A view of Village Creek in Roebuck Springs, Alabama, Sept. 13, 2010

by Glynn Wilson

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has still not concluded its negotiations with the city of Birmingham for a killing 11,760 watercress darters, an endangered species protected by the Endangered Species Act, and also for some 8,900 additional darters injured when a city park manager ordered a beaver dam removed on Village Creek in Roebuck Springs two years ago.

The federal agency, which could not be reached for comment today, is seeking a civil penalty totaling $2,975,000, but apparently some of the money will go toward planting trees and enhancing the habitat running through Roebuck Golf Course, which is showing progress, according to a recent visit to the area.

Part of the agreement calls for no mowing or use of pesticides or herbicides along the creek bank, and as you can see from the video above, the banks are now grown up with sea myrtle bushes, which will provide ground cover for nesting birds such as the native yellow-crowned night herons, and food for all manner of butterflies, including the migrating monarchs which travel through Birmingham on their way to Mexico every year in October.

The Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources also has a claim against the city for $1,062,786.21 for the death of watercress darters, plus the deaths of more than two million individuals of a protected species of snail, and is contemplating a lawsuit against the city to collect that claim. No word on where that stands either, and no one with the city will comment due to the ongoing litigation.

The agency’s action stems from an incident on September 19, 2008, when a City maintenance crew removed a beaver dam from the Roebuck Springs pool in Hawkins Park. The crew also breached an underlying earthen dam that formed the spring pool where more than 20,000 of the small endangered fish lived. Breaching the dam quickly drained the spring pool and stranded and killed thousands of watercress darters among a mass of drying aquatic plants.

“The massive fish kill resulted in the loss of more than half of the largest known population of this species,” Cynthia K. Dohner, the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Southeast regional director, said at the time.

Watercress darters are listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act and are a trust resource protected by Alabama law. The only populations in the world are found in five spring pools and spring brooks in Jefferson County, Alabama, within the metropolitan area of Birmingham.

Click on the image for a larger view…

The groundsel bushes [baccharis halimifolia], also known as silverling or sea myrtle, along Village Creek in Roebuck Springs, were covered in butterflies on Monday, mainly the common buckeye [junonia coenia], in the category of eyespot patterned butterflies. It lives year-round in the American South and elsewhere from March through October along shorelines, roadsides, railroad embankments, fields and meadows and swamp edge. The newly overgrown bushes due to an agreement between the city of Birmingham and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service should make for great food for the migrating monarchs due to pass through this part of Middle Alabamaland soon.

© 2010 – 2018, Glynn Wilson. All rights reserved.