Click the link to read the article on the Glenwood Springs Post Independent website (Ali Longwell). Here’s an excerpt:
December 20, 2024
For nearly three decades, Colorado and other Western states have been working to recover several species of endangered fish in the Colorado and San Juan river basins. Congress last week approved a bill that will renew the program’s federal funding for seven more years. The bill was included in the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act, which is heading to President Joe Biden’s desk. Sens. John Hickenlooper, D-Colo., and Mitt Romney, R-Utah, sponsored the fish recovery program’s reauthorization act. Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., sponsored the bill in the House.
“Local communities, Tribes, water users, and Congress — we’re all in to protect our native fish and rivers,” Hickenlooper stated in a news release. “These programs are tried and true. Our extension will help continue them to save our fish and make our rivers healthier.”
Federal authorization for the two fish recovery programs — the Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming as well as the San Juan Recovery Implementation Program in Colorado and New Mexico — expired this September. The reauthorization act, however, will extend the programs through 2031, authorizing the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to contribute up to $92 million in the next seven years. The bill also adds up to $50 million for capital projects that support infrastructure improvements to recover the threatened and endangered species…The annual operating costs for the programs were historically funded by Colorado River Storage Project hydropower revenues, which have diminished over time due to drought, declining reservoir storage, increased costs and more, according to a September Colorado Water Conservation board memo. This has required the federal and state appropriations and contributions to increase to cover costs, it adds. The fish recovery programs also rely on in-kind contributions and funding from other partners. Both programs have sought to recover populations of four species — the humpback chub, razorback sucker, Colorado pikeminnow and bonytail fish — in these basins. When the Upper Colorado and San Juan programs were established in 1988 and 1992, all four species faced extinction, but they have seen some success.