[Southern_AZ_MWS] (Tucson) Rose Canyon Lake restoration, 8/20

Thu Aug 16 10:28:07 MST 2007

A volunteer opportunity next Monday: 

Rose Canyon had a large flood last weekend and it filled the lake with woody
debris.  AGFD and the USFS are having a lake clean up on Monday Aug 20th, to
clear much of the debris out of the lake, and to restore the handicap
walkway.  We will meet at the gate off Catalina Highway @ 10:00 am.  Bring a
lunch, water and some gloves if you have them, I will provide what I can.
This is a good opportunity to volunteer, and spend a day in the cool
mountain air.  Parking will be limited so please carpool up to the gate as
the FS will have the access road under construction.
If you can make it please email me to let me know.
Thanks!

S. Jason Kline
Fisheries Program Specialist II, Region V
Arizona Game and Fish Department
555 N. Greasewood
Tucson, AZ  85743
office (520) 388-4452
fax (520)-628-5080
jkline at azgfd.gov

Fish Arizona! 
Buy a fishing license today at www.azgfd.gov

  _____  

From: Scott A. Bonar [mailto:sbonar at Ag.arizona.edu] 
Sent: Wednesday, August 15, 2007 3:18 PM
To: Jon Cooley; yk1975 at bk.ru; Larry Riley; Don Mitchell; Alison Iles; Kirk
Young; Mike Lopez; Kelly Meyer; Marianne Meding; Chantal OBrien; Kirk Young;
Dave Weedman; Jim Warnecke; Tony Robinson; Scott Reger; Don Mitchell; Lopez,
Mike; Andy Clark; Rob Bettaso; Chuck Benedict; Bill Persons; Brad Jacobson;
Dave Weedman; David Ward; Eric Swanson; Jeff Sorensen; Marianne Meding;
Duane Shroufe; Eric Gardner; Chris Cantrell; Julie Meka;
ahervatin at azgfd.gov; Bob Hernbrode; Jason Kline
Cc: bernard_shanks at usgs.gov; Bob Broscheid; Chantal OBrien
Subject: Thanks AZGFD Fish Folks!

Hi Fish People!

        Here is another set of updates on AZ Cooperative Fish and Wildlife
Research fish projects for you "fish" folks at AZGFD.  You provide excellent
experience and knowledge from the "front lines" for our students, and I am
very grateful for your support and partnership.  I met with Chasa O'Brien to
give her an update yesterday, and I wanted to provide you with the same.
Thanks so much once again!!  

        The Conservation Professional's Guide to Working With People

I authored this book, which is now available through Amazon, Island Press,
and yes, even Wall-Mart (my friends and relatives back home in KY and IN are
happy about that one!).  It demonstrates skills in verbal judo, conflict
management, customer service, negotiation, time management and a host of
other "people" skills for conservation professionals.  So far it seems to be
getting pretty good reviews, and it got up to 6th place on Amazon's new
bestsellers in general conservation. (5th place was held by "The User's
Guide to Composting Toilets) 

Many thanks to Duane Shroufe who wrote the forward, and there are several
examples highlighting people skills of members of the AZGFD  (only good
examples!) .  I'll be giving talks about the methods at workshops at AFS and
the Wildlife Society Meetings this year.  I'll be happy to sign it if you
get a copy when I see you next at a meeting, etc.  That way you can sell it
for $1.50 instead of $1.00 on Ebay.

                        Methods for propagation of the chubs (Gila, Yaqui,
Roundtail, Headwaters, Mohave Tui Chub) and topminnow (Yaqui). 

This project is finishing up and we are currently submitting articles to
journals.  So far we successfully bred and raised five of the fish species
above, and techniques on how to do this are available to those who are
interested.  We're still working on the roundtail chub however!  Can you
believe it, supposedly one of the easier ones to breed!   We have tested the
effects of temperatures, feed types, densities on growth for some of these
as well.  Jason Kline (Yaqui fish breeder) finished his MS and is now
working for AZGFD in your Region 5 office.  Tom Archdeacon (Mohave Tui Chub
breeder) just finished his MS and got a job with the USFWS at the New Mexico
FRO in Albuquerque.  Erica Sontz remains at her aquariums, breeding fish!

        Methods to remove northern pike from Arizona lakes.
                Drs. Yuliya Kuzmenko and Timofy Specivy just finished up
their field work on the project on northern pike mechanical removal
techniques.    We got Ukrainian fish bios involved because northern pike
populations have collapsed on huge Ukrainian reservoirs because of
overfishing.  We wanted to try some "Ukrainian methods" over here to see if
they could collapse our illegally stocked pike lakes as well.  They are now
crunching their data, so the following results are preliminary. Yuliya and
Tim slayed the pike. They got about 80-90% of them out of the lakes.
However, there are still a few left, so this method is more suppression than
erradication.  Gill nets fished in early spring, and a method that the
poachers in the Ukraine used - barrier nets herding fish into fyke nets -
worked best. Electrofishing, and an angler reward system for removing pike
were much less effective.  However, the electrofishing removed small pike
better than the netting techniques which removed larger pike more
effectively.  Yuliya and Tim even wanted to try a Ukrainian pike
electrofishing unit.  This looks more like a telephone generator than a boat
shocker, but they said it was hugely effective in the Ukraine.  Evidently it
is very quiet.  However,  it is a metal box with a lot of electronic
components and it looked too suspicious.  Therefore, the Ukrainian
authorities wouldn't let it on one of their flights out of the country.
Thanks much to Don Mitchell AZGFD Region 5, Mike Lopez and Kelly Meyer from
Region 1, and Kirk Young and Larry Riley from Headquarters who collaborated
with us on this project.  Bolshoi Speciba!

