Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Oliver Skelly):
November 18, 2025
Colorado water transfers rarely come easily. State water law ensures that every last drop of water is accounted for, litigated, and litigated some more.
It is no surprise then that the attempted Shoshone purchase by the Colorado River Water Conservation District has snagged on a couple of thorny legal and policy issues. Whether those issues will prove fatal to the purchase will be taken up at a meeting tomorrow afternoon, Nov. 19, in Golden.
The Shoshone rights
The transferred water rights from Xcel Energy to the Glenwood Springs-based River District have huge implications. Xcel uses the water rights for hydroelectric production at the Shoshone plant in Glenwood Canyon. The hydro plant produces relatively little power. As in real estate, though, location matters entirely.
Xcelโs water rights of 1902 and 1929 are senior to most other water rights upstream of Glenwood Canyon. They are also high-volume water rights, at 1,250 and 158 cubic feet per second, respectively. Additionally, they are entirely non-consumptive, meaning that all water taken out of the river (to spin the turbines) soon returns to the river for downstream use. As such, they have tremendous power to influence flows along the entirety of the Colorado River through Colorado.
If Xcel were to cease making electricity there, junior users upstream could divert more water. Many of those users would be the stateโs transmountain diversions, which extend from Rocky Mountain National Park to Independence Pass. They benefit farmers and now mostly cities from Fort Collins to Colorado Springs. Any water that is diverted to the Front Range, however, is water that does not flow westward.
Because of this, both the River District and the Front Range diverters have had their eyes on those water rights for decades. What happens at Shoshone matters greatly both on the Western Slope, where the river naturally flows, and on the Front Range, where some of the river is now diverted.
Will the River District get that water right? It plans to keep the senior, high-volume hydropower water rights but also add an environmental instream flow right to the original decree, a class of water right approved by state legislators in 1973.
The district has already inked a purchase-and-sale agreement with Xcel and has raised $57 million of the $99 million price. It has been promised an additional $40 million from the Bureau of Reclamation, although the Trump administration has now frozen that money.
The Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB), a state agency responsible for water policy and funding, plays several major roles. In addition to agreeing to contribute $20 million, the CWCB has the sole authority under state law to own instream flow rights. For this deal to work, the River District also needs the agencyโs board approval. That approval would seem to be a given because of the boardโs commitment of $20 million to the purchase. But there are complications.ย
Not so simple
You are likely not shocked that Front Range water providers have not been thrilled with this pending transfer. In June, they asked the CWCB to hold a hearing to express their concerns.
At a September 19th meeting held on the campus of Fort Lewis College in Durango, the two primary parties testifying fell along predictable geographical lines: the Front Range (water providers) and the Western Slope (River District). CWCB staff also presented findings.
The question before the CWCB was a simple one: Does the acquisition โpreserve the natural environment to a reasonable degree?โ If the answer is yes, the water right is suitable as an instream flow right. By law, the board must consider 11 factors when making this determination. These factors are found in the instream flow lawโs implementing regulations and range from whether this transfer will cause injury to other water users, the impact on interstate water compacts, and the cost of the transaction.
At the hearing, a host of messy realities surfaced. The first came after the CWCB staff presentation on the environmental importance of the 2.4-mile instream flow segment (i.e., whether the acquisition would in fact โpreserve the natural environment to a reasonable degreeโ) in Glenwood Canyon.
The Front Range and Western Slope parties then trumpeted the many but competing public benefits afforded by the Shoshone rights: rafting in Glenwood Canyon, orchard irrigation at Palisade, hospitals in Aurora.
Public interestโฆin Colorado?
Nearly all other Western states have incorporated some form of public interest requirement during water transfers. Although a difficult term to pin down, public interest reviews involve the consideration of public goods, such as healthy rivers or recreational amenities. The presiding bodies, when evaluating transactions, must weigh the private interests against the broader public benefits (or lack thereof).
Colorado has no requirement. In 1995, the Colorado Supreme Court found the public interest theory conflicts with the prior appropriation doctrine. Without any legislative developments or a judicial about-face, that is that.
So, if we donโt have a public interest review, why the parade of testimony?
The most obvious answer is politics. When seeking approval (or denial) from an administrative body, itโs not a bad bet to show pretty pictures and tell compelling stories. But โpoliticsโ in this context can also be seen as a sub-in for those public interest principles.
The eighth factor governing the CWCBโs deliberations requires consideration of the โeffect of the proposed acquisition on the maximum utilization of the waters of the state.โ Maximum utilization and the public interest, although not direct parallels, both share a principle of the โgreatest good.โ
This backdoor introduction of the public interest gave listeners a glimpse of what the judicially disapproved principle might look like in Colorado water transfers.
Whose right is it, anyway?
That introduction at the hearing spurred perhaps the trickiest legal and policy issue of the day: Who has authority to enforce the instream flow agreement? That is, who can make the legal call instructing other water users to forgo their diversion so that the instream flow right gets its full water allocation. Is that a Western Slope political entity, the River District, or the statewide agency, the CWCB?
And if it is the CWCB, does it have authority to grant its enforcement power to the River District? While the law appears to say yes, the River District can be granted authority, there is enough ambiguity in the 1973 law to perhaps send this to Colorado Supreme Court.
The policy question, however, quickly returned parties to the realm of the public interest.
The Front Range parties, arguably the most averse to any sniff of public interest requirements, ironically now found themselves supporting the idea that the broader public benefits should be under consideration.
They contended that the CWCB should preserve its discretion to use and operate the instream-flow right. That, they said, would be sound public policy. Or if you will, โin the public interest.โ
Meanwhile, the River District, as the purchasing party and longstanding practitioners of Colorado water law, understandably wants to get what they are paying for: full control over exercising their water rights. Retaining enforcement powers under the agreement was, in fact, โthe one sword that the West Slopeโ was prepared to fall on.
Filings from both parties on Monday suggest that there is ongoing disagreement on this issue, meaning the CWCB will have a big decision to make.
The Colorado River flows through Glenwood Springs, paralleled by Interstate 70 and the Union Pacific tracks, at sunset in March 2024. Photo credit: Allen Best
Canโt you just compromise?
The next display of messiness came when it was time for the Board to apply the 11 factors.
To those listening, it was quickly apparent that such a contested hearing had not been before these board members before. Few of the directors seemed to understand how each factor was to be applied to the proposal in front of them. Although no fault of the board members, the misalignment between their understanding of their roles and the consequences of the decision to be made felt almost incommensurate.
That unpreparedness may have resulted in the Boardโs parting directive to the parties to โcompromiseโ: surely a favorable idea aimed at inspiring creative strategies and good faith negotiating.
But in the adversarial world of Colorado water law, what might result from this directive?
Such directives are common enough in water disputes. Recently, in the case of the Gross Reservoir expansion, a federal court, the 10th Circuit, told Denver Water and Save the Colorado to do the same.
In matters of purely Colorado domain, however, such directives are normally reserved as an outcome of the water court process. Ordering it before litigation seemed premature, perhaps even subversive.
The partiesโ reactions were revealing here. The Front Range interests will certainly see it as a tally in their favor because it suggests the River District needs to move away from its hardline position. Perhaps their aversion to the public interest doctrine is not so set in stone, after all.
For the River District, it is hard not to imagine some frustration. This was a contracted-for acquisition under Coloradoโs longstanding, private property water rights regime. But here, too, the water is muddy. Recall that the CWCB is providing 20% of the purchase price. What kind of leverage, tacit or otherwise, does that commitment provide?
Nov. 19th hearing
These are all difficult questions, and they are being asked amidst a backdrop of high stakes, interstate Colorado River negotiations. Answering them will be no easy feat, and as the filings on Monday indicate, those questions remain unanswered. Whether it is indeed a โcompromiseโ at the CWCB meeting on Wednesday, Nov. 19, or back to the drawing board for the River District is anyoneโs guess. But the uncomfortable positions and contortions on display at the contested hearing gave an insightful glimpse into the messy realities of today and stress tests of the future for Colorado water law.
Oliver Skelly is a 2025 graduate of the University of Colorado Law School, a former river guide, and follower of Western water happenings. He has worked at various law practices around Colorado and is now clerking for a judge on the Western Slope.
Colorado transmountain diversions via the State Engineer’s office
Here’s the release from the Colorado Water Trust (Kate Ryan and Blake Mamich):
October 7, 2025
Coloradoโs rivers are running on empty asย drought grips the intermountain west. But a record-setting response from Colorado Water Trust is helping keep critical stretches of rivers around our state flowing for fish, farms, and communities alike.
This year, Colorado Water Trust is operating more projects across more rivers than at any point in its 24-year historyโand restoring more water to streams than ever before. Across the state and on both sides of the Continental Divide, Colorado Water Trust is partnering with local irrigators, water districts, state agencies, and funders to release more than 16,000 acre-feet of water (over 5.2 billion gallons) back into rivers when itโs needed most. This unprecedented effort highlights how collaboration and creativity can sustain Coloradoโs rivers through crisis, offering a model of resilience at a time when the stateโs waterways face one of their toughest seasons yet.
Colorado is in the grip of a devastating drought.ย Nearly 45% of the stateย is currently experiencing at least moderate drought conditions, with significant portions in severe and extreme drought. Streams across the state are shrinking, water temperatures are rising, and ecosystems, farms, and communities are all feeling the strain.ย In many places, streamflow gauges are reporting flows in the lowest 10-25 percentile for this time of year. Rivers in some regions are hitting historically low levels far earlier in the season. This year marks theย earliest call on the Yampa River in recorded history. The situation is dire, and without swift, creative intervention, stretches of Coloradoโs treasured rivers could be left dry.
In response, Colorado Water Trust is rising to meet this challenge by running nearly all of its projects across the state, ensuring that water is returned to rivers when it is needed most. The scale of the response is unprecedentedโthis year is predicted to see more water restored to Coloradoโs rivers through Colorado Water Trustโs work than in any other year since the organization was founded. Some of this yearโs projects include:
This map shows the 15-mile reach of the Colorado River near Grand Junction, home to four species of endangered fish. Map credit: CWCB
Colorado River: On the Colorado River, Colorado Water Trust is again operating its project on the 15-Mile Reach, a stretch of river critical to the survival of four endangered and threatened fish species. Colorado Water Trust is expected to restore well over 1 billion gallons of water to this critical reach by releasing water from Ruedi Reservoir near Basalt which is then restored to the Fryingpan and Roaring Fork Rivers before it reaches the 15-Mile Reach of the Colorado River. Through innovative partnerships with the Grand Valley Water Users Association, Orchard Mesa Irrigation District, and the Upper Colorado Endangered Fish Recovery Program, water is being delivered at key times to support flows in this fragile habitat. Backed by generous support from corporate partners such as Niagara Cares, Coca-Cola, and Coors Seltzer, this project has become a model of collaboration and creativity.
