Conservation Fisheries, Inc.

Newsletter #20 October 2003

Purchase of CFI Facility a Reality!

Well, we’ve finally done it! On September 30th we signed the papers to purchase the CFI facility! We had been leasing the property with the option to purchase, but honestly did not know if we could either raise the funds or arrange the necessary financing to ever pull this off. With a lot of help from our friends, we were able to secure financing to make the purchase possible. Steve Scarborough of Dagger put us in touch with Paul Wilson, President and Art Kimball, Chief Loan Officer at Citizens National Bank of Athens, TN. Paul and Art came to our facility for a visit and were impressed with our mission and interested enough in the work we are doing that they worked with us to get the property bought. Without their help, this would never have been possible! Art was great to work with, offering sage advice and smiling nicely as we bumbled through the process. We hope to get both of these guys into wetsuits and into the water on one of our field days. We highly recommend these guys and CNB to anybody looking to do any banking business! 

This will go a long way toward establishing a permanent, stable facility for the propagation of imperiled aquatic animals in the southeastern U.S. In addition to the 5200 sq. ft. facility, we have approximately one acre of fenced property at our disposal for future expansion! We have already been able to utilize outdoor vats for the culture of Barrens topminnows this summer! 

So now, we need to continue to search for funding to pay for this facility in order to continue to move forward in our efforts to maintain and/or restore imperiled fish populations. Thanks to all who helped make this possible! We could never have done it on our own! 

On to fish news…. 

Because of all that has gone on this year with our move, construction of all new culture systems and ultimately the time spent working toward the facility purchase, we would have to say this has been a slower than usual fish production year. We knew this would be the case when we moved, but we also knew the move was necessary! 

Our survey work has gone well! In a nutshell, the fish in Abrams Creek (smoky and yellowfin madtoms and duskytail darters) continue to do well! We’ve seen reproduction of all three and continue to see dispersal into new areas of the creek. We’ve seen a few spotfin chubs in the Tellico River after our Fall 2002 and early spring 2003 releases. These had all grown into adults and looked healthy. We were actually surprised to see any this year after just having started the project last fall. 

We were successful in spawning and rearing duskytail darters from Little River in TN. This is perhaps the most imperiled population of duskytail darters. Our plan is to move some of these propagated fish a little higher in Little River to (hopefully) establish populations above some of the impacts seen in the lower reaches of the river. 

We have collected tangerine darter, Percina aurantiaca, brood stock from the upper Pigeon River in NC. These will hopefully be propagated in our facility to support a project designed to reestablish the extirpated fish fauna of the lower Pigeon River in Tennessee. Initial transplants of some common species (including several darter species) have shown promise! If these beautiful darters cooperate for us, young fish could be available for stocking as early as spring 2005. 

Non-fishy news… 

I’m happy to report that our hatchery manager, Sherry Wehner, did a little propagating of her own! In September, she and Keith had a baby girl, Brooke Emmalee. Rumor has it mom, dad and baby are doing fine!