Written By
Dunkard Creek flows through Greene County, Pennsylvania and Monongalia County, West Virginia, meandering through a rural watershed and eventually flowing into the Monongahela River. This creek has been home to diverse fish species, crayfish, aquatic salamanders like mudpuppies and hellbenders, and over a dozen species of freshwater mussels.
In late summer 2009, an ichthyotoxin (a toxin poisonous to fish) produced from high concentrations of dissolved materials and golden algae killed tens of thousands of fish and other aquatic animals in the creek. Conservation efforts focused on addressing the ichthyotoxin, and along with natural recovery, the water quality improved.
Some fish species were stocked back into the creek and othersreturned on their own. Bringing back the mussels has been a longer and more complex story because of the mussels鈥� unique life history.
Take the pistolgrip mussel, for example. In Pennsylvania, it鈥檚 currently listed as state endangered and it's regionally rare. Individuals can live more than 70 years, but only about 1% survive to adulthood in the wild. In addition to low survivorship, mussels need to attach to specific host fish to transform between life stages, making rebuilding populations a challenge in a healing ecosystem. Clearly, these mussels needed assistance in making their return to Dunkard Creek. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and state agencies from West Virginia and Pennsylvania have been there to help.
Pistolgrip mussels. (Photo credit: Andrew Phipps/USFWS)
Freshwater mussels play an incredibly important role in aquatic systems, as part of the food web and as nature鈥檚 water filter. Mussels pull water from rivers and streams through their bodies to filter and collect their food, cleaning the water in the process. A single, small mussel about the size of a quarter can filter 1-3 liters of water per hour. Healthy mussel populations provide an incredibly efficient way to clean sediment, excess nutrients, algae, and bacteria from our waters. Whatever the mussels don鈥檛 use as food is deposited along the stream bottom, and this provides a food source for macroinvertabrates, which in turn benefit the food chain up to recreational fisheries like smallmouth bass and trout.
Fatmucket mussels. (Photo credit: Andrew Phipps/USFWS)
In addition, some of the mussel species the agencies have been working to restore are state listed as endangered, and Dunkard Creek was the only stream in the Monongahela drainage where some of these species had been found. After the event of 2009, partners worked to reestablish populations of these mussels in Dunkard Creek because it provided habitat for them in the past and would be the best place to rebuild the mussel populations.
The Service worked with state agencies to restock mussels in Dunkard Creek, as well as in other places in the Ohio and Allegheny River watersheds. In July 2025, the Service鈥檚 White Sulphur Springs National Fish Hatchery and partners at Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission successfully stocked 10,375 juvenile fatmucket mussels, marking the final stocking event of a 10-year project. Through the course of the project, the partnership released over 31,000 individuals of six species, including the largest release ever (10,200 individuals!) of pistolgrip.
Partners preparing to release mussels. (Photo credit: Andrew Phipps/USFWS)
To mark the final stocking event, partners and special guests were invited to join in the celebration - taking the project full circle from the die-off of aquatic life in Dunkard Creek to thriving fish and rebuilding mussel populations. This event was also a celebration of the collaborations and partnerships it took to accomplish the mussel stocking. The Service is dedicated to working with states and partners to achieve conservation of aquatic species for the benefit of the American people.
Staff from the Service鈥檚 White Sulphur Springs National Fish Hatchery, PA Department of Environmental Protection, and PA Fish and Boat Commission preparing to release mussels. (Photo credit: Andrew Phipps/USFWS)
Written By
