Endangered Species of the Southern US: The Spotfin Chub

A weekly column by Shawn Gaynor

Spotfin Chub

Hybopsis monacha

Status: Threatened (1977)

Range: Isolated areas of the

Tennessee River drainage

DESCRIPTION: This is a small species growing to a maximum size of 92 milimeters standard length. The body is elongate; the mouth inferior; usually there is one pair of minute, terminal labial barbels; scales moderate to somewhat small in size; a distinctive large black spot is present in the caudal region. Juveniles and adult females are olive above with the sides largely silvery and the lower parts white. Large nuptial males have brilliant turquoise-royal blue coloring on the back, side of the head, and along the mid-lateral part of the body; lesser blue is found in at least some fins; all fins are tipped with satiny white during peak development of color.

The Spotfin Chub, like many endangered and threatened species was once widespread, occupying the waterways throughout the Tennessee River Drainage. Now, as a result of habitat loss this fish is only found in four isolated tributaries of the Tennessee River drainage.

Feeding diurnally (in the early morning and evening hours), the Spotfin feeds on insect larva that live in the swift currents and intermittent pools of the Tennessee River drainage headwaters areas. It’s prey is significantly smaller then other similarly sized fish, presumably due to a significantly smaller mouth.

The Spotfin Chub requires clear silt free stream, and small rivers with rock bottoms. Due to a variety of factors, including the damming of waterways, siltation from logging and development, and pollution from farm chemicals and industrial sources, much of the Spotfin Chub’s historical habitat has become unsuitable to the species.

The reasons these alterations have extinguished so many populations of the Spotfin Chub are multifaceted. When much of this river drainage was dammed and impounded by the Tennessee Valley Authority, silt covered the rock bottoms that this chub requires for breeding. In the early summer the Spotfin Chub lays its eggs in fissures in rubble, and there the male fish guard the eggs until they hatch. When these rocks become covered by siltation, there is no suitable habitat for the Spotfin to spawn. Logging also contributes to the siltation of these areas by increasing erosion. Farm animals who are allowed to wade in streams also contribute to siltation.

Along with the troubles ofsiltation, the impounding of these waters slows them and the riffles, and rapids that oxygenate the water disappear, leaving the Spotfin unable to breath.

Last October a population of Spotfin Chub was found in an unlikely location, in the East Fork Poplar Creek, near the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Nuclear Facility. This stream, within the Spotfin’s historical range, is over 25 miles from the nearest know population.

Mike Ryon of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Environmental Science Division found the Spotfin during a sampling of the stream. He speculated that some stone that had been dropped into the stream during a drainage project combined with a fast current that the drainage project created, may have provided suitable habitat for the Spotfin.

Some of the areas that the Spotfin has historically occupied have been restored. Reintroduction of the Spotfin to Abrams Creek in the Great Smokey Mountains National Park is part of the effort to help this species recover. The reintroduction effort has removed some Spotfin from a health population area in the Little Tennessee River in North Carolina to the park land. Biologists are considering other streams for re-introduction of the Spotfin.

Still scientists fear that isolated chemical spills that have been know to cause fish kills could tip the balance of survival against the Stopfin dues to is extremely limited range.

No qualitative population information exists for the Spotfin Chub at this time.

GM soya threatens local seed industry in Brazil

By Mario Osava

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Sept. 30 (IPS)— The Brazilian government’s decision to temporarily allow farmers to plant genetically modified soya seed that was smuggled into the country “is our death sentence,” says Narciso Barisón Neto, head of a seed-producers’ association in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul.

The seed industry, however, is not opposed to genetically modified (GM) crops per se, and even defends their widespread use if the transgenic seed can be produced in Brazil and farmers are free to choose among seed varieties.

But the seed producers are suffering the immediate effects of the confusion created by the government’s failure to clearly define policies on GM crops, the lawsuits pending in Brazilian courts and the contraband of transgenic seeds from Argentina.

Cultivation of GM seeds is banned in Brazil according to a 1999 court decision, but the area planted with transgenic soya has expanded steadily since 1997, especially in Rio Grande do Sul. There, 70 percent of soya planted last year had originated from seed smuggled in from Argentina, according to the state’s seed producers’ association APASSUL.

The situation of the companies producing certified — legal — soya seed, already “desperate,” became “life-or-death,” Barisón Neto told IPS. “We had hoped to maintain 19 percent of the local soya market, but now we are losing 100 percent.”

The APASSUL leader says this will be the outcome of the “provisional measure” (a presidential decree subject to parliamentary approval within 60 days) issued late Thursday, authorizing the planting of the genetically modified soya that farmers had stored for that purpose.

The measure includes restrictions. Farmers will only be able to sell their harvests of GM soya until Dec. 31, 2004. The rest is to be destroyed. The measure bans any sales of the transgenic seeds and prohibits planting in or near environmentally protected areas.

Furthermore, the farmers who plant transgenic soya will assume responsibility for any potential harm the crop causes the environment or human health.

But “nobody respects the law in agriculture,” after so many cases of impunity, said Barisón Neto, explaining that the government has tolerated seed smuggling and announced in March what was to be a one-time authorisation to harvest the illegal soya crops, and now is allowing another planting season.

The Brazilian seed industry, which helped the country to double its agricultural output since 1990 while cultivated land increased just 15 percent, is also threatened in other states, he said.

In Paraná, also in southern Brazil, an estimated 15 percent of the soya grown is genetically modified, and there are signs of its expansion in central-west and northeast Brazil as well.

