There are 3 waterbodies infested with zebra mussels in Nebraska. The Missouri River, Lewis and Clark Lake near Yankton, Which is a section of dammed up Missouri River so really doesn’t count as a separate area, and the lake at Offutt Air Force Base, which was probably infested from the same ole Missouri River that sits right next to it.
If we follow rules laid out by Williamson Only about 10 precent of species released to a new area will survive and only about 10 percent of those will cause problems, and thus be termed invasive. Zebra and quagga mussels appear to fall into this category, though the impacts, as is often the case, drop after the initial population explosion. Is this invasion really that bad?
This blog is a short argument that one of the best things that could happen to the dilapidated swill that count as waters in Nebraska is the invasion of Zebra or Quagga mussels, Dreissana sp.
Nebraska waterways are in poor shape:
Those not in the know are asking themselves, or saying out-loud, there’s water in Nebraska? Nebraska has over thirty-eight thousand kilometers of stream and rivers, and over one thousand square kilometers of lakes and ponds. This is not up there with the 685,000 square kilometers of waters in Alaska, but it’s more than Kansas, Arizona, or Colorado. The problem is these waters are about as polluted with agricultural runoff as you can imagine. Most of the problems appear to stem from is excess fertilizers put on crops.
From a 2001 EPA report on water quality:
“Historically, National Water Quality Inventories have repeatedly shown that nutrients are a major cause of ambient water quality use impairments. EPA’s 1996 National Water Quality Inventory report identifies excessive nutrients as the leading cause of impairment in lakes and the secondleading cause of impairment in rivers (behind siltation).”
Though fertilizers are not the only problems which include, sewage, oil runoff, chemical spills, and pesticides. An EPA stream quality map of Nebraska donates the pollutants that are a major problem and an N (for nutrients, that is mostly fertilizers), is placed on 12 of the 20 labeled stream systems. More than 1/2. And this is not the best way to analyze this data as several of the streams without an N designation are short and small, thus the length of streams systems with an N is much, much greater than 1/2. In 2014 Nebraska waterways were ranked the 6th worse in the nation. The list of “impaired waters” for Nebraska is long, 260 water body “segments” in one report.
The impairments range from, as mentioned already, high nutrients (mostly nitrogen and phosphorus) which cause a host of other problems, like algal blooms and subsequent die-offs that use up oxygen and then kill fish, to many others. Let me list a few of the others impairments so you have an idea of the magnitude of the problem. Atrazine, a pesticide, is found in high level in many of the major rivers, and ground and drinking water (what fun). Selenium is high in many as well, this is primarily due to agricultural run-off (from dry soil that was previously harvested typically). E. coli, from sewage waste. Chloride, from badly run sewage treatment and …more. Ugh.
If you’re in Nebraska, just look, ugh. Disgusting swill everywhere you look, with a few ponds and lakes that actually look okay. These are often in the Sandhills, away from the majority of agricultural runoff. In addition, many of the fish that inhabit the lakes are not native species. Are we then, by trying to keep Zebra mussels out, basically choosing one non-native over another? Yes.
In Zebra mussels become establish in Nebraska they will clean the water. This occurred in Lake Erie when these mussels invaded. Some of the fish species and ducks started eating the mussels, so now they are a food source, part of the food web, of the lake. These little filter feeders, guess what, filter the water. In Lake Erie visibility has increased enough to increase the growth of aquatic plants.
Non-native species = bad, yes? Well, no.
There is a growing literature of the good effects of non-native species, and the sources list at the bottom has several papers, some as far back as 2003.
The idea that all non-native, even invasive, species need to be killed off is insane. This is known, of course, in ecological research circles, but not so much to the general public which often has the idea proposed above, that non-native = bad. Williamson, book cited below, elucidated these ideas long ago. Only a small number of non-native species cause problems, and in today’s lingo only these should be called invasive. However, that terminology still causes problems, as an “invasive” species today may, in short order, become an integral party of the ecosystem tomorrow and thus should no longer be termed invasive.
At the same time as we, as a country, are polluting the hell out of our water, new aquatic species are being introduced to theses waters. One set of invaders are the Zebra and Quagga mussels, genus Dreissena, I say, let them come.
Sources and Further Reading
Goodenough AE. 2010. Are the ecological impacts of alien species misrepresented? A review of the “native good, alien bad” philosophy. Community Ecology 11: 13–21.
Simberloff D. 2003. Confronting introduced species: a form of xenophobia? Biological Invasions 5: 179–192.
USGS water area. What a long damn link.
https://www.usgs.gov/special-topic/water-science-school/science/how-wet-your-state-water-area-each-state?qt-science_center_objects=0#qt-science_center_objects
Williamson M. 1996. Biological Invasions. London: Chapman & Hall.