The diamond darter (Crystallaria cincotta) isn’t much to write about. It’s only about 3-5 inches long.
But it is now quite threatened.
They were once found in many rivers in the Ohio Drainage.
Now, they are found only in the Elk River, which runs through the middle of the state and empties into the Kanawha at Charleston, the state capital and a major center for chemical refinement.
Now, if we were to implement the protections necessary to ensure that this little fish still exists, I guarantee that it would cost some jobs.
And in West Virginia, if the discussion is between jobs and the environment, the environment usually loses.
And if the federal government does anything, it will all be chalked up on “Obama’s war on coal,” a war that actually exists mainly because many utilities are switching to natural gas as an energy source. Natural gas exists in West Virginia in quite good quantities, but it’s mostly in the northern and north central parts of the state, which, of course, causes something of a regional rift.
But how on earth are you going to explain to people that we must sacrifice jobs just to save a small fish that no one has ever heard of?
I’m not against saving this fish.
Don’t get me wrong.
But this is a very complex issue that I don’t think many conservationists have thought through.
This isn’t an animal that people are going to travel a great distance to see– like with wolves and mountain gorillas. It’s hard to make the case that conserving this animal is an economic benefit.
It might be possible to get people in West Virginia to celebrate this species as a state symbol, but the state already has a state fish: the brook trout (which is actually a type of char.)
It is going to be very hard to make the case that water quality regulations should be used to protect this species.
To the typical West Virginian, it’s nothing but a “minner.”
related to the snail darter in Tennessee or the CA delta smelt?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204731804574384731898375624.html
Yeah, when people are hungry they’re not much interested in hearing about biodiversity and the web of life.
What I wonder is why a species would be more worth preserving than another. If the rich western world cant preserve a fish that now only exist in one place, how can we in the West defend or demands on the poor countries to preserve the biologigal diversity when people really have a hard time surviving. How can you simultaneously justify to preserve the last Asiatic cheetah, elephants, or other similar animals that are very costly to maintain and not a fish that probably dosent cost musch to preserve.for the future.
No argument here. The most successful efforts in the 3rd world have been those which engage the local people in the process. I suspect that the same would be true here in the States. We need to get inventive.
Of course, it would help overall if our species would get its runaway fecundity in hand. But that seems to be a hands-off issue.
You said it, Brother! “Go forth and multiply….”
Joe Public really only gets behind the conservation of creatures which are
(a) spectacular
or
(b) cuddly
Poor darter doesn`t seem to fit, somehow.
Elizabeth
Why not restock all the rivers where it used to live?