Bob Arter paused his conversation, raised his camera with purpose and pointed it at a pair of cormorant birds searching for two bright orange goldfish.
As the birds emerged from the water, the 78-year-old rookie bird-watcher looked on in awe as they swallowed their lunch whole.
“He’s like an underwater submarine,” Arter said, holding down the camera’s shutter button.
Arter, enjoying a walk with his wife, Kay, and golden retriever, Sunset, is one of hundreds who have swarmed to the Henderson master planned-community known as Cadence to see the massive amounts of goldfish. At the neighborhood Central Park, a few abandoned goldfish have colonized the manmade pond, establishing a population of hundreds that have grown, in some cases, to the size of a smartphone.
It’s been a problem for a year or so — a thoughtless release of a pet has morphed into a serious environmental hazard.
Cheryl Gowan, vice president of the Cadence HOA board of directors, said the goldfish are now a seasonal problem. Without draining the lake, which the HOA is against because of water waste, no lasting solutions exist, she said.
“There’s no quick fix,” Gowan told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “Even if we went out there all day, every day, we would still not be able to get every single last fish out.”
Could they spread to Lake Mead?
The news of goldfish prey has spread among predatory birds, attracting some frequent flyer cormorants and ospreys that previously would not have stopped there.
And it spread fast: Central Park is only 3½ miles from the Henderson Bird Viewing Preserve and located in the Pacific Migratory Flyway, the aerial highway for migratory birds that travel between Alaska and South America.
“It’s the proverbial, ‘If you build it, they will come,’” said Nevada Department of Wildlife spokesman Doug Nielsen. “The goldfish are an attractive nuisance for predator birds.”
The pond, filled with reclaimed water, is lined, not connected to any other waterway and privately owned.
That means it’s not under the jurisdiction of state wildlife officials, Nielsen said. Officials do fear, however, that through the birds, goldfish or their eggs could make their way into the nearby Las Vegas Wash, the 12-mile-long urban river that carries millions of gallons of runoff and treated wastewater into Lake Mead every day.
The phenomenon isn’t all that far-fetched: In 2013, headlines marveled at a 4-pound goldfish found in Lake Tahoe. In 2019, the state wildlife department applied pesticides to the Cold Creek fishing ponds to eliminate goldfish and minnows.
Invasive crayfish took over Lake Harriet in Spring Mountain Ranch before the department decided to drain it. The dumped crayfish were endangering the Pahrump poolfish that almost went extinct until the department intervened.
The Moapa dace, an endangered fish on the Muddy River, faced a similar fate when invasive blue tilapia were eating them.
“That fish you released might be happy, but what about the fish that it’s displacing?” Nielsen said. “The changes to the habitat and the ecosystem don’t stop.”
How to properly surrender fish friends
Nielsen said dumping any pet into the wilderness is never the correct method.
To minimize harm to the environment, it’s always best to attempt to return the fish, find a rescue or give the fish away, he said. Euthanasia is even better than disrupting fragile acquatic ecosystems.
“Just turning your fish loose isn’t the answer to not wanting them anymore,” Nielsen said.
Faced with a new issue and more responsibility for the park groundskeeper who must fish out goldfish and relocate them, the HOA asks that the public doesn’t make the problem worse, said Gowan, the vice president.
“Don’t interfere, and please don’t feed the goldfish that are already there,” Gowan said. “Let nature do its thing.”
Contact Alan Halaly at ahalaly@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AlanHalaly on X.
