William T. Russ

The New River crayfish, (Cambarus chasmodactylus), was described in 1966 from the East Fork of the Greenbrier River, West Virginia, and historically occurred throughout the New River Basin from the Greenbrier River sub-basin in West Virginia, upstream through Virginia, and into the headwaters of the South Fork New River in North Carolina. The New River crayfish was part of a federal listing species petition in 2010 and it is currently being evaluated for listing as either threatened or endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under the Endangered Species Act. In order to understand...

The Grandfather Mountain crayfish (Cambarus eeseeohensis) was described in 2005 from the Linville River in western North Carolina and considered to be endemic to the mainstem Linville River upstream of Linville Falls. Because of its limited distribution and the presence of non-native crayfish in the Linville River watershed, this species was considered imperiled. However, there has been limited survey effort for Grandfather Mountain crayfish and therefore the extent and nature of threats to persistence of the species were mostly unknown. We conducted surveys (n = 41) in 2011 throughout the...