Risk, Reward, Recovery

By Erica Place on September 19, 2024 in Blog

Small and unassuming, the Topeka shiner (Notropis topeka) might not immediately catch your eye. Outside of late summer when the male’s tiny fins and abdomens take on a reddish hue to attract mates, the two-inch minnow isn’t particularly colorful. Their stout, silvery-olive bodies are accented only by a thin line down their sides and a spot at the base of their tail. Especially when you consider there are 147 other fish species (50 of which are in the minnow family) swimming in Iowa waters, Topeka shiners don’t exactly stand out. It would be easy to overlook the specific needs of such a little fish, which is exactly how they almost disappeared from their native range across the Great Plains.

Though the Topeka shiner was first described in 1884, very little was known about its habits, life cycle or ecological requirements for the more than century that followed. It was assumed they could be found in any flowing water body, so when surveys done across the Midwest in the 1980s and 1990s showed really low numbers, alarm bells sounded. Iowa State University’s Dr. Bruce Menzel found Topeka shiners in only 66 of the 614 Iowa locations sampled. They were seemingly vanishing across their range — populations were so small and segmented that the fish was listed as federally endangered in 1998. Where could they have gone? What could be done?

In Iowa, it seemed the fish was now likely living only in the North Raccoon River and its tributaries as well as portions of the Boone, Rock and Little Rock Rivers. Was it pollution? Problems with water levels, dissolved oxygen or temperature? No one was sure, but the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) thought that Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation — already working in the North Raccoon River watershed on water quality projects — was well positioned to respond.

A partnership formed in the early 2000s and a plan to restore Topeka shiner habitat started to take shape. The USFWS could provide funding, Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation could provide a few more boots on the ground. The section of the North Raccoon River falling within Greene, Calhoun and Sac counties was the highest priority. But what exactly would work look like?

“We knew something needed to be done, but we didn’t have a real clear idea how to accomplish it,” remembers INHF President Joe McGovern, who at the time was land stewardship director. “Topeka shiners had been found in clear, first-order streams in Missouri and Kansas. It was logical to think that must be what they needed.”

Action steps centered on a tributary of the North Racoon River, Buttrick Creek, just east of Jefferson in Greene County. It was thought that Topeka shiners needed pockets of slower water for reproduction and feeding, so preliminary efforts included diverting water with field stone, excavating deeper pools and other attempts to create in-channel habitat. But the team would soon discover the solution lay completely outside of the creeks when they investigated oxbows on adjacent property.

Oxbows are U-shaped pools formed by the natural meanderings of a river or stream. Over time, the curves become so exaggerated that the flowing water forges a new path, bypassing the bend and cutting it off from the main channel. The resulting pool is elevated above the rest of the water table (often referred to as “perched”) and might only reconnect with the main channel during high water events. They’re a special type of wetland relied upon by many wildlife species including, as it turns out, Topeka shiners. This off-channel habitat — providing calmer water and safety from predators — was becoming scarcer as people intentionally altered and straightened streams and rivers. Whatever oxbows remained were filled with silt from erosion.

The good news was that Topeka shiners weren’t as sensitive to water quality as previously thought. While they can be found in clear prairie streams, they can also tolerate surprisingly low dissolved oxygen levels and higher temperatures, consistent with what you’d expect in the still, shallow waters of an oxbow. Solving this habitat problem got a little more straightforward — we just needed to revive the oxbows.

The revelation meant that even though we no longer needed to worry about complicated, engineered alterations to the creek, the restoration work would need to more deeply involve private landowners whose properties held the precious oxbows. Excavation to remove the silt was simple and would come at no cost to the landowner, but Joe and others worried that few people would have interest in signing up to help an endangered species on their property.

“We thought people might be concerned that if we created habitat and the Topeka shiner showed up, that they would lose the ability to do what they wanted with the land,” says Joe.

But that just wasn’t the case. The first three landowners contacted by Wayne Fischer, who was a USFWS private lands biologist at the time, jumped on board.

“They immediately said ‘yes,’” recalls Joe. “They wanted to help be part of Topeka shiner recovery.”

Kraig McPeek, who took over for Wayne and is now a USFWS Field Office Supervisor, remembers how the stars seemingly aligned to get this idea off the ground.

