© 2025
Virginia's Public Radio
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Bringing rare species back to one of the country's most ecologically diverse rivers

A hand holds a yellow mussel beside the Clinch River, where the mussel lives. Algae clings to the mussel's shell.
Roxy Todd
/
RadioIQ
In the Clinch River, ecologist Braven Beaty holds a female Cumberlandian Combshell, a type of mussel that's endangered.

Ecologist Braven Beaty stands on the bank of the Clinch River, at a section in Russell County where the Nature Conservancy has been working to restore rare species. “This is what we call a shoals, kind of this shallow habitat,” Beaty describes, as he begins wading into the water. “You see the water kind of riffling through the rock.”

The water is clear, and most of the rocks are decorated with snails, and in some of the deeper water are mussels.

“Freshwater mussels are one of the things that make the Clinch such a special river system in the U.S. It’s got one of the highest concentrations of rare species, of any river in the U.S.,” says Brad Kreps. He and Beaty both work for The Nature Conservancy.

Mussels are mollusks and live in shells. Some species in the Clinch River live 50 years. One even lives a hundred years.

Beaty wades out with an orange viewfinder, peering into the clear water. In about fifteen minutes, he’s identified a handful of different mussel species. Including two that had disappeared from this river.

“Seeing these animals here, these two species here, that weren’t here 10 years ago, is pretty amazing,” Beaty says.

And the lab that’s at the center of most of the research to restore them is in Marion.

Tim Lane holds mussels that were grown at the Aquatic Wildlife Conservation Center outside Marion. These are Appalachian Monkeyface, a species of endangered mussels that's extremely rare in the wild. Lane and his team have figured out how to grow them and they've released them into the Clinch river.
Roxy Todd
/
RadioIQ
Tim Lane holds mussels that were grown at the Aquatic Wildlife Conservation Center outside Marion. These are Appalachian Monkeyface, a species of endangered mussels that's extremely rare in the wild. Lane and his team have figured out how to grow them and they've released them into the Clinch river.

“Right now, we win little battles, but we’re losing the war,” says Tim Lane is a biologist who manages the Aquatic Wildlife Conservation Center, owned by the Department of Wildlife Resources. “And we’re losing mussels nationwide, worldwide.”

He says because of pollution and dams, most of the rivers in southwest Virginia lost their mussels.

“We’ve destroyed nature’s Brita filter, if you will. They are missing,” says Lane.

That’s because mussels filter and clean water. Lane says after a hard rain, a muddy river can clear up within days, if there’s a healthy mussel population. In others, where mussels have died off, the river will stay muddy. That affects all the animals that live in that river, as well as the drinking water for people downstream.

In this lab, they’ve been able to figure out how to grow endangered mussels and release them back into the wild.

Sometimes, when they set out to save a species, there are just a few mussels left.

“We know they’re resilient,” Lane says. “The Clinch is proof that many of these species can hold on.”

The Clinch has historically been impacted by agriculture and coal mining, but efforts to clean up the area have helped the natural ecosystem rebound.

Clear water ripples in the sun. Speckled brown, yellow and orange rocks dot the river bottom. Green trees line the edge of the Clinch River.
Roxy Todd
/
RadioIQ
The Clinch River in Russell County

Back at the Clinch, Braven Beaty points to a mussel with a yellow tag on its shell. This tag means it was one of the mussels released three years ago, from that lab in Marion.

“It would be nice if we could find the resources to do this on a much broader scale throughout the river,” Beaty says. “That’s been our challenge. Just the limited capacity we have at our hatcheries and finding the resources to step it up.”

Some are hoping outdoor tourism can help. The state recently expanded Clinch River State Park. There are picnic tables and multiple boat launches. Opportunities that could help rally more people to protect what’s left, says Kreps.

“And connecting people to the river, enjoying the river as an asset, and then learning about the river and how unique and important it is, so that hopefully over time more and more people get excited about the river,” says Kreps.

Local communities are excited for this too. The small town of Cleveland recently built a campground along the Clinch, with primitive and RV sites.

Jennifer Chumbley is a resident and former mayor of Cleveland and helped to get funding to build the campground. “You know, we’ve just got started,” Chumbley says. “We’ve worked really hard with grant moneys. And we’ve worked hard on cleaning the river and learning not to pollute for the future, and we don’t want to go back to that way of life.”

Chumbley and other residents along the Clinch are hoping more tourists will be drawn to visit one of the most ecologically unique rivers in the country.

Updated: June 26, 2024 at 4:14 PM EDT
Editor's note: The Nature Conservancy is a financial supporter of Radio IQ.
Roxy Todd is Radio IQ's New River Valley Bureau Chief.