Bifax Project Back In Gear

I had a good meeting yesterday with Stever Rider, Alabama's nongame aquatic biologist. He and co-workers had done a survey in 2004-05 in the Tallapoosa River system looking for Fundulus bifax, the stippled studfish, and had visited many but not all of the same sites my group did last year. Between us we have a comprehensive data set showing the decline of this species from its historic range. A difference between our results is that he apparently found bifax at a site in Cleburne County, north of where we found any and an area that in our two days of site surveys the streams were largely degraded. Any population there would be a connection between other known populations to the south (especially Tallapoosa and Randolph counties) and any remaining population(s) to the east in Georgia. No one has found the species in Georgia since the 1980s, so it's increasingly likely that the species is extirpated in Georgia. I spent much of the afternoon yesterday summarizing our visits and findings in an Excel spreadsheet, from which Steve and I can blend our findings. The one thing we may still do is a boat-based survey of the Tallapoosa itself, from the Wedowee reservoir downstream to the Harris reservoir. My guess is that the Tallapoosa no longer has the right microhabitat needed for bifax, especially clean sand bars the species needs for successful spawning. But the river may function as a population sink for existing creek populations, with individuals entering the river but never able to reproduce.

The Athens, GA, office of the Fish and Wildlife Service appears to be preparing to make bifax a candidate species for protection under the Endangered Species Act. I think our data will help in this process, documenting the rapid disappearance of this fish from much of its original range as its habitat is degraded. This species needs the protection even more than the flame chub, which itself is well down the road to extinction without some help.