Yampa River: Further north in the Yampa Valley, Colorado Water Trust is implementing our projects on the Upper and Lower Yampa River. Releases from Stagecoach Reservoir, made possible through collaboration with Upper Yampa Water Conservancy District and the Colorado Water Conservation Board, have been restoring significant volumes of water to the Upper Yampa as it passes through downtown Steamboat Springs since June. This water is vital for endangered fish within the reach, as well as the recreation economy downstream. Additionally, on the Lower Yampa, strategic releases out of Elkhead Reservoir in coordination with the Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program and the Colorado River District are sustaining critical habitat for endangered fish, as well as supporting the agricultural community downstream. These projectsโalready amounting to thousands of acre-feetโare keeping the Yampa River flowing through one of its most critical seasons. Without these boosts, irrigators, fish, and the communities of the valley would be facing even greater hardship. These projects are made possible thanks to generous funding from the Colorado Water Conservation Board, the Yampa River Fund, Colorado River District, and more.
Around the state: On smaller tributaries, Colorado Water Trust is also making a difference.The Slater Creek Project, in partnership with local ranchers and Western Resource Advocates, is improving conditions for an important headwater tributary to the Yampa River while supporting the local agricultural economy. So far, this project has restored over 100 million gallons of water to Slater Creek. On the Fraser River, Colorado Water Trust has teamed up with the Grand County Mutual Ditch and Reservoir Company to improve late-season flows through the Vail Ditch Project. This effort, which will return roughly 16 million gallons of water this year, helps cool the river and support critical trout spawning runs. In Boulder County in the Indian Peaks Wilderness by the Continental Divide, Colorado Water Trustโs project out of Jasper Reservoir released water and accounted for approximately 32% of flows in Middle Boulder Creek upstream of Barker Reservoir and 25% of flows in Boulder Creek in downtown Boulder. Across the state, permanent long-term projects are also running, steadily and reliably delivering water to rivers during the hottest, driest part of the year.
Taken together, these efforts represent the most ambitious season in Colorado Water Trustโs history. By weaving together partnerships with irrigation companies, conservancy districts, state and federal agencies, and local communities, and by drawing on the support of a diverse array of fundersโColorado Water Trust is delivering hope where it is needed most.
โThese projects demonstrate the power of partnership to keep rivers flowing, even in the toughest years,” said Kate Ryan, Colorado Water Trustโs Executive Director. โIt just goes to show how everyoneโno matter who you are or where you liveโcares about protecting Coloradoโs rivers and the people who depend on them.โ
While drought continues to tighten its grip on Colorado, these projects demonstrate that collaboration and innovation can keep rivers alive. In the face of crisis, Colorado Water Trust is proving that when partners and funders come together, rivers can be sustained for people, farms, fish, and communities alike. This year will mark the most flow ever restored to Coloradoโs rivers through Colorado Water Trustโs workโa milestone born from collaboration, ingenuity, and urgent necessity.
โItโs a strange mix of pride and worry,โ said Blake Mamich, Program Director for the Colorado Water Trust โOn one hand, Iโm thrilled to see so much water restored to rivers this year. On the other, I know that the only reason we can do this work at this scale is because itโs so needed: drought and climate stress are hitting us harder and harder. Thatโs a hard truth we carry with us every day.โ
As Colorado enters one of its most critical water years in recent memory, Colorado Water Trust is committed to ensuring that, even in the face of historic drought, Coloradoโs rivers will continue to flow.
About Colorado Water Trust
Colorado Water Trust is a statewide nonprofit organization with a mission to restore water to Coloradoโs rivers. Since 2001, theyโve restored over 26 billion gallons of water to Coloradoโs rivers and streams. ColoradoWaterTrust.org.
Itโs the beginning of a new water year, and to mark the occasion, Great Basin Water Network and its partners, including the Glen Canyon Institute and Living Rivers, released a list of recommendations for how to โlimit the Colorado River Conflict.โ
The primary โconflictโ in this case is the growing rift between supply and demand: The Colorado Riverโs collective users are pulling more water out of the system than the system can supply. That leads to other conflicts, most notably between the Upper and Lower Basins and between the states within each basin, over who should bear the brunt of the necessary cuts in consumption of at least 2 million to 4 million acre-feet per year. The states have until mid-November to come up with a post-2026 plan, though itโs not clear what will happen if they miss the deadline.
It may seem like a straightforward mathematical problem with a simple solution: Divide the necessary cuts up proportionally between all seven states. For example, if all seven states cut their 2022 consumptive use by 15%, it would add up to about 1.57 million acre-feet and seems equitable. But the history of consumption and diversion, along with the so-called Law of the River, made up of the 1922 Colorado River Compact and other subsequent compacts, agreements, and legal decisions, thoroughly muddy the water, so to speak.
Letโs go through the proposed solutions and Iโll elaborate a bit more there:
Recommendation 1: Forgo New Dams and Diversions
This is a no-brainer. Reality and nature are forcing the Colorado Riverโs users to pull less water out of the river, not more, and every dam and diversion built upstream of Lake Powell will result in less water reaching the reservoir, which is currently less than one-third full.1
And yet, there are myriad proposals for new dams and diversions in the Upper Basin, from the Lake Powell Pipeline to the Green River Pipeline. (Check out GBWNโs interactive map here). While some of these projects are, pardon the pun, mere pipe dreams, others are serious proposals.
The projectโs proponents justify them by pointing out that the Colorado River Compact allocated the Upper Basin 7.5 million acre-feet of water from the river each year (or half of the presumed 15 MAF in the river2), yet together those states use only about 4.5 MAF annually, meaning, in theory, they have another 3 MAF at their disposal. Furthermore, the Upper Basin has complied with another Compact provision requiring them to โnot cause the flow of the river at Lee Ferry to be depleted below an aggregate of 75,000,000 acre-feet for any period of ten consecutive years.โ3
Thing is, thereโs not 15 MAF of water in the river, nor was there even back when the Compact was signed, so the 7.5 MAF figure is essentially meaningless. Furthermore, the Upper Basin has met its downstream delivery obligations only by significantly draining Lake Powell, so it isnโt by any stretch of the imagination sustainable.
Rec. 2: All States Need Curtailment Plans
The Lower Basin has a curtailment schedule, or a plan for when cutbacks need to be made, by how much, and who needs to make them, all based on the Law of the River and water right priority dates. For example, when Lake Meadโs surface level falls below 1,050 feet, releases from the dam are reduced, and the Lower Basin goes to Tier 2a cutbacks, which includes Arizona giving up 400,000 acre-feet, Nevada forgoing 17,000 acre-feet, and so on. Californiaโs cuts donโt kick in at this level because it has the most senior rights.
The Upper Basin doesnโt have this sort of curtailment schedule. Again, they can justify this by saying they arenโt using their legal allocation, and they are meeting downstream delivery obligations, so why bother with curtailment? In fact, current Upper Basin plans call for more consumption, not less. But again, consumption is exceeding supply, period, so everyone is going to need to cut back. Best to do it in an orderly fashion.
Rec. 3: The โNatural Flowโ Plan Wonโt Work Until There Are Better Data
Federal and state officials need to bolster data collection on the Colorado River and more precisely monitor consumption. Without that, thereโs no way that the โSupply Drivenโ or โNatural Flowโ plan will work.
What that proposal does, by the way, is divide the river up according to whatโs actually in the river. The Upper Basin would release from Glen Canyon Dam a percentage of the rolling three-year average of the โnatural flowโ โ an estimate of what flows would be without any upstream diversions โ at Lee Ferry. While this plan has been deemed โrevolutionaryโ and a major โbreakthrough,โ there are still a lot of sticking points, like what percentage would each basin receive, and whether there would be a minimum delivery obligation and what that might be.
But none of that matters without an accurate estimate of the natural flow.
One of the biggest data gaps concerns evaporation. While evaporation from Lake Powell and a handful of other reservoirs is estimated and factored into the Upper Basinโs consumptive use, the same is not true for the Lower Basin โ or for many other sources of evaporation.
The report says:
Rec. 4: Alter Glen Canyon Dam to Protect the Water Supply of 25 Million People
Virtually all of the water released from Glen Canyon Dam currently goes through the penstocks and the hydroelectric turbines, thereby generating power for the Southwestโs grid. That becomes no longer possible when the reservoirโs surface level drops below 3,490 feet, or minimum power pool. In that event, water could only exit through the lower river outlets, which are not designed for long-term use, and could fail catastrophically.
The groups call on the feds to alter the dam to remedy the situation, and specifically suggest drilling bypass tunnels around the dam to release water, which effectively would turn the dam into a โrun-of-the-riverโ facility, meaning reservoir outflows would equal inflows and there would be no storage capacity.
Other possibilities include operating the dam as a โrun-of-the-riverโ facility when its surface drops to 3,500 in elevation (thus allowing the turbines to continue operating), or re-engineering the river outlets for long-term use and possibly to feed into the turbines.
Rec 5: Curtailing Junior Users to Serve Tribes
This is not a radical concept by any means. It simply is saying that the 30 some tribal nations in the Colorado River Basin should get the water to which they are entitled, just like any other senior water rights holders.
Rec. 6: Tackle Municipal Waste and Invest in Reuse Basinwide
Another pretty obvious one. The report recommends following Southern Nevada Water Authorityโs lead on this, which makes sense, given that theyโve managed to cut overall consumptive use even as the Las Vegas-area population has boomed.
Native fish populations, including the humpback chub, Colorado River pikeminnow, and razorback sucker, have declined significantly in the age of large-scale dams and diversions and mass non-native fish stocking. Theyโve avoided extinction, in part thanks to federal programs (funded in part by revenues from Glen Canyon Dam hydropower sales), thus far, but remain imperiled. The humpback chub, in particular, is threatened by smallmouth bass escaping from Lake Powell due to lower water levels; the non-natives prey on the native fish below the dam and in the Grand Canyon.
The report calls on federal agencies to consider abandoning storage in Lake Powell, drilling diversion tunnels, and going to a run-of-the-river scenario. Short of that, they urge management changes, including fish screens and sediment augmentation.
Rec. 8: Make Farms Resilient to New Realities
It might surprise some observers that this report never once mentions hay, alfalfa, livestock, or even golf courses, and does not suggest banning any specific crops. Rather, it calls for agricultural adaptation, economic diversification (including installing solar on some fields), and building more resilience and demand flexibility into operations.
The report recognizes the important role farms play in the Colorado River Basin. They are the largest consumers of water with some of the most senior water rights, meaning they will be โvital for stabilizing water supplies in times of drought and feeding the nation in the winter months for decades to come.โ But also, wildlife and ecosystems such as the Salton Sea have come to depend on agricultural runoff and even leaky ditches. Shutting off irrigation altogether will have potentially dire environmental consequences.
Farmersโ adaptation must be supported by federal, state, and local governments, and, โthese farmers must be able to choose how to adapt for the future themselves. They know their land and business models the best.โ
This is a big one, but also a very difficult issue, because as Colorado River consumption is reduced, farmers and cities and other users tend to turn to groundwater pumping. And, since groundwater and surface water are intimately connected, this can lead to further declines in the Colorado River system (along with other impacts such as the earth actually sinking as aquifers are depleted). A study from earlier this year found that groundwater supplies in the Colorado River Basin are declining by about 1.3 million acre-feet per year.
