Carmine shiner (Notropis percobromus) COSEWIC assessment and status report: chapter 12

Existing Protection or Other Status Designations

When the Manitoba population of carmine shiner, formerly called rosyface shiner, was first assessed by COSEWIC in 1994, the species had only been reported from the Whitemouth River (Houston 1996). Given its limited distribution and an apparent geographical separation of about 900 km from the nearest other Canadian populations in Ontario and Quebec, COSEWIC designated the Manitoba population as “vulnerable”, now “special concern”. In 2001, COSEWIC used the existing report to reassess the population, and uplisted its status to “Threatened”. The Manitoba population was subsequently listed as such under Schedule I of the Species at Risk Act (SARA) on 5 June 2003.

Listing under SARA confers protection on the Manitoba population of carmine shiners by prohibiting their harvest and sale. The carmine shiner is not otherwise protected in Manitoba except by general provisions in the habitat sections of the Fisheries Act, and incidentally by several provincial reserves and parks discussed above. The Manitoba Conservation Data Centre has assigned it a provincial rank of S2, on the basis that the species is rare in the province (6 to 20 occurrences) and may be vulnerable to extirpation, with a global rank of G5 that indicates the species is widespread, abundant, and secure elsewhere. The Manitoba Endangered Species Advisory Committee, as of February 2003, listed the carmine shiner as threatened (Stewart and Watkinson 2004). The Manitoba Endangered Species Act does not mandate habitat protection for listed species, so protection of carmine shiner habitat is at the government’s discretion.

 

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