On the second weekend of October the Bay Area Killifish Association and
Tropical FishKeepers Exchange had their annual non-native stomping trip to
Ash Meadows in southern Nevada. The North American Native Fishes
Association also deserves special mention since two of their members were
along including Chris Scharpf who flew all the way from Baltimore to
attend! Ash Meadows is a diverse group of desert springs which is best
known for the Devil's Hole pupfish and the mighty battles waged to save
it. Ash Meadows has a higher number of endemic species for it's given
area than anywhere else in the USA.
This was out best attended outing so far with around 15 adults and a group
of 12 high school students that Royal Ingersoll brought along from his
school in the Bay Area. We undertook four main activities over the
weekend, regular trapping and dip netting of non-natives, seining and gill
netting for large mouth bass, thinning out dense Typha (cattail) stands,
and undertaking a population count of pupfish (Cyprinodon nevadensis
mionectes) in two springs. We broke out into small groups and really
hammered the springs removing almost 7,000 non-native species. Most of
these were damnbusia and crawdads. Smaller numbers of bullfrogs and
mollies were removed along with 6 bass. While removing non-natives is
somewhat futile in the long term as it requires constant attention the
results from out annual trips are encouraging, pupfish numbers are up in
nearly all springs with record numbers being recorded from a couple.
We hold two trips per annun to southern Nevada in April and October with
the October trips being to Ash Meadows, the location of April trips
varies. Everyone is encouraged and welcome to attend!
Tootles
Peter J Unmack peter.unmack at asu.edu
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DESERT FISHES RULE: To boldly thrive where no other fish can make it!
Australian desert fishes pages at ozdesertfish.base.org (don't forget to
visit the Desert Fishes Council pages too)
Native Fish Australia pages at www.nativefish.asn.au
North American Native Fishes Association at www.nanfa.org