The report urges state and federal governments to put a tighter leash on groundwater pumping โ in parts of Arizona it goes unregulated and virtually unmonitored โ and begin managing it โwith the understanding that it is all one conjunctive source.โ
I asked Glen Canyon Institute Executive Director Eric Balkan whether adopting these suggestions would require tossing the Colorado River Compact into the rubbish bin of history. โI donโt think this means throwing out the compact,โ he replied. โBut it does mean adapting to the river we have, not the one assumed in the compact.โ
And that means changing or throwing out many of the terms of the compact. The 7.5 MAF division becomes obsolete, as does the 75 MAF-every-ten-years downstream delivery obligation. In fact, itโs hard to see how a fixed downstream delivery obligation is possible under the new reality; rather it would be a percentage of the natural flow. And without that sort of delivery obligation, Glen Canyon Dam loses one of its primary purposes.
โGlen Canyon Dam was built in the era of excess water to meet a specific accounting obligation,โ Balkan said. โToday, there is no more excess water and the accounting obligation is going away. So letโs start the conversation about the post Lake Powell future.โ
Screenshot from Carbon Mapperโs carbon dioxide and methane plume visualizer. This shows the north side of Bloomfield, New Mexico, and the methane plumes (blue) and carbon dioxide plumes (red) emanating from the Blanco Hub Complex, a major natural gas processing, refining, pipeline, and storage network.
๐บ๏ธ Messing with Maps ๐งญ
Todayโs featured cartography is a fascinating and alarming interactive mapvisualizing methane and carbon dioxide emissions from oil and gas wells, coal power plants, coal mines, cattle feedlots, landfills, and, sometimes, from the bare ground.This one is unique because it shows the actual plumes, not just symbols representing emissions, which somehow makes it more real and scary.
Itโs a bit frightening not only because it reveals so many sources of greenhouse gases, but also because we know that if a leaky oil and gas well is oozing methane, itโs also probably emitting volatile organic compounds and other nasty pollutants that can harm human health. The map includes the date(s) the images were made along with the rate of emissions.
Cattle feedlots and methane plumes in Californiaโs Central Valley. Source: Carbon Mapper.
โ๏ธ Wacky Weather Watchโก๏ธ
Last month, the skies opened up over Globe and Miami, Arizona, dumping nearly four inches of rain and triggering calamitous flash-flooding that killed three people, wrecked homes, and carried away cars and multiple propane tanks from an LP gas distribution facility.
Miami and Globe are dyed-in-the-wool mining towns. Miamiโs little downtown seems on the brink of being swallowed up by Freeport-McMoranโs massive Miami copper mine, while Globe, with its stately brick and stone buildings, was clearly the more prosperous of the two sister communities. Theyโre both pretty gritty in an appealing (to me) way in that they defy the manicured suburban sprawl ubiquitous on the other side of the Superstitions. They sit down in drainages that are almost always dry, except when a lot of rain falls on the arroyo-etched, sparsely vegetated hills. In this case, the flooding was made worse by a nearby wildfire burn scar.
Pinal Creek, which runs through Globe, ballooned from a dusty trickle to a 5,670 cfs torrent on Sept. 27. The San Carlos River east of Globe did much the same thing after nearly a year of complete dryness. The big water wreaked havoc, destruction, and death. Adding to the tragedy: Many residents reportedly didnโt have flood insurance.
1 One might argue that dams merely store excess water from wet years so that it can be used in dry years and so they donโt really count as a diversion or an increase in consumption. The problem on the Colorado River, however, is not a lack of storage, itโs a lack of water. Even huge water years like 2023 failed to even get close to filling up the systemโs two largest reservoirs: Lakes Powell and Mead. If you build more upstream dams, then even less water will reach those reservoirs.
2 The Colorado River Compact actually assumes that there is an average of 18 million acre-feet per year, and allocates 7.5 MAF to the Upper Basin and 7.5 MAF to the Lower Basin, but also adds the option of increasing the Lower Basinโs allocation to 8.5 MAF. This still leaves room, theoretically, up to 2 MAF for Mexico. Even back in 1922, however, the river didnโt actually deliver that much water.ย
3 During the 10-year period from 2015 to 2024, the Upper Basin delivered about 84 MAF to the Lower Basin, meaning theyโve lived up to their obligation and then some.
Water sits low behind Glen Canyon Dam near Page, Arizona, on November 2, 2022. A new report calls for urgent changes to Colorado River management, including modifications inside the dam. Alex Hager/KUNC
Click the link to read the article on the KUNC website (Alex Hager):
October 1, 2025
This story is part of ongoing coverage of the Colorado River, produced by KUNC in Colorado and supported by the Walton Family Foundation. KUNC is solely responsible for its editorial coverage.
A new report from a coalition of environmental nonprofits is calling for changes to Colorado River management and urging policymakers to act more quickly in their response to shrinking water supplies.
The reportโs authors stress a need for urgent action to manage a river system that they say is โon the cusp of failure.โ
โWe are looking at serious, chronic shortages,โ said Zach Frankel, executive director of the Utah Rivers Council. “And we don’t just mean one day in a couple of decades. We could see a crash on the Colorado River as soon as two years from now, or less.โ
A crash, they said, could mean water levels so low in the nationโs largest reservoirs that major dams areย rendered inoperable, leaving some cities and farms withย less water than they are legally owed. To stave off that crash,ย the reportย includes nine recommendations, including calls for major cutbacks to water demand.
Its authors focused largely on three things: reducing water use, modifying the plumbing inside Glen Canyon Dam, and changing the process by which new rules for sharing water are decided.
State leaders throughout the Colorado River basin seem to agree that significant cutbacks are needed, but conversations about who exactly should make those cutbacks often devolve into finger pointing. The nonprofits behind this new report say each state needs to be more specific and come up with a โcurtailment planโ about how it could use less water within its borders. They acknowledge that drawing up those cuts will likely be a complicated and painful process, but a necessary one.
โYes, it’s bad, but there’s a path through it,โ said Eric Balken, executive director of the Glen Canyon Institute. โThe solution to this problem is actually simple. It’s not going to be easy, but it is simple. Don’t pull more water from the river.โ
Their suggested approach also means hitting the brakes on new dams and diversions. The report tallied 30 proposals for new water development in the riverโs Upper Basin states of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico. Now, its authors say, is not the time to stretch an already-strained river system even further.
The back of Glen Canyon Dam circa 1964, not long after the reservoir had begun filling up. Here the water level is above dead pool, meaning water can be released via the river outlets, but it is below minimum power pool, so water cannot yet enter the penstocks to generate electricity. Bureau of Reclamation photo. Annotations: Jonathan P. Thompson
The reportโs second major proposal is to re-engineer Glen Canyon Dam, which holds back Lake Powell. The nationโs second-largest reservoir has dropped to record lows in recent years, and itโs currently about a quarter full. If water levels drop much further, they could fall below the intake for hydropower generators inside the dam. Further, they could drop below any pipes that allow water to pass through the dam. That could jeopardize the ability to send water to major cities downstream, like Los Angeles, Phoenix and Las Vegas.
In years when reservoir levels threaten to drop that low, federal water managers have shuffled water into Lake Powell from other upstream reservoirs. The new report says more permanent fixes, like the construction of new pipes inside the dam, are needed.
โThose reservoir levels are not a conspiracy,โ Frankel said. โThere’s not really any debate about whether there’s water in those reservoirs. A solution of, โHey, let’s just keep the reservoirs higher and avoid having to deal with this epic plumbing challengeโ is absurd.”
The Colorado River flows through Grand County, Colorado on Oct. 23, 2023. A new report calls for states to plan for curtailments to water use as the river shrinks. Alex Hager/KUNC
The reportโs authors did not mince words in their critiques of the current system for agreeing on new water management rules.
โWe’re so far away from meeting the moment right now,” said Kyle Roerink, executive director of the Great Basin Water Network. โThe moment might as well be on another planet.โ
Negotiations about sharing the river are stuck. The current rules for managing Colorado River water expire in 2026, and the seven states that use it are on the hook to come up with new ones. Negotiators from those states have been meeting for years now, and donโt appear to be close to a deal despite mounting calls for new policies, a steadily shrinking river and a fast-approaching deadline.
โWe’re so clearly not addressing the depth of challenge we’re facing,โ Frankel said of the negotiators. โAnd what we’re asking is, is it because of the process?โ
Under the current structure, the reportโs authors say, those negotiations lack transparency. Environmental groups, farmers, city leaders, Native American tribes and others who will have to deal with the consequences of negotiatorsโ decisions have mostly been left on the outside looking in.
โWhat we want is honest debate and discussion,โ Roerink said. โThere’s not even a meaningful regulatory process going on where we can debate, scrutinize, vet, and provide meaningful ideas about how we’re going to manage the nation’s two largest reservoirs.โ
The coalition of nonprofits that co-signed the report includes Glen Canyon Institute, Great Basin Water Network, Living Rivers, Utah Rivers Council and Save the Colorado.
Their work joins a number of similar calls for action that have been released in recent months. A September letter from former officials and academics said urgent changes are needed to protect Glen Canyon Dam. That same group released a memo in May calling for states to embrace some โshared painโ and agree on cutbacks.
Other outside groups โ including a coalition of Native American tribes and a large collection of environmental nonprofits โ have made their own suggestions for the next phase of river management. It is yet to be determined how or if their ideas will influence those closed-door negotiations.
Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
The Colorado River District (CRD) hosted its annual Water Seminar on Friday [October 3, 2025], bringing together water leaders, politicians and city officials for a variety of discussions and activities. The seminar, titled โAcross Dividesโ, was held at Colorado Mesa University, focusing on candid conversations and solution-focused dialogue to address water issues. The audience included agricultural producers, water providers, local and state government leaders, non-profit representatives, community members and CMU students.
โOver the course of today, weโve leaned into the conference theme of โAcross Divides.โ Weโve explored spaces where perspectives donโt always align, where there are divides in language, where there are divides in theory, where there are divides in practice,โ said CRD Chief of Strategy Amy Moyer during her closing remarks…
The keynote address was given by CRD General Manager Andy Mueller, who discussed the challenges facing the Western Slope and Colorado River Basin as well as the work being done by the district and its local partners and the Shoshone water rights situation. He also discussed the impact of shrinking supplies and interstate pressures on Colorado…The โLost in Translation: Interstate Divideโ panel represented agriculture, drinking water, tribal nations and environmental interests from the Upper and Lower Basins, examining how the new supply-driven model proposal could shape the future of the Colorado River…
Moyer encouraged attendees to implement three actions in their lives to make sure the seminar leads to positive results.
โFirst, follow up with the contacts that you made with the people at your table, with the presenters here today…. Find somebody you havenโt had the chance to talk to,โ she said. โThe second thing is to apply one new idea that you learned from today, whether itโs in your personal life or your professional life…. Lastly, stay engaged with us at the Colorado River District. Look for the events and conversations that we hold throughout the year.โ
The Bureau of Reclamation has scheduled a decrease in the release from Navajo Dam to 525 cubic feet per second (cfs) for Saturday, October 4, at 4:00 AM.
Releases are made for the authorized purposes of the Navajo Unit, and to attempt to maintain a target base flow through the endangered fish critical habitat reach of the San Juan River (Farmington to Lake Powell). The San Juan River Basin Recovery Implementation Program recommends a target base flow of between 500 cfs and 1,000 cfs through the critical habitat area. The target base flow is calculated as the weekly average of gaged flows throughout the critical habitat area from Farmington to Lake Powell.
