Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - 14
CREATURE FEATURE
BY NANCY HENDERSON
PHOTOS COURTESY OF
J.R. SHUTE, CONSERVATION FISHERIES INC.
Conservation
CRUSADERS
The non-profit Conservation Fisheries Inc.
raises rare indigenous fish.
J.R. Shute still has the first aquarium he and his business partner, Pat Rakes, set up in 1986
to propagate rare Southeastern
fish once headed for extinction. While earning their graduate degrees from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville,
a professor had asked them if
they were interested in working with the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service to reintroduce a dwarf catfish called
the madtom into Abrams Creek in the Great Smoky
Mountains National Park. They jumped at the chance,
but after graduation, no other students wanted to continue the research, so they got permission to take it
with them.
"Back in the 1950s, a number of state and federal agencies decided that they wanted to do what
they thought would improve trout fishing in Abrams
Creek," says Shute, co-director of Conservation Fisheries Inc. (CFI), a Knoxville-based non-profit dedicated
to saving imperiled, non-game fish in the region's rivers, lakes and streams. "They ended up poisoning out
Abrams Creek to get rid of the 'rough' fish so the trout
would have a better chance of
survival. And it was later discovered that there were several rare fish living in there that
they didn't know about at the
time."
Snorkeling in the dark to
survey the nocturnal smoky
and yellowfin madtoms, and
collecting eggs from the wild to bring back to their new
hatchery, Shute and Rakes eventually figured out how to
raise them in captivity, which, Shute says, "turned out to
be much more difficult than we ever thought." The first
batch was released in 1986, and CFI was born.
The comeback of the madtoms is still Shute's favorite
success story. It took a long time, but by the 10th year,
the two species were showing up again in Abrams Creek
and, later, in the Tellico River.
"We were out this past year, snorkeling in one spot,
looking for smoky madtoms and we found about 85 of
them in a very short stretch of stream, which is unheard
of," says Shute. "They have done exceedingly well in
there."
Incorporated in 1992, the organization has moved
several times over the years,
doubling in size each time, and
has worked with approximately 70 species of rare fishes, including darters, chubs and logperches, some of which have
been removed from the Endangered Species List. Believed to
be the only private, non-profit
J.R. Shute
facility of its kind in the South-
"They ended up poisoning out Abrams Creek
so the trout would have a better chance of
survival. And it was later discovered that there
were several rare fish living in there ..."
14 BlueRidgeCountry.com
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Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018
Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - Intro
Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - Cover1
Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - Cover2
Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - 3
Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - 4
Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - 5
Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - 6
Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - 7
Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - 8
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Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - 12
Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - 13
Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - 14
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Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - 17
Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - 18
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Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - 20
Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - 21
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Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - 27
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Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - 29
Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - 30
Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - 31
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Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - 33
Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - 34
Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - 35
Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - 36
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Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - 48
Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - 49
Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - 50
Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - 51
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Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - 54
Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - 55
Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - 56
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Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - 62
Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - 63
Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - 64
Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - 65
Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - 66
Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - Cover3
Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - Cover4
Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - BRPG 1
Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - BRPG 2
Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - BRPG 3
Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - BRPG 4
Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - BRPG 5
Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - BRPG 6
Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - BRPG 7
Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - BRPG 8
Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - BRPG 9
Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - BRPG 10
Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - BRPG 11
Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - BRPG 12
Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - BRPG 13
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Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - BRPG 24
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