QV Creekers are Back for 2015-2016 School Year!

QV Creekers is currently beginning its 7^th year!  

Each year, a maximum of 20 students are selected from a pool of interested high school applicants ranging from 9^th - 12 grades to participate.  Approximately 60 students have completed the program since 2009.  The QV Creekers would like to thank the Little Sewickley Creek Watershed Association, Quaker Valley High School and the Creek Connections program at Allegheny College for actively sponsoring this worthwhile experience for our local young people.  

We had out first meeting for this year on October 5th 2015!  We spent the day examining changes in fish diversity upstream of the Woodland dam site.  

The Woodland dam was removed in late July 2015!  Here is what we found!

“Local Fish Species Begin to Move”- On October 5^th 2015, the QV Creekers once again joined forces with Eric Chapman (Director of Aquatic Science at the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy) to investigate whether any fish species had begun to move upstream as a result of the Woodland dam removal which occurred on July 31^st 2015.  There has only been approximately 3-4 rain events since the actual dam removal so we weren’t expecting to see an enormous change in fish diversity but we were happy to see at least several species did start to migrate upstream of where they were trapped below the dam in years past.  The group sampled in Walker Park approximately 0.5 miles and 1.0 miles upstream of the dam removal site.  Several species of fish including the Rainbow darter, Smallmouth bass, Central stoneroller and one species of Shiner (yet to be positively identified) were found in small numbers (<10) at least one or both of the upstream study sites during the survey.  Several small Brown trout fingerlings (less than 80mm in length) were also discovered at the second site which suggests that the Brown trout are still successfully reproducing in Little Sewickley Creek.  QV Creekers hope to do more fish surveys in late spring/early summer in 2016 to investigate further evidence of fish diversity changes throughout the watershed post-dam removal.