This scheduled release change is subject to changes in river flows and weather conditions. If you have any questions, please contact Conor Felletter (cfelletter@usbr.gov or 970-637-1985), or visit Reclamationโs Navajo Dam website at https://www.usbr.gov/uc/water/crsp/cs/nvd.html
What happens on the Colorado River doesnโt stay on the Colorado River.
Indeed, the river system is not like a night on the Las Vegas Strip. When problems arise on the beleaguered system, the ancillary impacts ripple throughout the western U.S.
As water supplies shrink, the supply and demand imbalance on the river system poses questions about the long-term sustainability of communities across the west. The impacts span beyond cities in town in the Colorado River Watershed. Denver, Los Angeles, Albuquerque, and many others rely on the Colorado River even though they donโt live within the watershed. We are not yet ready for the consequences of prolonged inaction and ambivalence. Weโve lost 20 percent of flows since the turn of the 21st Century and poised to lose even more in the decades to come. Fixing the current imbalance has come at a high price to ratepayers and taxpayers, the environment, and the public trust. Further inaction will come at an even higher price.
We are working with a group of NGO partners to answer an important question
How do we prevent more conflict?
That is why we released a new report outlining nine recommendations for the river system.
1. No New Dams and Diversions
2. All States Need Curtailment Plans
3. We Need Better Accounting and Data
4. We Need to Fix Glen Canyonโs Antique Plumbing
5. Curtail Junior Users to Serve Tribes
6. Invest in Reuse and Limit Municipal Waste
7. Protect Endangered Species
8. Make Farms Resilient
9. Recognize Groundwater-Surface Water Connectivity
Please share far and wide and reach out with any suggestions. Perhaps no group better understands the far-reaching impacts on Colorado River scarcity than ours. The SNWA maintains a robust agricultural operation hundreds of miles away from the Colorado River in the high desert in the heart of the Great Basin. What will happen if Lake Mead keeps shrinking? They donโt own farms because they like beef and lamb, leather and wool.
The actions we take today will leave lasting marks on our watersheds for generations to come. Right now, the leaderships on the Colorado River System is lagging. We exist to equip communities with the knowledge to take action moving forward. As we await public participation opportunities for new Colorado River management guidelines, letโs prepare for the worst and hope for the best.
The San Juan River near Navajo Dam, New Mexico, Aug. 23, 2015. Photo credit: Phil Slattery Wikimedia Commons
From email from Reclamation (Conor Felletter):
The Bureau of Reclamation has scheduled an increase in the release from Navajo Dam to 650 cubic feet per second (cfs) from the current release of 500 cfs for Tuesday September 23, at 4:00 AM.
Releases are made for the authorized purposes of the Navajo Unit, and to attempt to maintain a target base flow through the endangered fish critical habitat reach of the San Juan River (Farmington to Lake Powell). The San Juan River Basin Recovery Implementation Program recommends a target base flow of between 500 cfs and 1,000 cfs through the critical habitat area. The target base flow is calculated as the weekly average of gaged flows throughout the critical habitat area from Farmington to Lake Powell.
This scheduled release change is subject to changes in river flows and weather conditions. If you have any questions, please contact Conor Felletter (cfelletter@usbr.govย or 970-637-1985), or visit Reclamationโs Navajo Dam website athttps://www.usbr.gov/uc/water/crsp/cs/nvd.html
Please forgive me for being confused about the state of our nation, about the actions of our president, and about the reaction to it.
See, a decade ago, Western state politicians โ particularly conservative Republicans and, if you will, Sagebrush Rebels โ were up in arms, sometimes literally, about something they called โfederal overreach.โ In most cases, it referred to actions by the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service that ranged from closing roads or prohibiting motorized vehicles in sensitive areas to attempting to round up cattle that had been grazing illegally on public land to arresting suspected pothunters to enforcing laws on federal land.
When a herd of assault-weapon toting self-proclaimed militia showed up at Cliven Bundyโs Bunkerville ranch in 2014, they were resisting federal overreach; when Phil Lyman led a flock of ATV riders down Recapture Canyon in Utah, he was protesting federal overreach; when Ammon and Ryan Bundy led the siege of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, they were protesting federal overreach.
Indeed, in 2011 Dennis Spruell, then-sheriff of Montezuma County, Colorado, threatened to arrest land management officials who dared to close roads across federal lands. He continued: โThe sheriff is the ultimate law enforcement authority. I have an obligation to protect my county from enemies, both foreign and domestic. So if the federal government comes in and violates the law, itโs my responsibility to make sure it stops.โ
A couple of years later, 28 Utah sheriffs wrote a letter to President Obama threatening violent revolt if he were to enact gun control. “No federal official will be permitted to descend upon our constituents and take from them what the Bill of Rights โ in particular Amendment II โ has given them,โ they wrote. โWe, like you, swore a solemn oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and we are prepared to trade our lives for the preservation of its traditional interpretation.โ
All of which is a very wordy lead in to a question: Where the hell is the concern about federal overreach now?
The Trump administration is figuratively shredding the U.S. Constitution on an almost daily basis; masked federal ICE agents are terrorizing immigrants and citizens, alike; the administration is forcing utilities to keep operating coal plants; and not only has it sent the National Guard and even the Marines into Democratic-led cities unbidden in clear violation of states rights, but Trump himself declared โwarโ on an American city in a social media post. This makes a bit of BLM โoverreachโ look like childโs play.
If anything would warrant a response from the so-called militia, or the folks who oppose gun control because it would hamper their ability to resist tyranny, it would be this. Or so it seems. After all, sending the Marines to Los Angeles appears to have violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which makes it illegal โto employ any part of the Army of the United States, as a posse comitatus, or otherwise, for the purpose of executing the laws.โ This Reconstruction-era law is often used by โconstitutionalโ sheriffs and federal overreach crowd to bolster their positions.
So whereโs Ryan Bundy and his pocket Constitution? Where are Richard Mack and the โconstitutional sheriffsโ and the folks that used to rail about posse comitatus? Whereโs Phil Lyman, who repeatedly called the Obama administration and the BLM โdespoticโ for daring to increase protections on public lands and for sending in law enforcement officers to arrest folks who violated the Antiquities Act?
They are, it turns out, nowhere to be found. The reason is obvious: All of the โfederal overreachโ grievance was performative. An act based not on principle, but on false victimhood, on a sense of entitlement, on a selfish desire the liberty to do what they please, not for Liberty as a principle or creed. So long as ICE doesnโt come after them, their cattle, their guns, they donโt have any beef with federal overreach, no matter how egregious or harmful โ especially if itโs done in the name of retribution and โowning the libs.โ
But there is an exception, and a surprising one to me. Ammon Bundy, who led the armed takeover of the wildlife refuge in Oregon, toldย Mother Jonesโ Stephanie Mencimer that he actually finds the military occupation of cities โvery concerning.โ Iโll admit I didnโt catchย Mencimerโs story, which was published a month ago, until I was writing this piece, and was looking for possible Bundy reactions. Ammon told her he has been relatively subdued (he hasnโt occupied any federal facilities yet) in response to Trump because heโs got enough legal troubles as it is 1.
While Iโm no supporter of Ammon Bundy, you got to hand it to him for his consistency. He rightly considers the ICE raids as an affront to the founding principles of the United States. And he points out โ apparently referring to his one-time allies โ โIt has been my sad experience that most people will set principles, justice, and good aside to spite those whom they despise.โ You got that one right. [ed. emphasis mine]
Sage Brush Rebellion folks, Recapture Canyon, Utah Photo credit: Jonathan P. Thompson
Like millions of people from around the globe, I watched the images of coup-pawns invading the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 with shock, rage, and sadness. But, like many others, I wasnโt surprised. After all, almost exactly five years earlier we had been transfixed and alarmed by another violent attack on an American institution, the occupation of the Malheurโฆ
1 *Ammon Bundy was one of the few people to speak out against the Trump administration and FBI head Kash Patel forย honoring the FBI agentsย who shot and killed LaVoy Finicum amid the Malheur occupation, and for fabricating the circumstances surrounding the incident.
The greenback cutthroat trout is a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. Biologists are hoping to return the species to the Colorado River headwaters in the Kawuneechee Valley. Kevin Rogers/U.S. Forest Service
13 years ago, Coloradoโs state fish could only be found in a single stream in the entire state. Today, a coalition of agencies and experts are working to change that.ย The Poudre Headwaters Project is a 10 to 12-year effort led by Rocky Mountain National Park and Colorado Parks and Wildlife, among other organizations, to restore the greenback cutthroat trout to its native waters โ about 40 miles of streams in parts of Rocky Mountain National Park and the Arapaho National Forest…
For decades, the National Park Service and state fisheries stocked millions of fish, mostly brook trout, in the native waters of the greenbacks. But once brook trout have established themselves in a stream, they will outcompete greenbacks for food and habitat, Clatterbuck said. Restoring native greenbacks requires killing off the non-native brook trout that have long threatened their survival. To kill the fish, crews must apply the pesticideย rotenoneย to streams with invasive brook trout and other non-natives. Rotenone is a dangerous chemical in high concentrations, but it has beenย widely usedย by fisheries for decades and is carefully managed when applied to streams…The pesticide specifically targets aquatic species, making it the ideal treatment method for fish removal. Consuming rotenone-treated fish is unlikely to poison a mammal, Clatterbuck said…
A map of the Poudre Headwaters Project area. U.S. Forest Service, J.Scott/Courtesy photo
Once the areas are confirmed to be free of non-native trout, biologists will reintroduce the native greenback cutthroat trout to its original habitat in the headwaters of the Cache la Poudre River, according to park officials…Colorado State University Professor Robert Behnke reported that once brook trout gained access to streams,ย greenback cutthroat trout were virtually goneย within five years. In the 1960s, Behnke spearheaded efforts to restore greenback cutthroat trout to streams of their native range east of the Continental Divide. Since then, fisheries have worked to build fish barriers, often in the form of small dams, near the downstream ends of headwater streams to protect native fish while applying chemicals to kill off brook trout upstream. However, none of these projects have been able to prevent non-native trout invasion long term. Clatterbuck is hopeful that with time and collaboration, this new restoration project will build a metapopulation, or a network of connected subpopulations that can strengthen the speciesโ genetic diversity and resilience.
Crystal Dam, part of the Colorado River Storage Project, Aspinall Unit. Credit Reclamation.
From email from Reclamation (Conor Felletter):
September 4, 2025
On Saturday, September 6, 2025 at 6pm MT, Reclamation will decrease releases from Crystal Dam to 1,450 cfs from the current release of 1,500 cfs. Gunnison Tunnel diversions remain at 1025 cfs. Gunnison River flows in the Black Canyon/Gunnison Gorge, currently ~460 cfs, are anticipated to decrease to ~410 cfs. This schedule will remain in effect until a new notification is issued. Scheduled releases are subject to changes with changes in river flows and weather conditions.
Releases are made for the authorized purposes of the Aspinall Unit, and to maintain target base flows through the endangered fish habitat along the Gunnison River between Delta and Grand Junction.
Contact Conor Felletter (cfelletter@usbr.gov or 970-637-1985) for more information regarding Aspinall operations.
The Crystal River was running under 8 cfs on Aug. 24, 2025. This section of river is downstream of big agricultural diversions and ditches owned and maintained by the Town of Carbondale. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Streamflows on the Western Slope have plummeted over the last month, sending water managers scrambling to boost flows for endangered fish and ranking it among the driest years in recent history.
