May Meeting: May 16, 2023
The Champaign Aquarium Fish Enthusiasts meeting will be one week later this month in order to accommodate our speaker.
CAFE Meeting: Tuesday, May 16, 2023, at 1125 Plant Sciences Laboratory, 1201 S. Dorner Drive Urbana, IL 61801. Doors open at 6:45 p.m. and will remain open until 7:00. Enter through the eastern most door on the north side of the building. Meeting starts at 7:00 p.m.
Park in the lot on the north side of the building. It is free during evenings. The metered parking on the street are not free.
Program: Jeremy Tiemann from the Illinois Natural History Survey will present The Vermilion River — from species reintroductions to dam removal.
The Vermilion River basin remains one of the highest quality and biodiverse stream systems in Illinois with >100 species of fishes and nearly 50 species of freshwater mussels. Although the watershed is primarily agriculture and several anthropogenic disturbances have occurred in the basin, most stream reaches have largely intact riparian zones and sand, gravel, and cobble substrates. Several restoration projects are occurring in the basin, and in this presentation, I will discuss two actively occurring projects aimed at enhancing fish and freshwater mussel assemblages. The first project will reflect how a salvage project in Pennsylvania provided an opportunity to translocate two federally-endangered species back into Illinois. The second project will discuss two recent dam removals that occurred in the basin and how these dams appear to have affected fish mussel populations, including the discovery of two fish species that had never been documented in Illinois before.