The Nooksack Dace is a little fish found only in a few rivers and streams in the Lower Mainland of BC. It has been listed as endangered under the Species at Risk Act, and tonight I attended a Department of Fisheries and Oceans forum on steps being taken to identify and protect crucial habitat. It was an interesting presentation on the dace and its preferred habitat. Unfortunately, the ratio of audience to DFO staff was about 10:6 -- it could have been better publicized.
Something that I found interesting was that all remaining Nooksack Dace habitat is in developed/developing areas. That's going to make it really tough to preserve this species. I asked if in the future there would be attempts to transplant dace to other streams in their previous range. They're not at that point yet, but one of the biologists said that transplanting would certainly contribute to keeping the species from going extinct.
Here is the recovery strategy for the fish, and watch the SARA public registry for a 60-day comment period after the strategy is officially posted soon.
Posted by Paul at February 27, 2008 09:38 PM