According to the Natural Resources Conservation Service, the Roaring Fork River basin ended the month of July at 28% of average streamflows. The Colorado River headwaters was at 42% of average; the Gunnison River basin was at 34% of average and rivers in the White/Yampa/Green River basin in the northwest corner of the state were running at 24% of average. Prior to this weekโs rains, the Crystal River near the Colorado Parks and Wildlife fish hatchery was running at 7.5 cfs, or 10% of average.
โWeโve been seeing pretty widespread well-below-normal flows across the entire upper Colorado River basin due to extremely dry conditions starting back in December,โ said Cody Moser, a senior hydrologist with the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center.
For most of August, the Crystal River near fish hatchery was running at less than 15 cfs. These extremely low conditions plus water temperatures above 71 degrees Fahrenheit, prompted CPW to implement on Aug. 15 a full-day voluntary fishing closure on the Crystal from mile marker 64 on Highway 133 to the confluence with the Roaring Fork. This section of the Crystal is downstream from big agricultural diversions and ditches owned and operated by the town of Carbondale.
The upper Roaring Fork River and its tributaries are also suffering the consequences of low flows. On Aug. 25 the Colorado Water Conservation Board placed a call for the minimum instream flow on a seven-mile section of the Roaring Fork through Aspen, between Difficult and Maroon creeks. The call was released the next day after rain boosted flows above the 32 cfs minimum amount.
The CWCB is the only entity in the state allowed to hold instream flow water rights, which are intended to preserve the natural environment to a reasonable degree. Itโs not uncommon for the CWCB to place calls for this stretch in late summer and it did so in other years, including 2012, 2018, 2020, 2021 and 2022.
Low flows have also affected recreation at the North Star Nature Preserve, a popular area for paddle boarders east of Aspen. On July 24, Pitkin County implemented a voluntary float closure โ asking people to launch at South Gate instead of Wildwood โ which occurs when the river falls below 60 cfs.
โAt low water levels, users are at risk of touching bottom, which could damage the riparian habitat and would be considered trespassing,โ a Pitkin County official said in an email.
Before this weekโs rainfall, the Roaring Fork above Aspen hovered around 30 cfs.
Streamflows across the Western Slope are often at some of their lowest points of the year during the late summer and early fall when snowmelt has waned and irrigators are still drawing from streams. But this summerโs lack of precipitation and low soil moisture were the main drivers of dry streams. Much of the Western Slope is in extreme or exceptional drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
โThe biggest factor is the dry spring conditions and layered on top of them a much drier than normal summer,โ said Peter Goble, assistant state climatologist. โWe will be watching those base flows but also soil moisture levels as we go into fall and early winter to see if those pick back up.โ
Dry soils that suck up snowmelt before it makes it to streams can mean a normal snowpack translates into below-normal runoff.
This section of the Colorado River at the boat launch near Corn Lake dipped to around 150 cfs in lake August. Known as the 15-mile reach, this stretch of river should have at least 810 cfs to meet the needs of endangered fish. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Stressed out fish
Another area hard hit by low flows is the 15-mile reach of the Colorado River between Palisade and the confluence with the Gunnison River. The chronically dry section is home to multiple endangered fish species and is downstream from some of the biggest agricultural diversions from the Colorado River in the state. Each year water managers work together to time voluntary releases from upstream reservoirs to boost late-season flows for the fish.
But even with many entities working with the Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program, a 2022 memo from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service found that during the irrigation season of dry years, flows did not meet the 810 cfs target 39% of the time.
This year, flows have not been above 810 cfs since July 9. And although flows in the 15-mile reach have been climbing since Aug. 23, โ up to about 650 cfs on Aug. 27 โ nearly all the water in the reach before this weekโs rain was attributable to upstream reservoir releases specifically intended for endangered fish. Without releases for the recovery program, flows in the 15-mile reach could have dipped as low as 30 to 50 cfs.
โFrom my standpoint itโs amazing how a dry year just makes it really hard to get down even a third of that flow target,โ said Bart Miller, healthy rivers director with Western Resource Advocates. โItโs a challenging time for water users, but a super challenging time for fish. For the fish itโs a huge stressor.โ
This map shows the 15-mile reach of the Colorado River near Grand Junction, home to four species of endangered fish. Map credit: CWCB
This year there was about 29,175 acre-feet earmarked for endangered fish, according to a presentation by program staff. But by Sept. 1 nearly all this water was scheduled to be used up. The nonprofit Colorado Water Trust has stepped in to lease an additional 5,000 acre-feet out of Ruedi Reservoir. The water is owned by the town of Palisade, the Colorado River Water Conservation District and QB Energy. The releases of about 100 cfs are projected to begin Aug. 27 and continue through mid-October, said Danielle Snyder, a water resources specialist with the Colorado Water Trust.
โThis particular stretch is very critical for the health of the ecosystem,โ Snyder said. โWe saw a lot of benefit for both the community and the environment and we thought this would be a great opportunity given we have the capacity and funds to provide water to that region.โ
The CWCB will also lease an additional 2,350 acre-feet for fish flows.
Locally dwindling streamflows have big implications downstream. Projections released earlier this month from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation show the nationโs two largest reservoirs โ Lake Powell and Lake Mead โ continuing to drop. Lake Powell could drop below the level needed to make hydropower by late 2026. As proof of how dry the month of July was across the basin, inflow to Lake Powell was just 12% of normal.
One bright spot in an otherwise bleak forecast is that parts of the Western Slope are finally seeing some relief from the hot and dry summer with rain this week. But it probably wonโt be enough to make up for the months-long lack of precipitation.
โWe have been dry for six-plus months so I donโt imagine it will have a significant impact long term, but itโs nice to finally see some precipitation in the forecast and observed over the last day or two,โ Moser said.ย
The outflow at the bottom of Navajo Dam in New Mexico. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism
From email from the Bureau of Reclamation (Conor Felletter):
The Bureau of Reclamation has scheduled an increase in the release from Navajo Dam to 850 cubic feet per second (cfs) from the current release of 800 cfs for Tuesday, August 12, at 4:00 AM.
Releases are made for the authorized purposes of the Navajo Unit, and to attempt to maintain a target base flow through the endangered fish critical habitat reach of the San Juan River (Farmington to Lake Powell). The San Juan River Basin Recovery Implementation Program recommends a target base flow of between 500 cfs and 1,000 cfs through the critical habitat area. The target base flow is calculated as the weekly average of gaged flows throughout the critical habitat area from Farmington to Lake Powell.
This scheduled release change is subject to changes in river flows and weather conditions. If you have any questions, please contact Conor Felletter (cfelletter@usbr.gov or 970-637-1985), or visit Reclamationโs Navajo Dam website athttps://www.usbr.gov/uc/water/crsp/cs/nvd.html
Reclamation conducts Public Operations Meetings three times per year to gather input for determining upcoming operations for Navajo Reservoir. Input from individuals, organizations, and agencies along with other factors such as weather, water rights, endangered species requirements, flood control, hydro power, recreation, fish and wildlife management, and reservoir levels, will be considered in the development of these reservoir operation plans. In addition, the meetings are used to coordinate activities and exchange information among agencies, water users, and other interested parties concerning the San Juan River and Navajo Reservoir. The next meeting will be held Tuesday, August 19th at 1:00 PM. This meeting is open to the public with hybrid options, in person at the Civic Center in Farmington, NM (200 W Arrington St, Farmington, NM 87401, Rooms 4&5) and virtual using Microsoft Teams. Register for the webinar at this link
The United Statesโ national parks have an inherent contradiction. The federal law that created the National Park Service says the agency โ and the parks โ must โconserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wildlife โฆ unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.โ
That means both protecting fragile wild places and making sure people can visit them. Much of the public focus on the parks is about recreation and enjoyment, but the parks are extremely important places for research and conservation efforts.
These places contain a wide range of sensitive and striking environments: volcanoes, glaciers, sand dunes, marshlands, ocean ecosystems, forests and deserts. And these areas face a broad variety of conservation challenges, including the effects of climate change, the perils of popularity driving crowds to some places, and the Trump administrationโs reductions to park service staff and funding.
Gray wolves, long native to the Yellowstone area, were reintroduced to the national park in the mid-1990s and have helped the entire ecosystem flourish since. National Park Service via AP
Returning wolves to Yellowstone
One of the best known outcomes of conservation research in park service history is still playing out in the nationโs first national park, Yellowstone.
Gray wolves once roamed the forests and mountains, but government-sanctioned eradication efforts to protect livestock in the late 1800s and early 1900s hunted them to near extinction in the lower 48 states by the mid-20th century. In 1974, the federal government declared that gray wolves needed the protections of the Endangered Species Act.
The return of wolves has not only drawn visitors hoping to see these beautiful and powerful predators, but their return has also triggered what scholars call a โtrophic cascade,โ in which the wolves decrease elk numbers, which in turn has allowed willow and aspen trees to survive to maturity and restore dense groves of vegetation across the park.
Increased vegetation in turn led to beaver population increases as well as ecosystem changes brought by their water management and engineering skills. Songbirds also came back, now that they could find shade and shelter in trees near water and food sources.
Black bear protection in the Great Smoky Mountains
Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most biologically diverse park in the country, with over 19,000 species documented and another 80,000 to 100,000 species believed to be present. However, the forests of the Appalachian Mountains were nearly completely clear-cut in the late 1800s and early 20th century, during the early era of the logging industry in the region.
Because their habitat was destroyed, and because they were hunted, black bears were nearly eradicated. By 1934, when Great Smoky Mountains National Park was designated, there were only an estimated 100 bears left in the region. Under the parkโs protection, the population rebounded to an estimated 1,900 bears in and around the park in 2025.
Much like the gray wolves in Yellowstone, bears are essential to the health of this ecosystem by preying on other animals, scavenging carcasses and dispersing seeds.
When Everglades National Park was created in 1947, it was the first time a U.S. national park had been established to protect a natural resource for more than just its scenic value.
With their help, the parks โ and the landscapes, resources and beauty they protectโ can be preserved for the benefit of nature and humans, in the parks and far beyond their boundaries.
Tubers float down the Yampa River in Steamboat Springs on July 23, 2025. A stretch of the river running near downtown can see more than 20,000 tubers through the course of the summer, but city officials sometimes roll out recreational shutdowns to protect the Yampa’s fish. Alex Hager/KUNC
Click the link to read the article on the KUNC website (Alex Hager):
August 5, 2025
This story is part of ongoing coverage of water in the West produced by KUNC and supported by the Walton Family Foundation.
On a hot summer day in Steamboat Springs, the Yampa River feels like the beating heart of the city. On a recent July afternoon, its banks teemed with people looking for a cool refuge from the mid-80s temperatures and direct sun.
Local mom Alohi Madrigal was one of them. She and two friends watched their kids jump off the rocks into the Yampaโs clear water. A steady stream of relaxed-looking tubers floated by too, sprawled out on thick, yellow inflatables.
Even at 3 p.m. on a Wednesday, this little section of the Yampa looked like a postcard-perfect picture of a summer vacation in the Colorado mountains.
