What's Good for the Topeka Shiner is Good for People
Governors Daugaard of South Dakota and Dayton of Minnesota advocate vegetated buffer strips along our prairie rivers as a practical and low-cost method for reducing water pollution, saving wetlands, enhancing wildlife habitat and protecting our soils. As a result of this leadership, the Governors may also accomplish, unintentionally, a conservation goal that federal agencies have been avoiding for years -- creating a recovery plan for endangered species in the Big Sioux, James, Vermillion and Rock Rivers.The Topeka Shiner was once widespread and abundant, but nineteen years ago it was listed as an endangered species; it’s numbers had declined by more than 80 percent, with 50 percent of the decline since 1948. As required by federal law, the listing was made “solely on the basis of the best scientific and commercial data available.” The normal process following listing is for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (“Service”) to designate critical habitat for the species and then to develop a species recovery plan, defining “recovery” as “improvement in the status of listed species to the point at which listing is no longer needed.”Years went by without either a critical habitat designation or a recovery plan from the Service. In response to this agency inaction the Center for Biological Diversity sued the Service in federal court, arguing that the failure to list prairie rivers as critical habitat of the Topeka Shiner was the result of political interference from agricultural and developmental interests which feared that a designation would make it more difficult for other federal agencies to approve wetland drainage. Following a court order the Service made a minimal habitat designation, but then returned to its pattern of inaction by failing to develop and implement a recovery plan; and there things remain.The reasons for the decline of the Topeka Shiner are well understood. Under natural conditions the small fish prospered in headwater prairie streams with good water quality and cool temperatures, but development and intensive agricultural practices changed all of that. Soil sediments introduced into the stream are the major factor: wetland drainage, cultivation and grazing to the water’s edge, livestock in the stream, channelization and water-front development all led to the degraded watersheds in which native species can no longer survive. Any recovery plan for the Topeka Shiner and other natives must address these practices, and it is here that proposals for vegetated buffer strips come in to play.What is good for endangered species is also good for people. Watershed management is the first and most fundamental step in protecting human drinking water supplies as well as providing water recreation. Healthy, functioning watersheds naturally filter pollutants, cool water temperatures, moderate the quantity of flows by slowing surface runoff and increase the infiltration of water into the soil. And, of escalating significance in an era of climate variation and change, healthy watersheds also work as natural infrastructure, providing the resilience required to blunt the effects of both flood and drought. Any good watershed management plan will begin with vegetated buffer strips.Thus, the first steps in a recovery plan for the endangered Topeka Shiner are also the first steps necessary to preserve a healthy supply of water for people and communities in the watershed.What is good for endangered species is good for people.
This article is by John Davidson. Davidson is an attorney, retired from teaching at the University of South Dakota School of Law., and has a career-long association with land and water conservation.