We'll Go Out Looking For Spring Pygmy Sunfish & Tuscumbia Darters

I have a paid survey job that we can hopefully do next week. The small area of available habitat for the spring pygmy sunfish is being squeezed by expanding suburban development from the city of Huntsville, AL. This is really just a unique spring system in the eastern edge of Limestone County, now the only home to the spring pygmys. They need just the right water flow conditions of limestone spring runs meandering through a swampy area. This area has been protected, more or less, but now sewer lines are being put in to support expanded suburbs. I've agreed to do a site survey at two creek sites where the sewer pipe is slated to cross the stream. By request of the US Fish & Wildlife Service, we'll be looking for both spring pygmys and tuscumbia darters, another endemic vulnerable species. At each site we'll net and generally look around to see if those species are present. Also present might be flame chubs and (much less likely) slackwater darters, the latter a Federally Threatened species already.

A petition has been filed with the USFWS by the Center for Biological Diversity in Oregon, and Michael Sandel in Tuscaloosa, to list the spring pygmy as a federally protected species. Hopefully they won't have to sue to have the petition acted on.