ST. GEORGE — Earlier this month, students from the Trinity Lutheran Academy helped the Division of Wildlife Resources plant endangered fish into the Virgin River as a way to help bolster the native population.
The activity was a part of an annual outreach effort by the DWR to area schools meant to educate students from kindergarten through high school about the state’s wildlife and their importance, said Melinda Bennion, a native aquatics biologist for the DWR’s Washington County Field Office.
“We do outreach a few times a year,” Bennion said, adding she usually sends letters to area schools in August that inform teachers about the outreach opportunities the DWR provides.
This has generally translated to a week out of the year where Bennion and others visit up 15 schools and do in-class presentations or outdoor demonstrations of some sort.
This year, the annual outreach has become increasingly limited because of the pandemic.
“Teachers have been calling me asking what happened,” Bennion said.
Among those who called was a teacher at Trinity Lutheran Academy in St. George, which has been involved with DWR outreach efforts for several years.
“We have participated in several field events with the DWR,” Duane Nyen, Trinity Lutheran Academy’s principal, wrote in an email to St. George News. “With our smaller classes, the DWR has been able to offer our students a real-life experience that cannot be found in a textbook. The students have had the opportunity to not only learn science concepts, but also about our local environment.”
While the pandemic may have halted certain aspects of the DWR’s outreach program, Bennion said they still look for opportunities that can take the students outside. One such activity turned out to be the upcoming planting of Virgin River chub grown in a hatchery into the Virgin River for the purpose of bolstering the endangered native population.
“Most of the those kids (at the academy) we’ve seen multiple years in a row, so it’s really fun for them to release an endangered fish we’re talked about and done in-class presentations with him,” Bennion said.
DWR personnel and Trinity Lutheran Academy students met Nov. 5 and released the fish in the river by the Fossil Falls Park in St. George.
Nyen wrote that the transplanted fish were grown in a hatchery near Lake Powell. The day of the planting, the fish were placed in coolers that had river water placed in them to help the fish acclimate to their new environment.
“Following the acclimating period, students from Trinity Lutheran Academy assisted DWR employees in putting the fish into the river,” Nyen wrote in the email. “DWR employees also took time to teach the students about the other native and non-native fish species in the Virgin River… We have enjoyed working with the DWR with this partnership in learning.”
It is hoped that the transplanted Virgin River chub will help the native fish there reproduce and help grow the population out of its endangered status, Bennion said, though added part of re-population efforts included getting rid of non-native species that compete with the native ones.
In this case, that is the red shiner. Efforts to remove the fish has led to wildlife officials chemically treating parts of the Virgin River to kill them off, as well as creating a fish barrier near the Utah-Arizona state line in the Virgin River Gorge to prevent the fish from going up the river.
As for any impacts the current toxic algal bloom may have had on the endangered fish, Bennion said there hasn’t been any noticeable impacts or decline in population thus far.
The Virgin River chub was placed on the endangered species list in 1989. It was the second native fish species to receive that designation. The first was the Woundfin, which was added to the endangered species list in 1970.
Click on photo to enlarge it, then use your left-right arrow keys to cycle through the gallery.
