Saving rare fish in dry summer

De reddingsoperatie is begonnen in de Verloren beek in Epe #veluwe pic.twitter.com/M0WJ6JejTA

— Martijn van der Zande (@vanderzande) July 20, 2018

This photo is about saving rare fish, threatened by a dry summer making the Verloren Beek stream in the Dutch Veluwe region dry.

Dutch NOS TV reports today on saving these threatened fish.

They write (translated):

Because of the persistent drought, there is less and less water and therefore the fish also have a hard time. More and more streams, streams and lakes are getting dry. And protected fish species are threatened with extinction. That is why the Vallei en Veluwe Water Board has started rescuing the Eurasian minnow, the brook lamprey and the bullhead in the Verloren Beek stream near Epe.

The fish are in trouble because they get isolated in the pools between dry parts of streams. “We are now focusing primarily on the Eurasian minnow”, says Elsa Boeve from Vallei and Veluwe Water Board. “Because it only occurs in two places in the Netherlands: in Limburg province and in the Veluwe, and if this population is not saved here, then it will have disappeared from the Veluwe.”

The employees of the water board put the caught fish into the Grift river. Boeve: “The water quality is the same as in the streams, so we think they will be OK and can survive, and if the water level will be higher again, then they can swim back to the streams.”

This video is called Eurasian minnow (Phoxinus phoxinus) Underwater UK.