Return-path: [log in to unmask] From: [log in to unmask] Full-name: AOL News Message-ID: <[log in to unmask]> Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1999 17:16:17 EDT Subject: Mollusks Get Experimental Homestead MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Unknown (No Version) To: undisclosed-recipients:; Mollusks Get Experimental Homestead .c The Associated Press By KATHERINE RIZZO WASHINGTON (AP) -- Government biologists want to put more mussel into Muscle Shoals. They're ready to reintroduce into the famous Alabama riverbeds mollusk species washed out by reservoirs on the Ohio, Cumberland and Tennessee rivers. Building new homesteads for up to 16 species of endangered mussels may sound simple, but they're such complicated creatures that researchers spent decades figuring out how to do it. ``It's 20 years of work that I've been working with these animals to get to this point,'' said Richard Biggins, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service fish and mollusk recovery coordinator. Techniques to move mollusks to a mussel-free portion of the Tennessee River were developed by researchers at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and Tennessee Technological University, he said. At least 34 species of mussels have disappeared from Muscle Shoals, a 53-mile stretch of the Tennessee River once thought to have the world's greatest collection of freshwater mussels, he said. Dams and reservoirs built in the 1920s and 1930s wrecked mussel habitat along the Tennessee and other rivers, covering breeding grounds with 20, 30 or 40 feet of calm lake when the creatures needed two or three feet of flowing water. The cold reservoir water didn't kill the mollusks, but impeded their breeding. ``It's like putting somebody in jail where they couldn't reproduce but could live long lives,'' Biggins said. Some mussels lived 100 years, giving the false impression of survival after the damming of the rivers. A section of Muscle Shoals in Alabama's Colbert and Lauderdale counties, selected as the new home, was part of the historical range of the different mussel species but not currently home to any of them. That should make it easier to determine the success of the human-assisted colonization. AP-NY-06-02-99 1715EDT Copyright 1998 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without prior written authority of The Associated Press. To edit your profile, go to keyword <A HREF="aol://1722:NewsProfiles">NewsProfiles </A>. For all of today's news, go to keyword <A HREF="aol://1722:News">News</A>.