Verde River GAWS planning project.
                AZ Game and Fish biologists and managers developed a plan to
identify and manage native and nonnative fish areas on the Little Colorado
River.  Graduate student Anne Kretschmann is working with Fisheries Branch
managers Kirk Young and Larry Riley and Research Branch biologist Bill
Persons to adapt this plan to the Verde River watershed.  She is
collaborating with Kansas State University researchers who are doing a GAP
analysis on the Verde River as well.  She is identifying data gaps for the
Verde watershed and updating segments of the plan to be able to apply it in
a new location.  In addition, she is working with the Little Colorado plan
to streamline and update it so it can be used on other watersheds in the
state as well.   Anne is currently assembling layers on GIS maps to identify
data gaps, using information provided from your Heritage Program, Fisheries
Branch, Kansas State University, and our GIS people here at the University
of Arizona.  We expect to finish this by the end of next summer.
        Standard Sampling of North American Fishes.
                Standard methods have resulted in huge advances in industry
and science.  However, standard methods have only been applied on a regional
or state level for sampling fish.  David Willis, Wayne Hubert and I are
coeditors on a text that will recommend standard sampling methods for
different waterbody types across North America.  This project is being
sponsored by the Fish Management Section of the American Fisheries Society,
and to date is being authored by almost 50 agency, academic, and private
scientists from the United States, Canada and Mexico.  Four current and past
employees of the AZ Game and Fish Department Fisheries Branch and Research
Branch are authors.  The AZ Game and Fish Department is a financial partner
on this effort (thanks to Jim deVos) as well as nine other agency and
private organizations.  33 state and federal agencies have reviewed the
methods, and now the 2nd draft of the book is in its final stage of review
by a final group of sampling experts.  

In the back of the book we have comparison data - that way you can tell if
the fish you catch are average, higher or lower for the index in question
(rel. wt, length frequency, CPUE, growth) than fish in your region or
rangewide.  Alison Iles (UA coop) and Mark Brouder (formerly of AZGFD)
deserve big kuddos for putting this together.  They received data from over
4000 fish populations (through mail survey) from 43 states and provinces
across North America to calculate this average .  Therefore, you should have
some good averages to compare with your fish caught by standard sampling.   

Following this review we are submitting the book for publication, so it
should be out soon!   I am also meeting with European biologists who are
also interested in standardization.  

        Effects of Asian Tapeworm on desert fish.
                This work is now concluded and articles are being submitted
for publication.  Graduate students Jason Kline and Tom Archdeacon tested
the effects of Asian Tapeworm on two Rio Yaqui fishes, the Yaqui chub and
the Yaqui topminnnow and on the Mohave tui chub, a fish found in only 3
populations in Southern California.  They bred their fish successfully,
reared copepods (the intermediate host), reared tapeworms, and infected fish
by allowing them to eat infected copepods. Growth of infected fish was
significantly below control fish, however, neither Jason nor Tom found
tapeworm in the infected fish by the end of the study. Tom even ran his
experients twice, and still he recorded no tapeworm in his fish at the end
of his study.  They did see a few pass from fish during the course of the
experiment.  We are confident that the methods they used to infect fish were
good.  They used methods previously used by another research group, and had
photos of infected copepods sent to parasite experts to ensure the copepods
fed to the fish were infected.  In a separate study, Wisconsin biologists
were able to get about 50% of their fish infected, but while they noticed
reductions in growth, increased mortality only occurred when food available
to the fish was very limiting.  

In other results of this study, Jason found that tapeworm eggs were not
killed by praziquantel treatments (the common method used to rid fish of
tapeworm).  These eggs could later develop.  Fish managers should be careful
transporting fish treated for tapeworm without taking some additional
precautions.

Alison Iles (Coop Biologist) tested praziquantel in small microcosms,
containing sediment, plankton and infected fish. designed to simulate ponds.
This will provide information for the efficacy of praziquantel for chemical
control of Asian tapeworm in a field setting.  The praziquantel was
successful in eliminating tapeworm from these microcosm fish populations.

>From field work, we found Asian tapeworm is currently in found in most of
the streams in Arizona.  However, it was only present in a small proportion
of the fish population, generally about 10-15% of the population of
cyprinids.

In conclusion, we did not find evidence of mass mortalities of fish from
Asian tapeworm in Arizona populations we studied.  However, they probably
add an additional stressor to the fish, like water drawdowns, invasive
species, water quality issues and the like.

Thanks to Dave Ward, Don Mitchell, and Mike Childs for their help with this
work.

Life history of introduced crayfish in Arizona. 

David Ragowski is studying the life history of introduced crayfish to
identify vulnerable life history time periods for control of this exotic
pest.  David is currently in the middle of his field work.  He has marked
hundreds of crayfish in four different Arizona sites to study their life
history characteristics and he goes back to these sites about every month to
study their population dynamics over the year.  So far he is getting good
data on populations, growth rates, and mortality rates that will be useful
for identifying any weak link in their life history we might be able to
exploit for control.  

                        Once again, thanks so much for working with us on
these projects.  We really appreciate the chance to work with the AZGFD, and
please let us know at any time if you would like more information on any of
these projects.
                        Scott Bonar, Unit Leader
        Arizona Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit
        104 Biological Sciences East
        University of Arizona
        Tucson, AZ  85721
                520-621-1193

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