To the FWGNA group:
Congratulations are in order
for our colleagues Jeff Garner of the Alabama DCNR and Stephanie Clark
of the University of Alabama! Last week The Nature Conservancy
announced that both researchers have recently rediscovered freshwater
gastropods previously feared extinct. An article from The Birmingham News is appended
below.
Jeff collected Goniobasis vanuxemiana
and G. lachryma diving in the
Coosa River below the Logan Martin Dam east of Birmingham.
Stephanie found Clappia cahabensis in
the Cahaba River south of Birmingham, closer to Tuscaloosa. Their
discoveries were unrelated but highly coincidental - both occurred last
year and were reported independently at the annual Alabama Mollusk
Meeting. TNC's decision to issue a combined press release last
week was prompted by the big Ivory-billed Woodpecker buzz.
Good job to all involved!
Rob
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Biologist, student find 3 snails thought to have been extinct
Coosa, Cahaba Rivers turn up prizes the discovery of snails believed to
have been wiped out by human actions
Tuesday, May 03, 2005
KATHERINE BOUMA
Birmingham News staff writer
Three snails listed as extinct have been rediscovered in Alabama's
rivers, the Nature Conservancy plans to announce today.
Jeff Garner, the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural
Resources' mollusk biologist, rediscovered the cobble elimia and the
nodulose Coosa River snail on a stretch of the Coosa that remains
free-flowing between Lake Logan Martin and Neely Henry Lake. And
Stephanie Clark, a postdoctoral student from Australia, found a Cahaba
pebblesnail in the Cahaba River in Bibb County.
Alabama is recognized as the globe's most densely populated home of
mollusks - the snails and mussels that dot the beds of rivers, the
acres of white shells that gave Muscle Shoals its name. The state also
is known to be the nation's top spot for extinct and imperiled
mollusks. Of 174 species of aquatic snails to occur here, 39 are
presumed to be extinct.
The Coosa River is home to hundreds of aquatic animals, making it a
global hot spot for snails and mussels. For that reason, it also has a
more lethal distinction - the site of the largest extinction in the
history of the United States.
From 1917 to 1967, dams were built along the length of the Coosa River
until it became a series of reservoirs. Dozens of fish, mussels and
snails that evolved to live and breed in the fast-flowing water on the
shoals and riffles of the Coosa reefs lost their niche.
Animals were drowned, cut off from each other or stuck in water so
dirty that they could not reproduce, biologists say.
Some species hiding
In recent years, scientists have discovered some species hiding in the
"headwaters" of the dams, the streams between reservoirs where the
Coosa still retains some of its original habitat. So Garner went
diving below Lake Logan Martin and found two species that hadn't been
spotted since the dams changed the river.
Garner knew immediately what the small, brownish spirals were.
"One of these I found is pretty distinctive," Garner said. "I've always
said it was my favorite snail - I hated it was extinct. It sort of has
teardrops around the periphery."
Clark, who began postdoctoral research at the University of Alabama
last year, didn't know immediately what she was looking at. But she
knew it was unusual.
She was accompanying a graduate student to the Cahaba River National
Wildlife Refuge in Bibb County when she began wandering around looking
in the usual spots a biologist would look for river snails.
"Behold, there was this oddball snail under a rock," Clark said. "I
didn't know that I'd found an extinct one straightaway, but I knew I'd
found something that I hadn't seen before."
The Cahaba pebblesnail, a round, yellow snail only about a quarter of
an inch in length, hadn't been spotted since 1965.
A surprise find
"That these things are being found is a surprise, but it's not
shocking," said Paul Hartfield, an endangered species biologist for the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Jackson, Miss.
In the past 15 years, scientists have turned their attention to the
snails of Alabama. The study of mollusks had dwindled to nearly nothing
by the early 1970s, with students lured away to sexier, high-tech
fields, he said.
Then after the passage of two federal laws, the Endangered Species Act
and the Clean Water Act, the field was in demand again, he said. It
took until the 1990s for the science to mature and for great numbers of
experts to begin looking for the snails that once covered Alabama's
river bottoms.
In recent years, Garner has found several species believed to have been
extinct, including a snail in the Locust Fork, a mussel in the Alabama
River and a mussel in the Tennessee River. Clark last month
collected two snails she believes have never been recorded.
"The number of people who are capable of looking grows every day,"
Hartfield said. "This is a big basin when it was just me out there
looking for snails and driving over from Mississippi for four or five
days. Now what do we have? We have grad students from Australia."
Surveyed before
However, some spots had been surveyed before but only recently have
snail hunters had any luck, said Paul Freeman, a freshwater ecologist
for the Nature Conservancy of Alabama, the land conservation group that
secured the Cahaba refuge for preservation. He believes that may have
something to do with cleaner water and better habitat brought by three
decades or more of environmental laws.
"Folks had been looking for these critters," Freeman said. "It's not
just an artifact of people not looking."
Although he believes rapid growth in the river basins has negated many
of the improvements, Hartfield said it may not be a coincidence that
Alabama Power Co. has managed for good river habitat in the stretch
where the two Coosa snails were found.
He said their survival will depend on the continued goodwill of the
company. He said he only wished more Americans realized the value of
mussels and snails, which filter water, clean river bottoms and serve
as food for birds, small mammals and aquatic animals.
"Those snails and mussels have a lot to do with quality of life for the
people of Alabama," he said.
E-mail: kbouma@bhamnews.com 1965.
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