The dead fish have been cleaned up in the Baker Wetlands, but allegations about the kill continue to thrive.

Roger Boyd, a Baker University biology professor who manages the wetlands south of town — where about 270 fish died recently — said a wetlands advocate who was angry about the fish kill was uninformed and hiding his true agenda.

The advocate — Don Phipps, a coordinator for Save the Wetlands, a group fighting a plan to put a highway through the wetlands — said his concern about the fish wasn’t a publicity stunt.

The fish died sometime in the last month in a canal near 31st Street and Haskell Avenue, apparently after a crew from a rural water district removed a nearby beaver dam to drain the canal and repair a leaking water line.

Boyd on Tuesday took a wildlife-management class to the scene of the kill. Class members chopped through ice to remove all but three of the dead fish, which Boyd described as mostly large carp.

Boyd said the fish would repopulate and the drainage won’t have a lasting effect on the wetlands’ ecosystem. He questioned why Phipps was raising a stink about the issue.

“I think what that indicates is that he has an agenda other than just the protection of the fish — that is, come up with some reason to claim that Baker doesn’t know what they’re doing,” Boyd said.

From left, Jerry Baker, Matt Sexson, Roger Boyd and Jason Patty bury fish that died near in the Baker Wetlands near 31st Street and Haskell Avenue. Boyd, who is a biology professor at Baker University and manages the wetlands, brought his students to the wetlands Tuesday to clean up after a fish kill.

“If he was more familiar with the ecology of the wetlands, he’d realize that the wetlands dry up all the time,” Boyd said.

Phipps, a small-business owner, said it was true his group was unhappy with Baker because the school agreed to give the Kansas Department of Transportation access through the Wetlands to complete the South Lawrence Trafficway. But he said his concern about the fish was genuine because he considered the area a nature preserve.

“Anytime we see dead wildlife in a nature preserve, it should raise questions in the public’s mind about what is happening and why these wildlife are dying,” he said. “I wouldn’t say we really have an agenda, per se. My issue was just as a concerned citizen.”

Phipps said his group was assembling a team of scientists to test the water in the canal for pollution.

Also, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment is looking into the kill, spokeswoman Sharon Watson said. She said it would be hard for the department’s staff to reach a conclusion because the fish died weeks ago.