Big Cypress National Preserve Fish Inventory and Monitoring Data

The Big Cypress national Preserve Fish Inventory database contains records of the inventory of freshwater fishes of the Big Cypress National Preserve (BICY) conducted by the National Audubon Society's Tavernier Science Center as part of the National Park Service (NPS) Inventory and Monitoring Project. The database includes data from October 2002 through April 2004. The Big Cypress National Preserve Fish Monitoring and Assessment data collections for aquatic animals from BICY were begun in July 2004. The spreadsheet contains worksheets for Raccoon Point, L28, and Bear Island.

Although a major ecosystem of the South Florida area, the Big Cypress National Preserve (BICY), is poorly understood in biological terms. To detect changes in natural and artificial habitats resulting from Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) restoration programs, baseline data on constituent aquatic communities and their ecology are needed before and after restoration actions. Fishes and aquatic invertebrates serve as indicators of the health of these wetlands. These organisms are also important because they are major prey for many of the characteristic South Florida predatory species, especially alligators and wading birds. This project has several objectives, the foremost of which is to continue a program of aquatic study in BICY begun in 2002. Work will be performed in partnership with National Audubon Society (NAS) and the National Park Service to design and implement a spatially and temporally explicit, quantitative sampling program for aquatic animals in BICY. This program will 1) provide baseline data which may be used to track changes in hydrology as a result of CERP projects 2) document the distribution, composition, and habitat use by native and introduced aquatic animals to evaluate the effects of CERP on BICY aquatic habitats, and 3) provide ecological data for use in the ATLSS fish simulation model used to plan and evaluate restoration actions during CERP (presently, inappropriate data from the Everglades are being used in the model for cells that lie in BICY). The strategy used to accomplish these goals will be to employ techniques used by the co-principal investigators in establishing monitoring programs in the Everglades (since 1977) and the mangrove zone of Florida Bay (since 1989).