Nebraskaland

NEBRASKAland April 2017

NEBRASKAland Magazine is dedicated to outstanding photography and informative writing with an engaging mix of articles and photos highlighting Nebraska’s outdoor activities, parklands, wildlife, history and people.

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APRIL 2017 • NEBRASKAland 47 matched with funds from the Nebraska Wildlife Conservation Fund and a Nebraska Environmental Trust grant to construct a building at the North Platte Hatchery to raise at-risk species. "Fish culture and propagation has been around in Nebraska for the last 150 years," said Rosenthal. "Mussel culture is relatively new and it is very exciting to be in on the cutting edge of some of the methods that are being used to culture mussels for restoration projects across the country. We have been assisting malacologists [those who study mussels] from other states by providing unique host fish, and as a result we have established working relationships, which has helped to provide avenues of information exchanged in culture techniques." Graduate students in the School of Natural Resources at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln will be conducting surveys that will help measure the success of the work, including locating, monitoring and recording how mussels are adapting, growing and, hopefully, thriving and reproducing. No one really knows what the future has in store for many mussel species in Nebraska and across the U.S., but by combining century-old fish culturing techniques with new mussel rearing capabilities, biologists are striving to increase mussel populations, while working with other states and local organizations to keep an important part of our natural fauna where it belongs: in our streams and rivers. As Sweet put it, "Mussels are the heart of our native landscape. For those concerned enough with Nebraska's fauna, mussels should be a part of the landscape now and for years to come. After all, we are primarily to blame for their demise." ■ The author would like to thank Bryan Sweet, Ted Bartels, Dean Rosenthal, Steve Schainost, and Keith Koupal for their contributions to this article. Thanks to Joe Cassidy and Josh Cloeter, Commission biologists, who worked on the propagation project and Dr. Mark Pegg at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln along with graduate student Lindsay Ohlman who will be doing studies on released mussels. Thanks also to Kristal Stoner with the Commission for her work on the grant funding to make this project possible. A glochidia's see-through shell shows inner body parts and an extended foot. Aland 47 After collecting glochidia from a female mussel, fisheries biologists Dean Rosenthal, Bryan Sweet, Josh Cloeter and Ted Bartels (left to right) count them and check their viability under a microscope.

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