it's a good thing, non-native = invasive species
Posted on 11/23/2017 8:16:31 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Up to 1,000 non-native fish died in the Lower Santa Cruz River, a retired fish biologist says, because a state contractor diverted river water for an Ina Road bridge construction project.
The diversion moved the river’s treated sewage effluent from the west bank to the east bank, away from the towering, shady willow trees along the west bank. It ended Friday, a little more than a week after it started, when the contractor dug a new channel near the bridge site to reverse the effluent’s course back to the west bank.
The diversion “was a necessary part of the construction,” Arizona Department of Transportation spokesman Tim Tait said.
Fish biologist Bill Zook, who lives near the area, photographed dozens of the dead fish, which included mosquitofish, carp and catfish, and said he counted close to 1,000.
He said he saw people taking some fish out of that stretch of river and putting them in buckets to carry them to wetter areas downstream. He saw live fish struggling to survive in small pools left behind after the river water was diverted, along with a number of small turtles struggling in a tiny pool that was also crowded with carp, Zook said.
“They dewatered an area a little more than a mile long. It’s the most unique aquatic habitat in Tucson, a channel that everyone enjoyed,” said Zook, who bikes that river stretch daily on the Pima County Loop bike path after working 46 years as a fisheries biologist, including for Washington state and for the Pacific States Marine Fishers Commission.
The diversion was always designed to be short-term, said Tait, emphasizing also that the dead fish were all non-native.
But he said ADOT’s decision to reverse the river diversion was “accelerated” by questions from the Star and after Pima County officials issued a news release about the fish Thursday when residents began calling them.
“We had staff who went out there earlier this week, and we were getting stopped by everyone who went by, wanting to know what was happening with the river,” said Mark Evans, a county government spokesman. “It’s an unfortunate result that aquatic life is affected by flow diversions, but this is a channeled river. We have to do work on it, from time to time.
“There’s no practical way to move aquatic life with the water. There’s no other way to do it. We wish there were.”
The bridge project will replace an aging, two-lane structure with two new two-lane structures. It’s part of a $128 million-plus state project to overhaul the Ina Road interchange at Interstate 10, including the construction of a new bridge carrying Ina over the freeway and the railroad tracks to the east. One of the new, two-lane bridge structures is nearly completed.
Zook said he believed the diversion could have been reversed earlier, by having contractors use a backhoe to dig an opening, farther downstream of the bridge, through a berm separating the river’s west side from the east side.
The fish losses came two months after the Sonoran Institute released its latest “Living River” report about the Lower Santa Cruz. The report pointed to an increased number of non-native fish as a sign that the river’s water quality has improved since Pima County finished a major upgrade of its two big sewage treatment plants along the river in 2013. Biologists have found five non-native fish species in that river stretch since 2015, compared to one before the sewage plants were upgraded, the report said.
In a broad, ecological sense, the fish deaths weren’t that important, partly because a decent number of living fish have recently been found downstream of that area, said Claire Zugmeyer, an ecologist for the Sonoran Institute’s Living Rivers program, which has monitored the river’s health for five years.
“There’s still a good number of fish. We might lose some, but in the grand scheme of things it’s not too many,” Zugmeyer said.
Watching dead fish float by was sad, nonetheless, said Marana resident Nancy Prevedello, as she walked downstream Friday morning along the Loop on the river’s west bank with her 6-year-old son. “It’s just terrible,” she said.
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No bridge is worth the life of one fish!
Sounds like most f them were undocumented.
***1,000 non-native fish***Illegal alien fish? Carp?
Remember the story of the Pilgrims and how the Indians showed them how to fertilize their corn by burying a dead fish with each corn seed?
The Indians should have scooped up all these dead fish and used them for something useful to them like poker chips.
Of course in most places, “non-native” fish are considered a problem, and everything is done to prevent their living and spreading. And yet, I’m guessing that if you go back far enough, the majority of fish anywhere are “non-native”.
I used to explore the Rockies - met folks that continued their grandfather’s role of taking trout fingerlings in milk containers via mule to seed the various high mountain lakes and creeks.
Plus all of the natural “non-native” fish that have coursed through the rivers and creeks lower down over the last 12,000 years.
A buddy of mine has an hilarious story about them packing a canoe into the Trinity Alps on a camping trip. One of the guys was out in the middle of the lake fishing when up pops an airplane to stock the lake. Pretty good pilot as he scored a direct hit on the canoe. They all got a good laugh out of that cept the guy in the canoe.
Guess we could apply the same philosophy to the hundreds-of-thousands "non-native" illegal scum in AZ...
All carp in North America are non-native, including the common carp, introduced from Europe.
Sounds like maybe it would not be such a good thing to have too many non native fish released in an area where they don’t belong. They might die anyway if conditions aren’t right or they could drive out the native species.
funny how whole industries can be crippled by the govt over an owl or a mouse or a snake of globull warming, but when the govt wants expediency, they'll get it no matter who they have to plow over...
They introduced carp into one of our local lakes because it was overgrown with hydrilla. But the carp did too good of job and/or they put in too many, which ate up nearly every bit of vegetation in the lake. So now they have to try and get rid of the Carp and reintroduce some native vegetation.
I wish I had known. It’s mighty good fishing when they do that.
Primary example of that is the Asian snakehead in the Delmarva region. Someone released a few juvenile and a couple adult snakeheads into a pond in Crofton, MD, several years back. Snakeheads have labyrinth organs, which allow them to breathe air. They’re also apex predators who can pull themselves across land for considerable distances on their pectoral fins from one body of water to another, as long as it’s moist. At least a couple made it into the Potomac River before the state DNR netted the rest out, and now they’re infesting a 120 mile stretch of the river. On the upside, I hear they make a damned good batter-fried fillet.
There will always be “brown” trout, bridge or no bridge.
non-native fish died, this is ok with the eco Nazis and the progressive liberal agenda, they are non native. Would they feel the same about illegal alien non natives
All they know is each did not have a feather stuck in its headband.
it's a good thing, non-native = invasive species
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