But days like this are a precious commodity in Steamboat Springs. When it gets too hot, the city shuts down this specific stretch of river: a roughly six-and-a-half-mile section that flows through downtown, just steps away from the shops and restaurants. During the driest years, it can be bereft of swimmers, tubers and anglers for weeks at a time.
This year, it was already closed for four days in July, and may close again before the summer is through.
Tubers float down the Yampa River, in the shadow of Steamboat Ski Resort, on July 23, 2025. City officials close the river to recreation when it gets too hot, too low, or lacks oxygen for fish. Alex Hager/KUNC
Itโs part of an uneasy balance struck by Steamboat Springs. The Yampa is the cityโs lifeblood. Its water irrigates nearby farms and ranches. The same river supplies drinking water to homes and businesses all over town. During the summer, it becomes a mecca for vacationers who flock to the resort town for a cool mountain escape. The city estimates that more than 21,000 people took tubes down this stretch of river in 2024.
But itโs also home to fish. When the river is hot and low, too many humans in the water can setress out its fish โ causing lasting damage to their health or even killing them. That could create an unpleasant scene for all of those river users and throw the Yampaโs ecosystem out of whack.
As a result, the city enforces periodic shutdowns to keep the river healthy, even if it means people โ and businesses that can make big bucks on equipment rentals โ will have to avoid it on the days when its cool water beckons the most.
Flows for fish
Itโs easy to look at the Yampa and think about the paddlers and floaters playing on its surface. It’s also easy to forget about the silent, scaly residents beneath. But those fish are at the heart of the riverโs summer closures.
โIt pretty much all comes down to fish health,โ said Emily Burke, conservation program manager at the nonprofit Friends of the Yampa. โFish get super stressed when river temperatures reach a certain level.โ
Recreational closures on the Yampa can be triggered by three things: low water levels, high water temperature or low levels of dissolved oxygen in the water. All three make it harder for fish to survive.
Models of fish that live in the Yampa River are on display at the Steamboat Flyfisher shop in Steamboat Springs on July 24, 2025. When water is low and hot, fish can get stressed and even die. Alex Hager/KUNC
When the river gets low and hot, fish often donโt have enough oxygen to breathe, causing them to get exhausted. That could make them too tired to look for food or stop eating. Already stressed and drained of energy, the extra stress added by humans in the river can cause lasting harm to fish health and โ in some cases โ kill them.
โIf you have a bunch of people splashing around in these deep pools [that] these fish are using as refuge,โ Burke said, โIt’s really stressful for them, and it can sometimes lead to fish die-offs.โ
Measuring stations along the river gather data about its water every fifteen minutes. If the water is hotter than 75 degrees for two consecutive days or flowing lower than 85 cubic feet per second, city officials will roll out a river closure.
โA huge economic driverโ
When the Yampa is teetering on the edge of a shutdown, the people watching closest are often those whose businesses depend on it. Johnny Spillane is one of them. He owns Steamboat Flyfisher, which has a back patio that overhangs the river itself.
On a recent Thursday morning, as people milled in and out of brunch spots and started heading toward tourist activities, Spillane stood behind the counter of his store.
โYou can tell in the shop right now it’s pretty quiet,โ Spillane said. โIf it was a busy, hopping day with people fishing in town, it would be a lot busier right now.โ
The river was still open for swimming, tubing and paddling, but officially shut down for fishing.
โJuly days are our most important days as a business, so losing July days certainly hurts a little bit more,โ Spillane said. โBut at the same time, you know, losing the fish in the river would hurt a lot more than that. For us, protecting the fish, protecting the resource, is far much more important than getting an extra couple days of fishing on the town stretch, or selling a couple dozen extra flies.โ
Johnny Spillane, owner of Steamboat Flyfisher, poses in his shop on July 24, 2025. “Protecting the fish,” he said, “protecting the resource, is far much more important than getting an extra couple days of fishing on the town stretch, or selling a couple dozen extra flies.โ Alex Hager/KUNC
Spillane said the river closure doesnโt affect his business that much. Fewer people come into the store to buy equipment, but the shopโs fishing guides โ who can run more than 200 trips each week โ can take customers 20-30 minutes outside of town to other streams, rivers and lakes that are open for anglers.
Even owners of businesses that are inextricably tied to the Yampaโs โtown stretchโ share Spillaneโs mentality.
Backdoor Sports sits just a short walk downstream from the flyfishing shop. Itโs a powerhouse in the local tube renting scene. Backdoor moves so many rental tubes โ as many as 400 a day during the peak of summer โ that it has a drive-thru-style window to keep customers moving from signup to river in short order. The shop dispatches rental tubes from a literal backdoor, which lies no more than a couple dozen feet from the Yampa.
Stacks of inflatable tubes wait for renters at Backdoor Sports in Steamboat Springs on July 23, 2025. “The closures can be tough at times,” said Mike Welch, the shop’s owner, “But also necessary, because it’s good to protect what we have here.” Alex Hager/KUNC
โThe Yampa River is a huge economic driver for the city,โ said Mike Welch, a co-owner of Backdoor. โWe want to make sure that it stays that way for a lot of years to come. The closures can be tough at times, but also necessary, because it’s good to protect what we have here. It’s a wonderful, wonderful thing that we’ve got.โ
While it takes some extra preparation to steel Backdoor against changing river conditions and shutdowns, Welch said communication from city officials makes it easier.
โThe city has done a great job in setting those parameters,โ he said. โSo we know what the water is looking like and where and when those closures are potentially coming. So we can plan for it.โ
People ride a tube through the Yampa River in Steamboat Springs on July 23, 2025. The river is a major draw for tourists and locals alike during the summer. Alex Hager/KUNC
Welch bought the business alongside his brother and sister-in-law this spring. The previous owner, Pete Van De Carr, was a well-known local who died in February following a skiing accident.
Another shop owner, Marty Smith, said Van De Carr played a part in getting the city to specify its plans for reopening the river after a closure.
โEvery day, all the outfitters in town, we would get emails from Pete saying we need to come up with a rule to reopen the river,โ said Smith, owner of Mountain Sports Kayak School. โI think that they definitely listened to Pete.โ
City officials say they are trying to be more transparent about the criteria they use to reopen the Yampa for recreation and communicate directly with outfitters about upcoming changes to closures. The city consults with Colorado Parks and Wildlife before reopening the river. They consider current river conditions, weather forecasts and the amount of stress that fish may already be feeling from hot, dry conditions.
โA tough spot to be inโ
For the city officials who manage closures on the Yampa, itโs all about balance.
โWe hate having to do this,โ said Jenny Carey, the cityโs Open Space and Trails supervisor, โBecause you inevitably will hear from somebody that it’s just ruining their day, their business. And that’s tough. That’s a tough spot to be in. We don’t want to do that.โ
Carey said Steamboat Springs puts up signs and social media posts to inform people about the closures and the reasons for them.
โWe understand that people want to be in the river,โ she said, โAnd so it’s a difficult conversation. We do our best to educate as best we can. I think a lot of our locals are getting used to this, and they understand the reason.โ
While it can be rocky trying to tell out-of-town tourists that they wonโt be able to tube on a hot summer day, locals really do seem to be getting the message. In a 2024 survey of Steamboat Springs residents, 92% of people said โmanagement of the health of the Yampa Riverโ was essential or very important.
Thatโs only five points lower than the fire department. Managing the Yampaโs health ranked as more important than city parks and the police department.
โThe Yampa river is considered one of the most important services that the city provides,โ said Julie Baxter, the cityโs water resources manager. โSo we feel very grounded that we have the support of the local community members that live here in Steamboat Springs.โ
Bears play along the banks of the Yampa River in Steamboat Springs on July 23, 2025. In a survey of city residents, 92% of people said protecting the health of the river was important โ scoring it higher than city parks and the police department. Alex Hager/KUNC
Recreational closures on the Yampa are mandatory for rental shops, but technically voluntary for individuals who want to bring their own tubes or kayaks. But with so many locals on board, few people decide to take a dip.
โIf there is a closure in place and you get in the river,โ Baxter said with a chuckle, โYou will likely have a local yell at you.โ
Alohi Madrigal, who was raised in Steamboat Springs and still lives in town, watched her kids splash in a stretch of the Yampa that may be closed later this summer. She said a shutdown wouldnโt be the end of the world.
โThere’s a million things to do here,โ she said, proceeding to list off a handful of other swimming spots. โWe have to take care of the river, or it won’t be here for long.โ
This 2023 diagram shows the tubes through which Lake Powell’s fish can pass through to the section of the Colorado River that flows through the Grand Canyon. Credit: USGS and Reclamation 2023
Federal officials reported Tuesday that the water level in Lake Powell, one of the main water storage reservoirs for the Colorado River Basin, could fall low enough to stop hydropower generation at the reservoir by December 2026.
The reservoirโs water levels have fallen as the Colorado River Basin, the water supply for 40 million people, has been overstressed by rising temperatures, prolonged drought and relentless demand. Upper Basin officials sounded the alarm in June, saying this yearโs conditions echo the extreme conditions of 2021 and 2022, when Lake Powell and its sister reservoir, Lake Mead, dropped to historic lows.
The seven basin states, including Colorado, are in high-stakes negotiations over how to manage the basinโs water after 2026. One of the biggest impasses has been how to cut water use in the basinโs driest years.
โYou canโt reduce what doesnโt come down the stream. And thatโs the reality weโre faced with,โ Commissioner Gene Shawcroft of Utah said in the statement. โThe only way weโre going to achieve a successful outcome is if weโre willing to work together โ and not just protect our own interests.โ
Lake Powell is seen in a November 2019 aerial photo from the nonprofit EcoFlight. The Upper Basin states are proposing two pools of stored water in Lake Powell: A Lake Powell protection account and a Lake Powell conservation account. Credit: EcoFlight
Lake Powell, located on the Utah-Arizona border, collects water from Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, part of Arizona and tribal reservations in the Colorado Riverโs Upper Basin. Glen Canyon Dam releases the reservoirโs water downstream to Lake Mead, Native American tribes, Mexico, and Lower Basin states, including Arizona, California and Nevada.
Lake Powell and Lake Mead make up about 92% of the reservoir storage capacity in the entire Colorado River Basin.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamationโs July report, called a 24-month study, shows the potential for Lake Powell to decline below two critical elevations: 3,525 feet and 3,490 feet.
It could drop below 3,525 feet in April 2026, which would prompt emergency drought response actions. Thatโs in the most probable scenario, but the federal agency also considers drier and wetter forecast scenarios. The dry forecast shows that the reservoirโs water levels would fall below this elevation as soon as January.
Lake Powell would have to fall below 3,490 feet in order to halt power generation.
Planning for emergency water releases
In 2021 and 2022, officials leapt into crisis management mode and released water from upstream reservoirs โ including Blue Mesa, Coloradoโs largest reservoir โ to stabilize Lake Powellโs water levels.
The July 24-month study triggered planning for potential emergency releases, called drought response operations, at Lake Powell, and Flaming Gorge, Blue Mesa and Navajo reservoirs, said Chuck Cullom, executive director of the Upper Colorado River Commission.
โThe Upper Division States and Reclamation have been monitoring the risks to Lake Powell since January 2025 due to the declining snowpack and runoff, and are prepared to take appropriate actions as conditions evolve through 2025 and spring of 2026,โ he said in an email to The Colorado Sun.
