lake pedder
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2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 102-118
Author(s):  
Rick De Vos

In  1972  Lake  Pedder  in  south-west  Tasmania  was  submerged  under  15  metres  of  water  as  a  result  of  the  Tasmanian  State  Government’s  Middle  Gordon  Hydro-electric  Power  Scheme.  The  lake  was  subsumed  into  a  much  larger  artificial  impoundment  formed  by  three  rockfill  dams,  making  it  the  largest  freshwater  lake  in  Australia.  The  Tasmanian  government  transferred  the  name  Lake  Pedder  to  the  new  impoundment.  Three  species  endemic  to  the  original  Lake  Pedder  were  recorded  as  extinct  as  a  consequence  of  the  lake’s  flooding.    The  Lake  Pedder  planarian,  a  species  of  carnivorous  flatworm,  the  Lake  Pedder  earthworm,  and  the  Pedder  galaxias,  a  small  freshwater  fish,  disappeared  from  the  lake  area  after  the  inundation  of  this  unique  habitat,  the  site  of  a  number  of  ecologically  valuable  faunal  communities.  The  divergent  fates  of  these  animals,  their  status  as  lost  species  and  their  significance  as  creatures  both  meaningful  and  meaning-making,  marks  out  an  extinction  matrix  suggesting  that  the  absence  of  specific  animals  and  specific  experiences  and  ways  of  life  matter  more  than  others,  that  specific  deaths  can  be  more  readily  incorporated  into  stories  of  loss  and  restoration,  and  that  the  perceived  malleability  of  habitats  invariably  involves  death  inscribed  as  sacrifice  or  justifiable  casualties.  This  paper  seeks  to  retrieve  some  of  the  perspectives  and  experiences  forgotten  or  written  over  in  the  lake’s  stories  of  flooding  and  redemption.   


2013 ◽  
Vol 64 (9) ◽  
pp. 864 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Chilcott ◽  
Rob Freeman ◽  
Peter E. Davies ◽  
David A. Crook ◽  
Wayne Fulton ◽  
...  

The Pedder galaxias (Galaxias pedderensis) from Lake Pedder, Tasmania, Australia, is one of the world’s most threatened freshwater fish. The flooding of Lake Pedder in 1972 for hydroelectric power generation caused a major change to the ecosystem that initiated an irreversible decline in the Pedder galaxias within its natural range. The flooding inundated another headwater catchment and native and introduced fish from this catchment colonised the impoundment. Numbers of the Pedder galaxias declined markedly as the impoundment matured and as colonising fish proliferated. Surveys in the 1980s confirmed the parlous state of the population, highlighting the need for conservation intervention. Several urgent conservation actions were undertaken to save the species from extinction. Translocation was considered the most important recovery action, given the critically low numbers in the wild. The species is now extinct from its natural range and is known from only two translocated populations. The conservation program, and specifically the translocation recovery action, saved the Pedder galaxias from extinction. The conservation management was extremely challenging since rapidly declining fish numbers needed timely and critical decisions to underpin the future of the fish. Recommendations are provided arising from this case study to guide conservation of freshwater fish in similar circumstances.


Zootaxa ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 3406 (1) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
GEORGE D. F. WILSON ◽  
A. W. OSBORN ◽  
G. N. R. FORTEATH

The Tasmanian lakes Pedder and Edgar were inundated in 1972 to create a reservoir to feed into a hydroelectric powerscheme, despite biologists highlighting the uniqueness of the fauna therein. This fauna included undescribed species ofphreatoicidean isopods, which were noted in several subsequent publications but not formally described. In 2010, the orig-inal beds of these two lakes were revisited and successfully sampled for these isopods as part of a program to assess theconservation status of the unique fauna of this large freshwater body. These two previously reported species of phreatoi-cidean are both new to science, distinct from each other and belong to the genus Colubotelson Nicholls, so we providedescriptions and illustrations of these species to assist their identification by other biologists. The two species are easilyidentified by the shape of the pleotelson and setation of the head, although they are separated by considerably more thantwo hundred specific differences. C. pedderensis sp. nov. was collected only from the now deeply submerged bed of theoriginal Lake Pedder, whereas C. edgarensis sp. nov. may be found more widely in the current extent of Lake Pedder,owing to its appearance in previously collected samples from the original Lake Pedder as well as in the now drowned areaof Lake Edgar. These results bring the known diversity of the family Phreatoicidae in Tasmania to 26 described species,including 16 in the genus Colubotelson. The persistence of phreatoicids in Lake Pedder, despite the extensive changes to its ecosystem, suggests that these two species are more resilient than was suspected.


2008 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 77-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Courtenay N Smithers ◽  
George Nigel Forteath ◽  
Andrew Osborn

2000 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 21
Author(s):  
By Dr K. Crowley
Keyword(s):  

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