Natural rehabilitation of stream fish populations in an Illinois catchment

Abstract

SUMMARY An extreme drought in 1988 dried first‐ and second‐order streams in the Salt Fork basin (1190 km2) in east‐central Illinois. This event provided a natural experiment in which the natural rehabilitation of fish populations could be measured in the whole catchment following resumption of stream flows. Fish were sampled before, during, and after the drought (1987–1990) throughout the basin (eighty‐eight samples in July‐September) using methods of known efficiency. Analyses of covariance [using log (distance from source) as the covariate] indicated no significant differences (P>0.2) of biomass or species richness between pre‐drought and post‐drought samples from sites desiccated during 1988 or among pre‐drought, drought, and post‐drought years among samples from perennial Streams. Therefore, recovery occurred within 1 year, but there was no indication of increased biomass or species richness in permanent streams resulting from fish moving down or remaining downstream during the drought. Fish biomass per unit length of stream segment was modelled as a power function of distance of the segment from the source of each stream to estimate changes in biomass of the whole catchment. Before and subsequent to the drought, 90.0t of fish occupied the total 729km of stream length in the basin, compared with 74.61 in the drought year. Although, the drought affected 80% of total stream length, fish biomass was reduced by only 17% in the drought year because only the lower‐order streams were desiccated and their normal biomass density was lower than in perennial streams. In conclusion, it is expected that no expenditure on stocking fish would be necessary in restoration projects on these lower‐order, surface runoff streams, providing that they are connected to permanently flowing streams that contain a full complement of species.