The back of Glen Canyon Dam circa 1964, not long after the reservoir had begun filling up. Here the water level is above dead pool, meaning water can be released via the river outlets, but it is below minimum power pool, so water cannot yet enter the penstocks to generate electricity. Bureau of Reclamation photo. Annotations: Jonathan P. Thompson
At-risk hydropower
Hydroelectric power generation takes a hit with lower water levels at Lake Powell and Lake Mead.
Reclamationโs dry conditions forecast says Lake Powell could fall below 3,490 feet by December 2026, and Lake Meadโs water level could fall below a key elevation, 1,035 feet, by May 2027. At that point, Hoover Dam would have to turn off several turbines and its power production would be significantly reduced, said Eric Kuhn, a Colorado water expert.
In more typical or unusually wet forecasts, neither reservoir would fall below these critical elevations in the next two years, according to the report.
Lake Powell and other federal reservoirs provide a cheap and consistent source of renewable energy. Without that, electricity providers would have to look to other, more expensive sources of energy or nonrenewable supplies. Some of those costs can get handed down to customers in their monthly utility bills.
Output capacity of the damโs turbines decreases in direct proportion to the reservoirโs surface elevation. As Lake Powell Shrinks, the dam generates less power. Source: Argonne National Laboratory.
Glen Canyonโs hydropower is normally pooled with other power sources to serve customers in Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Texas and Utah. Its power generation has already been impacted: Fourteen of the lowest generation years at the dam have occurred since 2000.
A strong monsoon season this summer could help elevate the water levels in the major reservoirs, as could a heavy winter snowpack in the mountains this coming winter.
โIf next year is below average, then weโre setting ourselves up for some very difficult decisions in the basin,โ said Kuhn, former general manager of the Colorado River District and author of โScience Be Dammed,โ a book about the perils of ignoring science in Western water management.
Arizona power house at Hoover Dam December 2019. Each of the 17 hydroelectric generators at Hoover Dam can produced electricity sufficient for 1,000 houses. Photo credit: Allen Best/The Mountain Town News
An interstate legal mire
Kuhn has also been tracking the releases from Lake Powell with big, interstate legal questions in mind.
If the riverโs flow falls below a 10-year total of about 82.5 million acre-feet, it could trigger a legal mire. In that scenario, the Lower Basin could argue that the Upper Basin would be required to send more water downstream in compliance with the foundational agreement, the 1922 Colorado River Compact.
Some Upper Basin lawyers disagree about the terms of when states, like Colorado, would be required to send more water downstream. Thatโs a big concern for water users, including farmers and ranchers, who say they already donโt have enough water in dry years.
From 2017 to 2026, the 10-year cumulative flow is expected to be about 83 million acre-feet, Kuhn said.
โWeโre OK through 2026,โ Kuhn said. โBut under the most probable and minimum probable [forecasts], itโs almost a certainty that the flow will drop below 82.5.โ
Lake Powellโs ecosystems feel the strain
Bridget Deemer, a research ecologist for the U.S. Geological Survey, keeps her eye on how lower water levels impact ecosystems in Lake Powell.
In a recent study, she found that low dissolved oxygen zones grow larger as water levels fall and more sediment gets backed up in the reservoir over time. This sediment can spur more decomposition, which uses up oxygen in the water.
The zones can cut down on fish habitat. Fish donโt want to be in the warm surface waters of the lake, but as they search for their preferred temperature and food source, they can end up in an area with low oxygen, Deemer said.
The effect is greatest right below Glen Canyon Dam. In 2023, there were 116 days when the oxygen was below 5 milligrams per liter, which is the threshold for trout. At 2 to 3 milligrams per liter, the fish can die.
Deemer also studies how these zones are impacted by algae blooms.
Lake Powell researchers noted toxic algae blooms around the Fourth of July and last fall. They donโt know definitively what caused either bloom event, but research does show that warming water temperatures and increased nutrients are two leading causes of harmful algae blooms.
These blooms can impact fish, people, pets or anything that ingests the algae.
โIn general, Lake Powell is doing well,โ she said. โIts waters are really clear without a lot of nutrients and algal growth. These blooms are smaller scale and localized.โ
In response to last weekโsย dispatchย on a potential new Colorado River sharing deal, Save The Worldโs Rivers! tweeted this compelling โ but, for some, potentially opaque โ tweet:
I say โopaqueโ because at first glance it might seem strange that a 50/50 split of the riverโs waters between the Upper Basin and the Lower Basin would lead to ecological disaster. But it could, if, during a period of extremely low flow years, the 50% sent downstream was so low that it reduced daily flows through the Grand Canyon to a level that could not support fish or the ecology.
Iโve written about the faulty math of the Colorado River Compact many times here. Yet the assumptions of the riverโs flow and the math are hardly the only, or largest, problems with the document. Most egregious was the exclusion of tribal nations from the original negotiations and the compact, itself, even though they collectively are entitled to a significant portion of the riverโs waters. Under the compact, the tribal nationsโ water rights must come out of the respective statesโ allotments โ that reduces tribes to subdivisions of the states, which they are not. They are sovereign nations and their water rights are negotiated with the federal government.
The other very big problem is that the compact never once considers the river, or the ecology that depends upon it. Instead, it apportions all of the water in the river and then some to โbeneficial use,โ which does not include environmental or even recreational uses. The compact also states that โthe use of its waters for purposes of navigation shall be subservient to the uses of such waters for domestic, agricultural, and power purposes.โ If we consider river-running and Lake Powell boating to be navigation, then the compact also deprioritizes those uses, i.e. recreation.
Because all of the Lower Basinโs water must flow through the Grand Canyon, the Lower Basinโs water rights serve as sort of de facto instream water rights through the canyon. In other words, the more water the Imperial Irrigation District and other Lower Basin users demand for irrigating alfalfa, the more water there is for fish and other critters in the Grand Canyon (including river runners). So, if the states were to strike a deal that might allow the Upper Basin to send only a trickle to the Lower Basin, it would also result in a mere trickle flowing through the Grand Canyon.
The thing is, the fish and even the river runners donโt really care much about the annual volume of water in the river, they care more about the daily streamflow. And that is currently regulated by a separate set of rules aside from the Colorado River Compact that were implemented in the 1990s.
But first, letโs go back in time to the years before there was a Glen Canyon Dam. Back then, the Colorado River through Glen Canyon, Marble Gorge, and the Grand Canyon was truly wild. Seasonal streamflow fluctuations were extreme, swinging from as low as 3,000 cubic feet per second in late summer, fall, and winter, to 80,000 cfs or more during spring runoff and late summer monsoonal floods. The water was often laden with orange-red sediment, and in the summer its temperature might reach 80ยฐ F or higher, giving it a viscous, dirty-bathwater feel. It may not have been great for swimming in, but the native fish reveled in it.
The completion of Glen Canyon Dam in 1963 changed all of that. Annual flows were evened out to build up storage in Lake Powell while also meeting Colorado River Compact obligations. Seasonal fluctuations were also no more, and the silt-free, murky green water emanating from the dam was a near-constant 46ยฐ F. Daily fluctuations of streamflow, however, could be erratic and downright manic, depending on the power gridโs need for more juice.
Before there was a Glen Canyon Dam, the Colorado River ran wild and free, often topping out at Lees Ferry at or above 100,000 cubic feet per second, which is ginormous. After the dam was completed, managers withheld flows to fill up the reservoir. Then, in 1983, they withheld too much water, and a massive spring runoff threatened the dam itself, forcing managers to release nearly 100,000 cfs once again and providing a wild ride for Grand Canyon river runners. After the 1996 operations plan was implemented, occasional high-flow releases occurred to help move sediment through the Grand Canyon in an effort to benefit the riparian ecology and build new beaches. But they still pale in comparison with pre-dam high flows. Data source: USGS.
During the first few decades after the dam was completed, the hydropower plant operators had ample leeway to โfollow the loadโ by modulating the flow of water through the turbines. This occasionally caused huge fluctuations in the flow of water through the Grand Canyon. On one July day in 1989, for example, about 3,471 cfs was running through the dam at 5 a.m., a meagre flow by the Coloradoโs standards. By 3 p.m., it had jumped to 29,000 cfsโthe maximum flow through the turbinesโto generate juice to the burgeoning number of air-conditioners on the Southwest power grid. This must have wreaked havoc on river runners in the Grand Canyon, who might have tied up their boats during high flow, only to find them beached out several hours later (or vice versa, depending on how far downriver they were). It probably wasnโt so good for the fish, either.
In the early โ80s, dam operators wanted to maximize the potential for following the load by also installing turbines in the river outlets so they could generate even more power by releasing more water, which likely would have exacerbated daily fluctuations. The proposal was shot down following intense opposition, and sparked an effort to develop a more river-friendly plan for managing the dam.
Congress passed the Grand Canyon Protection Act in 1992, and in 1996 Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt signed off on the Glen Canyon Dam Operations plan, selecting the โModified Low Fluctuating Flowโ alternative โ a compromise between environmental and power-generating interests โ and creating an adaptive management working group. The annual releases would remain the same (8.2 million acre-feet), but it imposed minimum and maximum release rates and maximum fluctuation rates, along with adding in occasional high-flow events meant to simulate pre-dam seasonal fluctuations. This limited Glen Canyon Damโs flexibility as a hydroelectric plant, but it was far better for the downstream river and its users.
A profile of the Colorado River with potential future dam and reservoir sites. From the 1916 USGS paper โColorado River and its utilization,โ by E.C. La Rue.
Yet in the ensuing three decades, power-generation has often taken precedent over downstream ecological health, and the Grand Canyonโs riparian environment remains imperiled. (As long as weโre talking about ironies: A portion of revenues from Glen Canyon Damโs power sales fund endangered fish recovery efforts.)
Whether a new deal to share the Colorado River becomes an ecological disaster would seem to depend less on the annual volume released from Glen Canyon Dam than it does on the daily and seasonal operations of the dam. And I would add this to the above tweet: It would be the second ecological disaster for the Grand Canyon; the first was the construction of Glen Canyon Dam, itself.
The back of Glen Canyon Dam circa 1964, not long after the reservoir had begun filling up. Here the water level is above dead pool, meaning water can be released via the river outlets, but it is below minimum power pool, so water cannot yet enter the penstocks to generate electricity. Bureau of Reclamation photo.
As long as weโre talking streamflowsย โฆ hereโs a hydrograph of the Animas River in Durango for the last year (July 17, 2024-July 17, 2025) and for the same time period during the previous year. You can see that spring runoff this year was lower, and less drawn-out than in 2024, and that the current streamflow is about 25% lower than it was on this date last year. Hopefully the monsoon will arrive soon and boost flows, at least for a bit.
