It’s a minor miracle that happens every year about this time: Driven by an urge to spawn, great schools of American shad swim from feeding grounds in the Atlantic Ocean to the Chesapeake Bay, sensing their way back to the rivers where they had been born three years earlier.
In recent years, the silvery shad that Native Americans used to teach European settlers how to fertilize crops, that helped feed George Washington’s Continental Army, and that provide food to eagles and otters, have started to disappear in alarming numbers. The disappearance has started talk of extinction, mostly because of four giant dams that block the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania, where the fish were once abundant, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Biologists say there’s one ray of hope for efforts to restore the Susquehanna’s shad — the looming expiration of operating licenses for two of the dams. Before granting a 30-year renewal, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission requires the dam operators to study the environmental effects of their facilities. Based on the findings, the commission can require that conditions be greatly improved so that more shad can swim past them.
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