A Strategic Conservation Plan for Threatened and Endangered Mussel Species of the Gulf Coast Prairie Region

Freshwater mussels (family: Unionidae) are extremely threatened throughout their range in southern rivers. Freshwater mussels provide valuable ecosystem services and are sensitive to habitat degradation making them an important indicator of environmental conditions of fluvial habitats. Thus, these animals are a focus of the Gulf Coast Prairie Landscape Conservation Cooperative’s (GCP LCC) conservation efforts. Most of the GCP LCC area is in eastern Texas, central Oklahoma, and southern Louisiana, which contains numerous threatened and endangered freshwater mussel species, including endemic Quadrula species. The goal of this project is to combine current information from literature with expert knowledge to support the development of a conservation plan for mussel species of greatest conservation need with an emphasis on Quadrula species in the region. Public awareness of threats to freshwater mussels must be increased because mussels are not well understood by the general public including their values to people and river ecosystems. Our results showed that many focal species lacked basic life history information and that comprehensive information on threats to mussels throughout the region was not available. The lack of widely available and detailed information for many mussel species must be rectified to ensure their future conservation.