Fish Inventory at Stones River National Battlefield

Mullen, Dennis

The purpose of this two year survey of the fish supporting habitats on or adjacent to the Stones River National Battlefield was to document the species richness of the fish communities in those habitats. The fish communities of each of the habitats (West Fork of the Stones River at McFadden’s Ford, West Fork of the Stones River at Redoubt Brannan, Lytle Creek at Fortress Rosecrans, King Pond, and an unnamed pond at Redoubt Brannan) were sampled by a combination of electrofishing, seining, and trapping, with hoop nets, once each season between October 2004 and August 2006. An Index of Biotic Integrity (IBI) based on the fish community was determined for each of the three riverine sites during August of 2005. A total of 46 species of fish (representing 73% of the species determined to potentially occur in the WFSR in this area) were documented over the course of this study and species richness estimates indicate that this survey was successful at documenting about 90% of the fish species in the area. The McFadden’s Ford site had the highest richness with 41 fish species, compared to Redoubt Brannan (33 species) and Lytle Creek (31 species) which is probably a function of its larger size (compared to Lytle Creek) and greater habitat diversity (compared to both Redoubt Brannan and Lytle Creek). Both the McFadden’s Ford and Lytle Creek sites were ranked as “Fair to Good” quality habitats by the IBI assessments and Redoubt Brannan was ranked as a “fair” quality habitat. All three sites scored low on the metric “Number of intolerant species,” primarily due to a lack of three small benthic pollution intolerant species (slender madtom, fantail darter, and speckled darter) that are present at low densities in the WSFR system, but were not present during the IBI assessments (non-benthic pollution intolerant species bigeye shiner and rockbass were present during IBI sampling and are abundant in the system). These results are consistent with the assessment of the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation that this portion of the WFSR system is impaired due to excessive siltation.

Fish Inventory at Stones River National Battlefield

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