Josh Smith

Staff Photo by John Rawlston A crew from Georgia's Department of Natural Resources walks into a spring on Tuesday at Badger Farms near Varnell to collect coldwater darters and brownback salamanders.

Lavelle and Scott Badger and their six children are watching an intervention.

A tiny 21/2-inch fish called a coldwater darter lives in only 13 places worldwide -- all in Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama. One of those places is a natural spring on the four-generation Badger family farm near Varnell, Ga.

For the past few weeks, in a tiny spring near the border of Whitfield and Catoosa counties, the Tennessee Aquarium Research Institute, Georgia environmental regulators and the Conasauga River Alliance have removed silt that is strangling one population of the darters.

One recent weekday, three of the Badgers watched as conservationists in waders staged something of a darter rodeo, scooping up the fish, crawfish and other spring inhabitants and sending them on a short vacation to the Tennessee Aquarium Conservation Institute fishery several miles down the road near Cohutta.

"We feel blessed," Mrs. Badger said of the spring restoration, an idea pitched to the family by the Conasauga River Alliance. "This is an opportunity to preserve a special place."

Perhaps the most famous fish-save project of recent decades is a cousin of the coldwater darter -- the snail darter that stalled the completion of the Tellico Dam in upper East Tennessee for more than two decades.

On the Badger farm, which belonged to Mr. Badger's grandparents before he brought his family back to live in the rolling hills, there's none of the traditional push and pull between private and government interests that often accompany environmental efforts.

So far, all that is prolonging the coldwater darters' emergency layover at the Cohutta fishery and hatchery is a little mechanical trouble.

Tennessee Aquarium Conservation Institute researcher and director Anna George said the vacuum machinery used to suck tiny silt particles from the natural pebble bottom of the spring works almost too well. The bags intended to catch the dirt keeping bursting, she said, so researchers/rescuers are working out Plan B.

"Sometimes conservation doesn't work the way you think it will," she said last week. "But we'll get it (right)."

Cleaning house

Brett Albanese, a researcher with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, said the coldwater darter is an endangered species in the state. Its primary habitat is limestone springs and spring runs -- the still or slow-moving water between a spring and a flowing creek.

That kind of spring is unique to this tri-state region of the Southeast, one of several reasons the Badgers' spring and the coldwater darter are important. They are part of the rare and biodiverse aquatic ecosystem of the Southeast, Mr. Albanese said.

The darters eat small crustaceans and insect larvae, and they only live about two years, so successful spawning every year is essential to their continued existence, according to researchers.

The females attach adhesive eggs to vegetation and, when nearby fields are plowed, or areas are cleared for roads or new homes, the bare dirt caught in normal rain runoff can move to the spring and suffocate the eggs or the food supply for the darter.

Over the past couple of decades, that's just what has happened in the Badgers' spring -- known for years to the community as Colvard Spring and sometimes used by old-timers as a clean water source, according to Josh Smith, watershed director for the Conasauga River Alliance.

The alliance partnered with the aquarium institute, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, the landowners and Dalton-Whitfield Regional Solid Waste Management Authority to clean up the darters' Colvard Spring habitat, Mr. Smith said.

Money to finance the work -- $14,500 -- came from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation in Washington, D.C.

When Plan A fell through because the silt bags kept splitting, Mr. Smith brought in a late-coming partner, the Dalton-Whitfield Regional Solid Waste Management Authority.

Now the housekeepers will bypass the bags altogether and suck the silt out onto a nearby field to dry out. The water will drain safely back to the spring run and the waste management authority will collect the dried silt for disposal elsewhere.

Mr. Smith said the grant is paying for water quality and habitat lab work measurements before and after the sediment removal, as well as the material used to separate the water from the sediment -- dirtbags and straw wattles. Straw wattles are specially woven straw bales that filter sediment-laden runoff.

The partnering agencies are lending the workers and their time for the project, they said.