Click the link to read the article on the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel website (Dennis Webb). Here’s an excerpt:
December 18, 2024
The Upper Colorado and San Juan River Basins Endangered Fish Recovery Programs Reauthorization Act was included in the fiscal year 2025 National Defense Authorization Act. The fish legislation extends programs that protect four threatened and endangered native fish species in the Upper Colorado and San Juan river basins. The defense bill now heads to the president’s desk. The Senate version of the fish bill was sponsored by U.S. Sens. John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet, both D-Colo., and Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, among others. U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., carried a House version of the fish bill. A negotiated version of her bill and the Senate bill ended up being included in the defense bill. The Senate passed the defense bill Monday after passage by the House, despite controversy over a provision banning some gender-affirming care for transgender children of service members, according to a Reuters story.
The fish programs provide for studying, monitoring and stocking the four fish species, managing habitat and river flows, and combating invasive species through 2031. That provides certainty for Upper Basin water use and fulfills the federal government’s trust responsibility to tribes, according to a news release from Hickenlooper’s office…The fish bill language authorizes up to $92 million for the Bureau of Reclamation to contribute annual cost-shared funding for program implementation. It also adds up to $50 million to the authorization ceiling for capital projects, which will fund infrastructure improvements to benefit the fish.