Celebrate Restoration Successes on Giving Tuesday!
Conservation Fisheries, Inc. has been at the forefront of freshwater conservation for nearly 40 years.
Since 1986, CFI has been dedicated to the conservation of native, non-game fish by working with some of the country’s (and the worlds!) rarest and most endangered fish. CFI is the first and only private facility dedicated specifically to native, non-game fishes. With a unique blend of experience and skills, CFI has restored over 270,000 fish to their native streams and rivers since our inception, working with over 85 species in total.
This year’s accomplishments include producing over 15,000 fish!
These 15,000 fish represent 17 different species, all of which were managed by 5 Species Leads, fed by a Food Crew of 3 people, and supported by a rotating group of volunteers. This team of biologists dedicate their every day to these fishes, making their care and survival a top priority.
Several species we worked with this year, including Boulder Darters, Spotfin Chubs, and Yellowfin Madtoms (above), have been produced in our hatchery since our early days as an organization. The Barrens Topminnow, another early CFI species, was released into the wild for the first time this summer since its listing as Endangered in 2019. We welcomed a new and highly anticipated friend, the Candy Darter, with plans to spawn them in the spring of next year.
Roanoke Logperch, the King of the Darters, was proposed for delisting from the Endangered Species List this year! CFI has been involved in their restoration for nearly 10 years, and we look forward to continuing to supplement and monitor these restoration sites for years to come.
Conservation is a marathon, not a sprint.
If there’s one thing we’ve learned from conserving freshwater biodiversity, it’s that restoration of a population doesn’t happen overnight. Our very first project, restoring Yellowfin Madtoms and Smoky Madtoms into Abrams Creek in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, took a few decades to catch on. After Abrams Creek was poisoned in 1957 in favor of a trophy trout stream, many of the small and rare fish that were originally found in that creek never recovered. Thanks to CFI, both madtom species are now recovered in that area, needing little more from us than a genetic exchange every few years.
Thankfully, not all conservation projects take quite that long. The Buck Darter used to be widespread in the Buck Creek System in Kentucky but declined to just one single tributary in recent years. Following nearly 8 years of restoration work, the Buck Darter has successfully returned to a second tributary, with restoration plans having begun in a third stream this year.
Giving Day could help us reach our year-end goal of $100,000 in donations.
Giving Tuesday is a global movement aimed at reimagining a world built upon shared community and generosity. It is commonly celebrated on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving by volunteer initiatives or donations made to non-profit organizations doing meaningful work. If the restoration work that CFI does every day is important to you, please consider supporting us next week on Giving Tuesday, or any day, by donating to our organization.
We’re less than $25,000 away from our year-end goal of $100,000! We, and the fish, would be grateful if you could help us swim across the finish line.
Thanks for helping us to Save the Fish!
— The CFI Team