Click the link to read the article on The Durango Herald website (Reuben M. Schafir). Here’s an excerpt:

May 12, 2024

Fish native to the Colorado River Basin evolved in a highly connected network of streams, explained CPW Aquatic Biologist Jim White. Fish will swim into smaller streams like Cherry Creek to spawn, before larvae drift back into larger bodies like the La Plata River. That interconnected network has been severed by roads that pass over culverts that were not designed with fish in mind…With $702,000 of federal funding, contractors will remove a standard 60-foot-long steel culvert pipe in Cherry Creek and replace it with a “box culvert.” The new passage will allow for a more natural stream bed and allow upstream access to about 20 miles of habitat for roundtail chub, bluehead sucker and flannelmouth sucker.