Students from Trinity Lutheran Academy help Utah Division of Wildlife Resources personnel plant endangered Virgin River chub fish into the Virgin River as part of native species re-population efforts, St. George, Utah, Nov. 5, 2020 | Photo courtesy of Duane Nyen, St. George News
Students from Trinity Lutheran Academy help Utah Division of Wildlife Resources personnel plant endangered Virgin River chub fish into the Virgin River as part of native species re-population efforts, St. George, Utah, Nov. 5, 2020 | Photo courtesy of Duane Nyen, St. George News
Students from Trinity Lutheran Academy help Utah Division of Wildlife Resources personnel plant endangered Virgin River chub fish into the Virgin River as part of native species re-population efforts, St. George, Utah, Nov. 5, 2020 | Photo courtesy of Duane Nyen, St. George News
Students from Trinity Lutheran Academy help Utah Division of Wildlife Resources personnel plant endangered Virgin River chub fish into the Virgin River as part of native species re-population efforts, St. George, Utah, Nov. 5, 2020 | Photo courtesy of Duane Nyen, St. George News
Students from Trinity Lutheran Academy help Utah Division of Wildlife Resources personnel plant endangered Virgin River chub fish into the Virgin River as part of native species re-population efforts, St. George, Utah, Nov. 5, 2020 | Photo courtesy of Duane Nyen, St. George News
Students from Trinity Lutheran Academy help Utah Division of Wildlife Resources personnel plant endangered Virgin River chub fish into the Virgin River as part of native species re-population efforts, St. George, Utah, Nov. 5, 2020 | Photo courtesy of Duane Nyen, St. George News
Students from Trinity Lutheran Academy help Utah Division of Wildlife Resources personnel plant endangered Virgin River chub fish into the Virgin River as part of native species re-population efforts, St. George, Utah, Nov. 5, 2020 | Photo courtesy of Duane Nyen, St. George News
Students from Trinity Lutheran Academy help Utah Division of Wildlife Resources personnel plant endangered Virgin River chub fish into the Virgin River as part of native species re-population efforts, St. George, Utah, Nov. 5, 2020 | Photo courtesy of Duane Nyen, St. George News
Students from Trinity Lutheran Academy help Utah Division of Wildlife Resources personnel plant endangered Virgin River chub fish into the Virgin River as part of native species re-population efforts, St. George, Utah, Nov. 5, 2020 | Photo courtesy of Duane Nyen, St. George News
Students from Trinity Lutheran Academy help Utah Division of Wildlife Resources personnel plant endangered Virgin River chub fish into the Virgin River as part of native species re-population efforts, St. George, Utah, Nov. 5, 2020 | Photo courtesy of Duane Nyen, St. George News
Students from Trinity Lutheran Academy help Utah Division of Wildlife Resources personnel plant endangered Virgin River chub fish into the Virgin River as part of native species re-population efforts, St. George, Utah, Nov. 5, 2020 | Photo courtesy of Duane Nyen, St. George News
Students from Trinity Lutheran Academy help Utah Division of Wildlife Resources personnel plant endangered Virgin River chub fish into the Virgin River as part of native species re-population efforts, St. George, Utah, Nov. 5, 2020 | Photo courtesy of Duane Nyen, St. George News
Students from Trinity Lutheran Academy help Utah Division of Wildlife Resources personnel plant endangered Virgin River chub fish into the Virgin River as part of native species re-population efforts, St. George, Utah, Nov. 5, 2020 | Photo courtesy of Duane Nyen, St. George News
Students from Trinity Lutheran Academy help Utah Division of Wildlife Resources personnel plant endangered Virgin River chub fish into the Virgin River as part of native species re-population efforts, St. George, Utah, Nov. 5, 2020 | Photo courtesy of Duane Nyen, St. George News
Students from Trinity Lutheran Academy help Utah Division of Wildlife Resources personnel plant endangered Virgin River chub fish into the Virgin River as part of native species re-population efforts, St. George, Utah, Nov. 5, 2020 | Photo courtesy of Duane Nyen, St. George News
Students from Trinity Lutheran Academy help Utah Division of Wildlife Resources personnel plant endangered Virgin River chub fish into the Virgin River as part of native species re-population efforts, St. George, Utah, Nov. 5, 2020 | Photo courtesy of Duane Nyen, St. George News
Copyright St. George News, SaintGeorgeUtah.com LLC, 2020, all rights reserved.
November 23, 2020 at 07:01AM
https://ift.tt/2HooylY
Students help wildlife officials reintroduce endangered fish to Virgin River - St George News
https://ift.tt/35JkYuc
Fish
No comments:
Post a Comment