Imperiled fish listed as endangered species

Federal regulators are giving new protections to a rare fish species found in West Virginia and Virginia.

In a Federal Register notice published Wednesday, the Interior Department’s Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) said that the candy darter, which has lost about half of its range, warrants protection as an endangered species.

The fish is native to hundreds of miles of streams in the Kanawha River basin in West Virginia and Virginia. But it’s no longer present in about half of its historic range, due mainly to hybridization, or breeding, with another species that was introduced due to fish stocking.

{mosads}“Darters are an integral part of Eastern freshwater stream environments and help other wildlife by transporting freshwater mussel larvae and becoming food for larger species. Many darter species require clean waters, making them a useful biological indicator of stream health,” the FWS said in a statement.

The Center for Biological Diversity, which sued in 2015 to compel the FWS to formally consider protections for the darter, cheered the move.

“Nothing’s sweeter than imperiled animals finally getting help to avoid extinction, so we celebrate the candy darter receiving the Endangered Species Act’s lifesaving protections,” Tierra Curry, a senior scientist at the group, said in a statement.

“These colorful fish have disappeared from so many streams, but there’s still time to save them.”

The FWS also proposed to designate certain streams as “critical habitat” for the fish, which will protect them from certain harm in those areas.

The agency had initially proposed to designate the fish as a threatened species, which would have afforded it a lower level of protection. But data that officials reviewed since the October 2017 proposal caused them to reevaluate.

The listing decision is a contrast with other Trump administration actions related to the Endangered Species Act. The FWS is currently working to change regulations to make it harder to list some species and to protect species’ habitats.

The candy darter is only the eighth species to get Endangered Species Act protection under the Trump administration.