Sept. 2007 - Volume 68, Issue 9
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Encore!
More than just a curtain call, the alligator gar gets a new “release” on life in southeast Missouri.
A crisp kerplunk reverberates off the surface of Monopoly Marsh in Mingo National Wildlife Refuge.
“Did you hear that?” asks Chris Kennedy, a fisheries biologist with the Conservation Department. “That is the sound of balance being restored, and I’m proud to play a role.”
Until today, the creature making that sound—a young alligator gar—hadn’t set fin in these waters for more than 30 years. This June morning, Kennedy will introduce 300 young kerplunkers to their native dark waters.
Alligator gar were the top predators in Mingo’s swamps until about 1970, when habitat loss and wanton harvest drastically cut their numbers. In 2006, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Conservation Department approved a plan to restore this legendary leviathan to its former habitat.
“My dad used to take me fishing, and when we caught a gar he would snap its beak and throw it up on the bank to die,” Kennedy recalls. “He was told it was the right thing to do, but I remember sitting in the back of his boat, actually feeling sorry for those gar.”
Kennedy slips his hands into a fish tank in the back of the airboat, cradles a 30-inch gar, lifts it out of the tank, swings it over the side of the boat and releases the wriggling 2-pounder. Before the day is over, he will repeat this bare-handed procedure 298 more times.
About This Article
Author
A.J. HENDERSHOTT lives with his wife, Cheryl, and children, Cheyenne and Hunter, in rural Cape Girardeau County. When not hiking, hunting or sketching, he crafts wooden longbows. A.J. is an Outreach and Education supervisor with the Conservation Department and holds wetlands in high regard.
PHIL HELFRICH spends his free time looking for the place where blues, jazz and ozark streams converge. Preliminary data suggests the intersection is dependent on a change in latitude.
Photographer
Photographer DAVID STONNER, shown working on aerial photographs of the Mingo Basin in southeast Missouri, joined the Department of Conservation in May 2007. He lives in Jefferson City with his wife, Angela, and one year-old daughter, Maggie. David enjoys weekends sailing on Stockton Lake and angling for fish anywhere he can cast a dry fly.
