A laurel dace in a stream is like a canary in a coal mine.
During the past year’s summer drought, the Tennessee Aquarium Conservation Institute and other conservation-minded entities set out to rescue the laurel dace from a stream that had dwindled to a few isolated puddles, said Bernie Kuhajda, an aquatic conservation biologist with the institute. There was a time when the laurel dace, a type of freshwater minnow, inhabited eight streams on Walden’s Ridge around Dayton and Spring City, Kuhajda said. Now, the fish inhabits just two streams.
“It is for sure one of the top five most endangered species east of the Mississippi – for fishes,” Kuhajda said in an interview at the conservation institute by Baylor School. “It is literally on the brink of extinction, and that is not overstating how dire this species is right now.”
Federally listed as an endangered species in 2011, the laurel dace is a narrow endemic, based on the small area where it is found, Kuhajda said. These kinds of species are more imperiled than others because “it only takes a couple of major events in their habitat” to lose a population, he said.