SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2000

Globe/Vince Rosati

Chris Barnhart, a biology professor at Missouri State University of Springfield, checks a Neosho mucket mussel for its gender Friday as one of his graduate students takes note. Barnhart and his students assisted in moving some of the mussels out of harm’s way, a planned bridge project at Redings Mill on Shoal Creek.

A bridge to safety
Rare mussel population helped out of harm’s way

By Andy Ostmeyer
Globe Staff Writer

Divers and others worked Friday to rescue a rare mussel that plays a key role in the ecosystem but now lies in the path of development.

Gene Gardner, who works for the Missouri Department of Transportation’s design/environmental section, and Andy Roberts, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, donned wet suits on a chilly fall morning to scour a mussel bed in Shoal Creek for the Neosho mucket and its freshwater relatives.

The mussels were moved several hundred yards upstream and out of the path of the proposed Redings Mill bridge on Highway 86. Work on the bridge, which will be built just downstream from the existing bridge, could begin in early 2001, said Wendy Brunner-Lewis, public affairs specialist with the Missouri Department of Transportation. “We want to move them where they can be in their natural environment again,” she said. “We don’t want to crush the bed.”

Chris Barnhart, an associate professor of biology at Missouri State University, and a group of his students arrived in the afternoon to help with the relocation.

As many as a dozen species may live in the mussel bed, but one that concerns biologists the most is the smooth-shelled Neosho mucket. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is investigating the species for listing as threatened or endangered, Roberts said. The Neosho mucket is limited to parts of the Spring and Neosho rivers, including tributaries such as Shoal Creek and the North Fork of Spring River.

It also is found in Elk River but is “barely hanging on,” Barnhart said. “The range for this species is very narrow.”

And, the range is tightening. The Neosho mucket is on the decline throughout its range, these experts say. The Neosho mucket mussel is listed as a “species of conservation concern” by the Missouri Department of Conservation, but it is not an official endangered species in the state.

The mussel has been listed by Kansas officials as endangered, said David Edds, an associate professor of biology at Emporia (Kan.) State University. The mussel also is considered endangered in Oklahoma.

These experts say mussels such as the Neosho mucket play an important role in aquatic ecosystems. Not only are they a food source for fish, turtles, muskrats, raccoons, otters and other species, but they act as water filters. The mussels feed on algae and plankton, leaf litter and other suspended particles, and by doing so they cleanse the stream.

According to Edds, a square meter of mussels can filter 123 liters of water, and anywhere from 10 percent to as much as 100 percent of the water in a stream can be filtered in a day by that stream’s mussel community. “They definitely clarify the water,” Barnhart said.

They also help stabilize river and stream bottoms, but they are even more useful in another role, Barnhart said. “Perhaps their greatest utility is as an indicator organism,” he said. Neosho muckets and their relatives are sensitive to environmental changes. That includes channelization and gravel mining, he said. And because of their role as a filter, their disappearance can act as a warning when pollution threatens water quality.

Because they need native species such as bass to propagate, the mussel populations are affected by such problems as the introduction of exotic or non-native species and overfishing, and again may provide warning of problems.

According to Barnhart, each of these issues may be playing a role in the decline of the Neosho mucket.

All content ©2000 The Joplin Globe and may not be reproduced without permission.