“This was so organic and ground up,” says Kraig. “We found local champions in Caroline Schwartz, Greene County’s Engineer, and Kurt Goetch, the Pheasants Forever Biologist out of Jefferson. People knew and trusted Caroline and Kurt, and after several key landowners who the rest of the community looked up to agreed to sign on, the projects just happened like dominoes.”

The idea was that these oxbows would serve as demonstration sites, modeling how species recovery and private land ownership can go hand in hand. Landowners signed a 10-year agreement that the oxbow would remain intact on the property, giving Topeka shiners a chance to thrive. In less than a decade, USFWS and INHF restored 20 oxbows in the region. The projects were the first of their kind in the nation and yielded impressive results.

^{Oxbow restoration at Buttrick Creek in 2002, two months after restoration and again in 2024.}

Kraig described those 20 oxbow sites as ‘unable to support aquatic life’ prior to restoration. But surveys done later showed they all were providing habitat to a variety of wildlife species like amphibians, reptiles, fish and more.

“Researchers found at least one Topeka shiner in 9 of 10 restored oxbows, including 354 Topeka shiners in one oxbow alone,” remembers Kraig.

The model was confirmed: restore the oxbows, and the Topeka shiner will rebound. Oxbow restoration quickly lost its novelty and became a standard practice adopted by conservation organizations across the country.

“As restoration work grew, so did INHF, and we started overseeing more restoration projects,” says Erin Van Waus, INHF’s Conservation Easement Director.

Erin, who in 2013 became the INHF point person for Topeka shiner projects, remembers seining (a method of surveying with nets) for the minnows as an INHF intern.

“It was a really cool opportunity to see the different angles of research,” Erin says. “It helped me understand why we should take notice of and care about the little things… why we should care about this tiny minnow. To have that experience as I was beginning my career in conservation was invaluable.”

Continuing to collaborate with USFWS as part of their now robust Fish and Wildlife Partners Program, Erin helped support the work of other partners like The Nature Conservancy, Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) by administering grant funding from USFWS. Since 2013, INHF has helped administer nearly $70,000 in grants for habitat restoration projects in the North Raccoon and Boone River watersheds.   

Today, Topeka shiner populations have shown enough growth that their status as federally endangered is being reevaluated.

“This is arguably one of the most successful accounts of species recovery in the country,” Kraig reflects.

The tiny minnow’s success story holds many lessons. One, the value in being willing to try new things, especially when the stakes are high. To never discount the importance of collaboration or the human element of a project and to always seek unlikely partners. That despite our backgrounds and priorities, we all still have common ground. That private land conservation not only can happen but is crucial in the protection of the species who also call Iowa home. That being listed as federally endangered doesn’t have to be a death sentence; it might initially be bad news and a tough road, but it opens doors to rally together and change the trajectory.

“We don’t often get to contemplate reversing a decision to list a species as federally endangered,” says Kraig. “Once you’ve reached that point — where systems are so altered that something is hanging in the balance — it usually takes a long time to correct it, if you even can. This small minnow’s success story hinged on being embraced by local landowners, conservation organizations and others in a way that never felt negative. It wasn’t a regulatory burden, but an opportunity to place conservation into a working landscape so it could be a landscape that also worked. Like with the preservation of any species or habitat, it just wouldn’t have been possible without private landowners.”

Our work to protect things on the brink of disappearance continues. Since the Topeka shiner kicked off our partnership more than 25 years ago, INHF has also worked with USFWS to research the presence of the Iowa Pleistocene snail (federally endangered) and timber rattlesnake (Iowa species of greatest conservation need) and to restore habitat for the rusty patched bumble bee (federally endangered). We embarked on a decades-long initiative with MidAmerican Energy to protect critical habitat for federally endangered Indiana bats and a successful statewide volunteer project to gather valuable acoustic data on all of Iowa’s bat species. Through nine grants from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, we’ve restored or improved more than 36,000 acres of habitat across Iowa for monarch butterflies and other struggling pollinators. And we continually seek opportunities to do what we were founded to do: preserve and restore Iowa’s dwindling habitats like oak savanna, tallgrass prairie or wetland complexes, all of which support a multitude of plant and animal species in need of refuge. The list goes on.

“While there are many plants, animals and habitats we should safeguard now before they’re considered endangered or become absent from our landscape, the Topeka shiner is a good reminder that it’s not too late to turn something around,” says Joe. “It’s possible, as long as we all work together.”