Tiny Tennessee Fish Protected, but US Has Yet to Say Where

Tiny Tennessee Fish Protected, but US Has Yet to Say Where

By TRAVIS LOLLER

Source: Associated Press

10/21/2022

Credit: Casey Phillips/Tennessee Aquarium via AP

It was a crisp fall day when biologist Bernie Kuhajda drove to a nondescript trickle of water running through a Middle Tennessee cow pasture to try to keep a small, brightly colored fish from becoming extinct.

The trickle — little more than a few big mud puddles — was one of the last bodies of water left with a population of Barrens topminnows, and it was drying up.

So Kuhajda and his team donned waders and dragged a large sieve through the muddy pools, collecting 64 of the small, iridescent killifish to take back to the Tennessee Aquarium, where they maintain an “ark population” as a hedge against their possible disappearance in the wild.

“If we hadn't rescued these 64, this entire genetic population of Barrens topminnows would have disappeared,” Kuhajda said. “This species would have been one step closer to extinction, and it's not many steps away now."