USFWS

A Tale of Two Species By Mike Montagne

Fish and Wildlife Service

Strategic Habitat Conservation Southwest Region Emphasis Areas • East Texas/Oklahoma

Big Cypress Bayou Watershed • Rio Grande

Big Bend Reach

The Species

Rio Grande/Silvery Minnow Big Cypress Bayou/Paddlefish

American Paddlefish (Polyodon Spathula)

• Status: Texas Threatened • Extirpated from BC Bayou • Recovery Efforts Underway • Ongoing Reintroduction Efforts • Production/Augmentation • Ramsar Site Designation • Long Lived

Rio Grande Silvery Minnow (Hybognathus amarus)

• Status: Federal Endangered • Extirpated From Texas • Recovery Efforts Underway • Ongoing Reintroduction Efforts • Production/Augmentation • Wild and Scenic River

Designation • Short Lived

The Different Approaches American Paddlefish (Polyodon Spathula)

• Watershed Restoration • Experimental Environmental

Flows in Place • Habitat Restoration • Beginning Larger Scale

Reintroductions

Rio Grande Silvery Minnow (Hybognathus amarus)

• Species Restoration • No Environmental Flows • Limited Restoration • Large Scale Reintroductions

Rio Grande Silvery Minnow Texas Reintroduction Effort

2008-2017

Treaty/BBEST/Texas Clean Rivers

Sand Bars

Eddy

Near Johnson Ranch, Big Bend NP

1945 • Channel spans entire width of

bedrock walls • Alternating sand bars • Active eddy

2008 • Floodplain surface inset within

bedrock walls • Steep, high banks completely

colonized by exotic plants • Eddy has filled with sediment

and is colonized by exotic plants • “floodplain” disconnected from

active channel From Dean and Schmidt 2011

Stocking RGSM

Monitoring

Stocking/Recapture History

Year Number Stocked Stocking Location RGSM Source # Recaptured Comments

2008 431,000

Grassy Banks

SNARRC

Santa Elena

Rio Grande Village

Adam’s Ranch

2009 509,988 See above SNARRC 7 Searched where they were stocked

2010 500,000 See above SNARRC 139 80 in February, 36 in May, 8 in August at Terlingua/Santa Elena, captured some at RGV

2011 304,648 See above SNARRC 109 37 in February, 13 in June, 8 in August, 3 in October, captured some at Boquillas, RGV, Contrabando, and Adams Ranch

2012 120,000 See above SNARRC 42 21 at Adams Ranch, 7 at Contrabando, 5 at Sant Elena/Terlingua in February, 4 at La Linda in April

2013 72,000 Shaffer’s Crossing SNARRC 0

2014 70,000 Shaffer’s Crossing SNARRC 2

2015 312,618 Shaffer’s Crossing SNARRC/UNFH 3

2016

410,931

La Linda SNARRC

41 100's more seen at fosters Spring, no attempt to recapture.

Dryden SNARRC

Fosters UNFH

Total 2,731,185 343 Total to date recaptured

Future Recommendations

• Suspend reintroduction effort until environmental flows can be implemented

• Implement environmental flows • Use RGSM reintroduction, and other declining

fish species, as a measure of effectiveness of future environmental flow regimes and habitat improvements

Big Cypress Bayou and Caddo Lake

Environmental Flows Project

Ecological Monitoring and Research

• American paddlefish reintroduction • Water quality • Sediment transport • Nutrient monitoring • Riparian forest and soil moisture response to

environmental flows • Bluehead shiner life history and distribution • Giant Salvinia Control (chemical and biological)

Watershed/Upland Restoration

3 water crossings replaced with a bridge and rerouted another on 7.1 miles of Prairie Creek in 2017. (Partners Program)

(Prescribed fire)Within the Cypress Basin 5 projects, 2,747 acres

($106,000 spent by program and $154,000

by private landowners)

National Wildlife Refuge System

• Established Caddo Lake National Wildlife Refuge in 2000

• Caddo Lake National Wildlife Refuge

contributes refuge water rights to help meet the recommended environmental flows out of Lake o’ the Pines

Paddlefish Reintroduction • Initial funding provided by USACE, USFWS,

and the Caddo Lake Institute • Fish provided by Tishomingo NFH, and hauled

by TPWD in special tanks for paddlefish

Paddlefish Decline

• In 1959, Ferrell’s Bridge Dam was completed creating Lake O’ the Pines, and the paddlefish fishery began to decline, and was gone by 1980.

• The population likely crashed due to loss of spawning shoals and increased sedimentation caused by the altered hydrological regime that reduced spring flood pulses and restricted channel connectivity to backwater areas.

Previous Paddlefish Reintroduction • Between 1992 and 1998, as part of a larger paddlefish

restoration project in 6 watersheds by Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.

• Over 73,438 fingerling paddlefish were stocked into Caddo Lake and Big Cypress Bayou, averaging less than 250 mm in total length (TL).

• No returns were documented in Caddo Lake or within the Big Cypress Bayou. The results of the larger paddlefish project were also not encouraging.

• Recapture rates in other systems were extremely low, and no survival rates or population estimates were able to be calculated.

• However, none of the recapture efforts were in the BCB or Caddo Lake.

Phase 1 and 2

Phase 3 Long Term (10 year)

Stocking Plan Tracking Juveniles into

Adulthood

Aquatic Habitat Restoration Spawning Shoal Mapping Restoring Nursery Habitat

Outreach Collins Academy

Watershed vs. Species Restoration Big Cypress Bayou Rio Grand Silvery Minnow

• Many more partners • Paddlefish staying in system • Recaptured many of them • Good Health • Environmental flows

through 2021 • Additional life history stages

to be examined

• Not taking hold • Other species declining • No reliable water except

spring influenced canyon sections

• No environmental flows in immediate future