Sunday, August 29, 2010
Environment / Arkansas Culture and Characters Save the garfish
Posted by Max Brantley on Sun, Aug 29, 2010 at 7:32 AM
Spitzer comments: "I can assure you that this matter is important to your readers. Especially fishermen, considering that more large predators in the system = larger gamefish."
SPITZER'S LETTER
Residents of Arkansas should know that Conway Corporation intends to build a sewage treatment plant on Tupelo Bayou by the Arkansas River, which could be detrimental to the largest known population of alligator gar in Arkansas. This fascinating creature (300 million years old, capable of reaching lengths of ten feet) is threatened throughout its range and its status is listed as imperiled, vulnerable, and substantially declining in the state. State and Federal agencies across the South are currently coordinating on management plans to preserve and propagate this species, which is advantageous to ecosystem stability. It is not known how important this particular spawning ground is to our local gene pool of alligator gar, but an environmental impact study is definitely in order considering the delicate reproduction of this fish, which requires a convergence of ideal water temperature and sustained floodwater levels for spawns to take. US Fish and Wildlife, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, and UCA biologists have been studying this local population for years and agree that an assessment is needed. It may be that this area is not vital to sustaining this population, and it may be possible for Conway Corporation to develop an environmentally friendly treatment plant. Another complication, however, is that sewage plants purify wastewater with estrogen, which has a history of turning male fish into female fish. This can directly affect population growth.
Conway Corporation is currently collecting comments from the community for the next ten days regarding this project. I’d like to encourage everyone with an interest in conserving this important natural resource to write to CEO Richard Arnold / Conway Corporation / P.O. Box 99 / Conway, AR 72033 as soon as possible and request that this matter be seriously studied before any construction begins.
Prof. Mark Spitzer
Conway
Comments (7)
Showing 1-7 of 7
I read Professor Spitzer's book just a few weeks ago and he makes a strong case for appreciating and protecting this amazing fish. Apparently gar require a certain flooding of shallows for 9 days to spawn and give the hatchlings time to reach a size where they might survive. Our steadily creeping encroachment of habitat and Corps of Engineer channelizing flood plains threatens the species. This and a brutal attitude towards specimen fish by bow fishers puts the alligator gar at peril.
Both the book and Spitzer's activism merit attention.
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This Conway sewer plant plan certainly needs to be studied thoroughly before the first dirt is turned. Corps of Engineers, Game and Fish, Evironmental Quality and any other parties must take a look at it. Let's also keep in mind that Conway's sewage, treated, has gone into Lake Conway for many decades without identifiable harm. Lake Conway had some apparent pollution issues in recent times, but people in the know point to illegal household septic systems running into the lake.
Mark Spitzer is right in raising an early red flag. Mark lives on Lake Conway's shores, too.
I caught a 70 lb alligator gar once from Fayetteville's former small,city lake, Lake Sequoyah. Excitedly I thought I had set a state record. Then I checked and I wasn't even close.
They get pretty large as the article indicates and gar do eat lots of game fish thinning the herd, so to speak, so that some game fish grow larger.
El, one of the myths that Spitzer's book seeks to expose is that gar's diet is of game fish.
Is the aligator gar considered endangered or protected? That is what it should hinge on. If their population is down to dangerous levels they should be protected, but if there are still plenty of them, then no. THey are a cool fish, and look almost like a dinosaur or other prehistoric creature.
The alligator gar is most certainly threatened w numbers diminishing astonishingly in the last 50 years. It is w these kinds of evaluation that the status can be determined. One of Spitzer's very cogent points is that the gar has been neglected and maligned simply because there is not enough data. States are only now establishing any fishing regulations at all in regards to gar. We should not wait until the survival situation is critical before we act. An environmental impact evaluation is well in order.
Hell, they are dinosaurs.
Well before all of the tree huggers speak, perhaps all of you should spend a night in south conway near where the current wastewater treatment plant is. For the last 7-8 months there has been a stinch of sewage in the air-and it's almost enough to make someone with a very strong stomach to want to puke. Trust me. The current plant uses exposed ponds to treat sewage and some of this sewage water spills over into Stone Dam Creek, which eventually leads to Lake Conway. I would bet that many don't even know about this but it happens. When the wind is out of the southeast, this part of the city STINKS. The other reason for the odor is a couple of farms that allow RAW sewage to be dumped on the pasture (pumped from septic systems). And people gripe about sewage being "treated" in open ponds...and they don't even know that when their septic is pumped, it's spread out over a cow pasture-and cattle have been known to graze in that same pasture. Kind of makes you think twice about eating beef doesn't it?
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