The darter will continue to thrive. The people can begin thriving again by rebuilding the economy and putting people back to work.
This column was signed by state Sens Chris Girdler and Sara Beth Gregory; Clinton County Judge Executive Lyle K. Huff; Russell County Judge Executive Gary D. Robertson; Burnside Mayor Ronald Jones; Pulaski County Judge Executive Barty Bullock; Bobby Clue, executive director of Somerset-Puaski County Chamber of Commerce; and Rick Mercader, chairman of the Clinton County Chamber of Commerce.
Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2014/03/24/3157 ... rylink=cpy
http://www.lakenews.com/News.asp?ID=58E ... teID=KY005
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Art Lander’s Outdoors: Presence of duskytail darter linked to return of free-flowing river
Duskytail darter (Photo by Dick Biggins, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)
- Etheostoma_percnurum_duskytail_darterDick-Biggins-UFWS1.jpg (10.58 KiB) Viewed 4336 times
When Lake Cumberland was lowered in 2007 to make repairs to a leaking Wolf Creek Dam there was some speculation among biologists that the change in water level might be attractive to endangered species in the tributary streams.
“There are quite a few listed species in the Cumberland. We thought some of them might take advantage of the river habitat created when the lake was lowered,” said Lee Andrews of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Last fall, federal biologists sampling about five miles of the Big South Fork embayment of Lake Cumberland, in the former lake bed, found the duskytail darter (Etheostoma percnurum), an endangered species that has been federally listed since April 27, 1993.
“It was an aquatic species survey,” said Don Getty, project manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Nashville. “We were expecting to find endangered mussels. It was a surprise that we found the duskytail darter.”
The survey was agreed to, and funded by, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, as part of the environmental impact statement for the dam safety project.
According to the USFWS Kentucky Ecological Services Field Station website, there are 50 federally threatened and endangered species in Kentucky, as of Jan. 24. This includes four endangered darters. View the complete list here.
The logical conclusion is that the darters, which biologists have known about for years in Big South Fork of the Cumberland River, simply moved downstream to take advantage of the newly-created habitat — a free-flowing stream in its natural state. That’s the only explanation that puts this rare species in an area that had been inundated by lake waters basically since the early 1950s.
“These darters can’t tolerate standing water or silt,” said Matthew Thomas, ichthyologist for the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources. “They need moving water, clean gravel swept free of silt and saucer-sized flat rocks to spawn beneath.”
The fish itself is something of a mystery.
“The four populations look alike, but they are different,” said Andrews. “Through genetic work they were split into four species.” For legal purposes, the species group is referred to as duskytail darter.
Fishery scientists knew of the existence of the duskytail darter since the late 1960s, but the species was not formally described and named until 1994. Today, isolated populations are only found in the Tennessee and Cumberland drainages in Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia.
In 2008 three new species in the group were named, including the Tuxedo Darter (Etheostoma lemniscatum) which is the fish sampled from the former lake bed last fall. “Presumably, the Tuxedo Darter occurred throughout the Big South Fork, but there’s no evidence that it was ever in any other of the Cumberland River tributary streams, such as the Rockcastle River,” said Thomas.
The duskytail darter reaches a length of 2 1/2 inches and has a relatively short life span of just two years. It inhabits warm, clear, slow-running water from large creeks to medium-sized rivers with gravel, rubble, or boulder bottoms.
Formerly more widespread, the range of the Duskytail Darter has been fragmented by impoundments, siltation and pollution.
Coloration is dull. The top of the head is gray, the belly is white, and there are vertical lines down the sides.
The spawning season is April through May. The female lays one cluster of up to 200 eggs on the flattened underside of a rock. During incubation the male cleans and protects the cluster of eggs.
The diet of the young fish is micocrustaceans and larvae of aquatic invertebrates. Adults eat aquatic invertebrate larvae and will sometimes eat fish eggs.
At first the discovery of the rare darter seemed to put the brakes on the return to Lake Cumberland to its traditional summer pool elevation of 723.
This is because of language in Endangered Species Act, which is designed to protect critically imperiled species from extinction.
In the last two months the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the USFWS have been discussing ways to limit adverse impacts on the fish.
Getty said no announcement about the lake level will be made until the formal consultations with the USFWS are complete and a plan has been accepted.
“We’ve made great progress in a short amount of time,” said Getty. “I fully expect to get the green light to raise the lake.”
One argument for bringing the lake back up to elevation 723 might be that finding these fish in the former lake bed represents a population expansion. Bringing the lake back up may restrict available habitat, but does not put the survival of the species in jeopardy.
1Art Lander Jr.Art Lander Jr. is outdoors editor for KyForward. He is a native Kentuckian, a graduate of Western Kentucky University and a life-long hunter, angler, gardener and nature enthusiast. He has worked as a newspaper columnist, magazine journalist and author and is a former staff writer for Kentucky Afield Magazine, editor of the annual Kentucky Hunting & Trapping Guide and Kentucky Spring Hunting Guide, and co-writer of the Kentucky Afield Outdoors newspaper column.