Agriculture minister Roberto Rodrigues justified the provisional measure as an emergency response to prevent “civil disobedience” by farmers, given their need to plant the seeds that they have and the government’s inability to offer an alternative.

The Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva government is nearing consensus on the issue and in October should finalize draft legislation, says the minister. Once Congress has approved it there would be no need for new provisional measures, he adds.

Scientists are divided when it comes to GM crops, but the nearly 700 biosafety experts from around the world, who gathered last week for the third Latin American Symposium on Transgenic Products, backed Brazil’s National Biosafety Technical Commission, which in 1998 stated that Roundup Ready genetically modified soya is not harmful to the environment and human health.

Barisón Neto said that if GM crops are given the green light, the future remains grim for the seed companies, because they need three years to produce enough seed to meet demand. “And how would we survive in the meantime?”

In Rio Grande do Sul, soya crops cover an estimated 3.5 million hectares, planted by more than 150,000 farmers.

At risk is the future of Brazilian agriculture, because contraband can introduce diseases and reduce productivity, given that seeds are used “without monitoring or follow-up” and their illegality precludes contribution to scientific knowledge, said the APASSUL leader.

Already in Rio Grande do Sul, which borders Argentina and Uruguay, five weeds have been identified that have developed resistance to glyphosate, the main ingredient in Roundup, the herbicide used with RR soya, both produced by the agribusiness transnational Monsanto.

RR soya, which as at the root of the transgenics controversy, was developed by Monsanto to be resistant to glyphosate, facilitating cultivation and harvest — and reducing production costs.

But glyphosate will be the target of a lawsuit announced by the Brazilian Consumer Defense Institute (IDEC), adding new factors to the agriculture debate.

The use of this herbicide on soya stalks and leaves is not authorized by the government’s regulatory agencies, IDEC technical consultant Sezifredo Paz told IPS.

The institute, which filed the legal complaint that led to the 1999 ban on cultivation of GM crops in Brazil without conducting environmental impact studies beforehand, will now focus on mitigating the effects of the government’s provisional measure that “authorized illegal activity”, said Paz.

IDEC will demand a ban on the illegal application of glyphosate herbicide on soya crops and a “detailed plan” on how the government will comply with its new provisional measure and inspect the country’s soya crops.

The measure “unnecessarily endangers the health of consumers” because it “legalizes a product of unknown origins and obtained illegally,” inducing farmers to continue to commit crimes, charges IDEC in a communiqué.

Katuah Earth First! drops banners opposing mountaintop removal

Oct. 6— Katuah Earth First! staged a dramatic action this morning aimed at unmasking a conspiracy surrounding the federal court case to be held this Tuesday in Knoxville. The court case involves a plot by Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), the Office of Surface Mining and the Robert Clear Coal Company to bring the newest destructive mining practice to the Tennessee Valley — mountaintop removal. Earth First! members dropped banners reading “STOP MTN TOP REMOVAL .COM” off of a billboard near the News Sentinel building.

TVA, in accordance with environmental laws, has installed new scrubbers in several of their coal plants, therefore raising their rates to pay for these installations. The use of the new scrubbers is enabling TVA to burn higher sulfide coal, which is extracted through methods such as mountaintop removal. The cost of the new scrubbers, which has increased the price of power, is actually allowing TVA to use cheap, low quality coal that has a more detrimental environmental effect. Mountaintop removal is quicker and less costly for companies to perform, but is the most environmentally devastating means of coal extraction in history. Mountaintop removal, or cross ridge mining, is essentially taking one hundred times the amount of dynamite used in the Oklahoma City bombing, blowing off the top of the mountain, gathering the old coal that is left from previous mining, and scraping the remains back into a pile. The end result is a bare mountain, virtually leveled.

TVA is a major purchaser of coal in this region and subsequently the main contributor to mountaintop removal. Their first onslaught of our region is the dismantling of Zeb Mountain, currently underway.

“This project will destroy habitat for a number of endangered species such as the black sided dace (a small fish), the Indiana bat, and several freshwater mussels,” says John Johnson, who lives near Dunlap, TN. Braden Mountain, which is next on the chopping block, is 7,500 acres of majestic forest waiting in line to be clear cut and blown to pieces. This act of environmental devastation will also threaten the sanctity of the regional community’s watershed, an issue entirely overlooked in the preliminary environmental assessment.

The federal preliminary hearing and injunction to cease mountaintop removal on Zeb Mountain will be held Tues., Oct. 7 at 1:30pm in Knoxville. This case will be heard by US District Judge Thomas Varlan. Judge Varlan, who was appointed by Bush, is highly endorsed by the CEO of TVA, Bill Baxter. Thomas Varlan was formerly employed by Bass, Berry and Sims PLLC, a law firm with a record of proudly defending companies that knowingly break environmental laws, helping them to obtain permits to continue devastating the environment.

“The appointment of this judge is an obvious scenario of conflict of interest and makes it virtually impossible for an unbiased hearing. Judge Varlan should be recused from the Zeb Mountain lawsuit,” said Elizabeth Albiston, a member of local environmental group Earth First!.

There is a significant lack of discussion in the local mainstream media about mountaintop removal. A participant in Monday’s action stated that “We dropped the banner in front of the Knoxville News Sentinel building so they would make a greater effort to inform the public, who has a right to know about this important issue. We made the website, www.stopmtnremoval.com, to give the public a reference point to learn about mountain top removal.”

Source: Katuah Earth First! Press Release