Fishing News
Fish might be protected
By Tom Jackson King
Arizona may soon be getting one more fish species on the federal Endangered Species List and a plan to set-aside "critical habitat" along creeks and streams will directly affect Graham and Greenlee counties.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed Aug. 8 to list the Gila chub, a small minnow, as endangered, the most serious level of ESA listing possible. The agency also proposes to designate critical habitat along 208 miles of streams and headwaters in Arizona and New Mexico.
According to Debra Bills, supervisory biologist with the Arizona Ecological Services Field Office of USFWS, the following streams and creeks contain some of the Gila chub populations and would be a part of the critical habitat:
- Bonita Creek from the Safford pipeline diversion upstream to the headwaters.
- Eagle Creek and East Eagle Creek.
- Blue River from its confluence with the San Carlos to its headwaters.
- Mineral Creek.
- Dixie Creek, the right and left fork.
- Harden Cienega Creek.
Bills said the six-inch long minnow is found in only 31 isolated and vulnerable populations scattered about southeastern Arizona, southwestern New Mexico and the Sonora province of Mexico. She said the listing of the species and the future designation of critical habitat will not block cattle-grazing on federal lands nor will it require killing off of non-native sports fish that now reside in the streams, creeks and rivers.
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