Click the link to read the article on The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel website (Nathan Deal). Here’s an excerpt:
Students in Palisade High School’s fish hatchery program released the fish at Riverbend Park on Wednesday, the culmination of a full school year of taking care of the fish until they were ready to live in the river.
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Some students, as well as Palisade teacher and fish hatchery coordinator Patrick Steele, even planted farewell kisses on some of the Razorback Suckers before releasing them into their permanent home…
At the beginning of the school year, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Fish Culturist Mike Gross, also the information and education coordinator with Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program, brings the razorback suckers to the school, where students care for the fish under Steele’s guidance…
Because razorback suckers are on the Endangered Species List, by law, the Colorado River District and the Upper Colorado River District have to allow a certain amount of water to flow through the river in order to create enough space for these fish to live in a new habitat safely.
“That helps water flow downriver, keeping it out of reservoirs and things like that, being able to then keep our canals full to irrigate and so forth,” Steele said. “It really is a great partnership between our U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the fish recovery program they run, our irrigation district, our cultural groups and farmers. It’s pretty neat that all those entities need to get together to keep these endangered species rolling and fish flowing through our river.”