๐คฏ Trump Ticker ๐ฑ
While everyone is going bananas over the Trump/Jeff Epstein brouhaha, the Trump administration is putting its fossil fuel fetish on garish display. This includes:
Yesterday the Interior Departmentย saidย it would subject proposed solar and wind developments on public lands to elevated scrutiny in an effort to end โpreferential treatment for unreliable, subsidy-dependent wind and solar energy.โ Meanwhile these guys have been eliminating environmental reviews for and public input on oil and gas and mining projects. So whoโs getting preferential treatment now?ย
Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency is trying to block the state of Colorado from pushing dirty coal plants to close as part of its effort to reduce air pollution and, well, comply with EPA air quality regulations.ย CPRโs Sam Brasch has theย story, and reports that Coloradoโs not about to take this one lying down.ย
And, the EPA continues to defy its name by extending the deadline for compliance with regulations forย managing coal combustion waste, or CCW. Coal combustion waste is the solid stuff left over from coal burning, like ash, clinkers, and scrubber sludge, and it contains copious quantities of nasty stuff like mercury, arsenic, boron, cobalt, radium, and selenium. This is an enormous waste stream, and is piled up outside coal plants and in coal mines all over the West. Check outย this map from Earthjusticeย to see where the coal waste depositories are near you!ย
And finally, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, in anย Economistย column, wrote that climate change is โnot an existential crisis,โ merely a pesky little โby-product of progress.โ He said he was willing to take the โmodest negative trade-offโ of climate changeโalong, presumably, with the heat waves, wildfires, and devastating floodsโ”for this legacy of human advancement.โ Itโs almost as if they like pollution! It would be funny if it werenโt so tragic.
๐ Good News Corner ๐
Colorado has new wolf pups! Yes, Colorado Parks and Wildlife has confirmed three new wolf families have joined the Copper Creek Pack with new pups, though they have not released the number of pups in each family. This is good news, indeed.
โLike so many Coloradans, Iโm thrilled to hear of new wolf families and puppy paws on the ground,โ said Alli Henderson, southern Rockies director at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a written statement. โThe howl of wolves rising once more in this iconic landscape signals real progress toward restoring balance in Coloradoโs wild places.โ
For more background and history on wolves, check out my essay from a little while back on wolves, wildness, and hope. But youโll have to sign up as a paid subscriber to read it, since the archives are behind the paywall!
Water runs down a spillway at the Shoshone hydro plant in Glenwood Canyon. Rockfalls, fires and mudslides in recent years have caused frequent shutdowns of plant operations. Credit: Heather Sackett/Aspen Journalism
{The Colorado Water Conservation Board] unanimously agreed Tuesday to hear out Front Range water operatorsโ concerns about a Western Slope plan to purchase historic Colorado River water rights.
The Colorado River Water Conservation District, which represents 15 Western Slope counties, negotiated a $99 million deal to purchase water rights tied to the century-old Shoshone Power Plant, owned by a subsidiary of Xcel Energy.
The River District and the Front Range groups โ Aurora Water, Denver Water, Colorado Springs Utilities and Northern Water โ all want to maintain the historical flows past Shoshone to provide predictable water supplies long into the future. They mainly disagree about the amount of water involved. Front Range providers say, if the number is too high, it could hamper their ability to provide water to millions of people.
In June, the Front Range water managers asked the Colorado Water Conservation Board to hold a hearing to air concerns. That hearing will be held during the boardโs meeting, Sept. 16-18.
โWe look forward to the hearing, and we appreciate the effort and the time that you and the staff have put into this effort,โ Andy Mueller, the River Districtโs general manager, said during the board meeting Tuesday. โ[We] look forward to finishing this in September.โ
The decision Tuesday also opened up a seven-day period, ending July 9, for others to ask to join the September hearing. The board will share updates with the public on its website.
The hearing is part of a larger [CWCB Instream and water court] process to decide whether Shoshone Power Plantโs water rights can become an environmental water right, called an instream flow right. These rights aim to keep water in rivers to help aquatic ecosystems.
Photo: 1950 โPublic Service Damโ (Shoshone Dam) in Colorado River near Glenwood Springs Colorado.
In this case, the environmental water right would focus on a 2.4-mile stretch between Shoshoneโs intake dam, which takes water out of the Colorado River, and the end of its penstocks, which return all of Shoshoneโs water to the river. The power plant is tucked into Glenwood Canyon along Interstate 70 a few miles east of Glenwood Springs.
At times, the power plant sucks nearly all of the Colorado Riverโs flow โ depending on the amount of water in the river above the dam โ through its turbines before returning it to the river channel. When this happens, the 2.4-mile stretch immediately below the dam is reduced to a narrow channel of water.
The environmental flow right would allow water managers to keep more water in that stretch of the river to help fish and other aquatic species. If approved, it would be the largest, most influential instream flow right in the stateโs portfolio. The Colorado water board has until Sept. 18 to make its decision.
The Colorado River District wants to purchase the water rights as part of a larger plan to permanently shore up water supplies for Western Slope communities, which have long worried that Shoshoneโs flows could change if Xcel decided to shut down the power plant or sell the water rights.
The district has a purchase agreement with Xcel Energy to buy the rights and lease the water back to Xcel to generate electricity. One of the terms of the deal is getting the instream flow use approved by the state.
The Front Range water providers and water managers want to prevent any changes to Shoshoneโs water rights from harming their water supplies.
Shoshoneโs water rights are like the bottom blocks in a game of Jenga: change to the rights could cause ripple effects statewide, in part, because of their age, location and amount of water.
Shoshoneโs oldest water right can impact up to 10,600 other upstream water rights because of the plantโs geographic location, according to the Colorado Division of Water Resources. Those junior water users include Front Range water managers, like Denver Water and Northern Water, that send water to millions of people.
Colorado transmountain diversions via the State Engineer’s office
The Front Range water operators want to resolve their concerns about the historical flows through Shoshone during the instream flow approval process this summer.
The Colorado River District says their questions can be resolved during the subsequent water court proceedings, where opposing parties will have another opportunity to voice their concerns and make sure their water supplies arenโt negatively impacted.
โWe are deeply concerned that the Front Range entities requesting this contested hearing are asking the CWCB to encroach on the jurisdiction of water court,โ the district said in a prepared statement Tuesday.
Shoshone Falls hydroelectric generation station via USGenWeb
Click the link to read the article on The Denver Post website. (Elise Schmelzer). Here’s an excerpt:
July 2, 2025
Four major Front Range water providers โ Denver Water, Aurora Water, Colorado Springs Utilities and Northern Water โ will presentย their concerns about the purchaseย of theย Shoshone Power Plantย water rights by the Colorado River District during a hearing in September before the Colorado Water Conservation Board. The board during a special meeting Tuesday decided to hold the hearing to hash out the urban utilitiesโ concerns about how much water should be allocated to the right. The board must decide by September whether to approve the new use of the water right proposed by the district…The Colorado River District, a taxpayer-funded agency that works to protect Western Slope water,ย in 2023 announced a $99 million dealย to buy the water rights from Xcel Energy, which owns the power plant. The purchase โ a decades-long effort by the district โ will ensure that water will continue to flow west past the plant tucked into Glenwood Canyon and downstream to the towns, farms and others who rely on the Colorado River even if the century-old power plant were decommissioned.
Each of the Front Range utilities have said they do not oppose the purchase itself. They do, however, question the river districtโs calculations of how much water has been used historically under the rights. Under Colorado water law, that number will determine how much water must flow through the plant in the future. The districtโs calculations are too high, the four utilities argue, and would leave them with less water from the Colorado River for their own uses. The river district has repeatedly said it plans to maintain the status quo and will not use more water than has been used in the past. Disputes about the amount of water historically used under a water right should be settled in water court, the districtโs general manager Andy Mueller said Tuesday in a statement.
โWe are deeply concerned that the Front Range entities requesting this contested hearing are asking the CWCB to encroach on the jurisdiction of water court,โ Mueller said. โโฆ We believe maintaining public trust relies on following the right path and avoiding political intrusion.โ
Colorado transmountain diversions via the State Engineer’s office
Four major Front Range water agencies have requested a state hearing to fully air their objections to a Western Slope plan to purchase historic, coveted Colorado River water rights.
The Colorado River Water Conservation District, which represents 15 Western Slope counties, is leading the effort to purchase the $99 million water rights tied to the century-old Shoshone Power Plant, owned by a subsidiary of Xcel Energy. The district wants to buy the rights to protect historical water resources for Western Slope communities long into the future.
Aurora Water, Denver Water, Colorado Springs Utilities and Northern Waterย also want to maintain the historical flows past Shoshone which provides stability for their water supplies. They just disagree over the numbers, namely how much water is included in the deal. If the number is too high, it could throw a wrench in their water systems.
The stateโs water board, the Colorado Water Conservation Board, will decide duringย a special meeting Tuesdayย whether to grant the hearing requests.
โIf, as the River District asserts, the status quo will be maintained, this acquisition can be a win-win for both the Front Range and the West Slope,โ wrote Marshall Brown, general manager of Aurora Water in a letter on June 9. โHowever โฆ we have significant concerns.โ
The Colorado River District already has passed a few hurdles in its years long effort to purchase the powerful water rights for Shoshone, located just east of Glenwood Springs.
It has a purchase agreement with Xcel Energy. A diverse array of Western Slope cities, agricultural groups, the Colorado legislature and others have promised millions of dollars toward the asking price.
Democratic and Republican Congressional representatives from Colorado have spoken in support of the purchase. U.S. Rep. Jeff Hurd, a Republican from Grand Junction, asked Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum to release the funds in a committee meeting this month.
120 days to decide
The district is moving on with its next step: working with the state to use the water rights to help protect the environment. This is where the concerns over historical flows come in.
The River District wants Shoshoneโs rights to be used to keep water in the Colorado River near the power plant in Glenwood Canyon to benefit aquatic ecosystems when the power plant isnโt generating electricity.
The additional environmental use would secure the flow of water past the power plant, even if the plant goes out of commission โ maintaining the status quo flows permanently. That water could otherwise be used further upstream.
The Colorado Water Conservation Board, faces a September deadline to decide whether to approve this new environmental use, called an instream flow right.
The four Front Range water managers were the only entities to submit notices within that 20-day window.
They want to recalculate how much water has been used at Shoshone in past decades before the matter goes to water court, where opposing parties will have another opportunity to voice their concerns and make sure their water supplies arenโt negatively impacted.
Collectively, the four agencies help deliver water to over 3 million people along the Front Range cities and northeastern plains.
In its letter, Aurora Water said the river districtโs estimate could overstate historic use by up to 300,000 acre-feet. One acre-foot roughly equals the annual water use of two to three households. The utility did not respond in time for publication.
Northern Water is concerned about its ability to fill Green Mountain Reservoir in Summit County, which depends in part on downstream water rights, like Shoshoneโs. The reservoir delivers water to the Western Slope, including to a 15-mile stretch of the Colorado River that provides vital habitat for endangered and threatened fish.
Colorado Springs Utilitiesโ letter said a too-high estimate could cut into the amount of water the provider can divert from the Blue River and the Homestake Water Project, which directs water from the Western Slope to the Eastern Slope.
Denver Water cited similar concerns, saying the proposal, as is, will change the โstatus quoโ in ways that would harm the utilityโs ability to provide water to over 1.5 million people during severe or prolonged drought.
Colorado Springs and Denver Water declined to comment further, referring to their written letters.
If the Colorado Water Conservation Board approves the hearing request, people will have until July 9 to ask to join the hearing process, said Rob Viehl, chief of the Stream and Lake Protection Section at the Colorado Water Conservation Board. The board will share updates with the public on its website and decide the date of the hearing during its meeting Tuesday.
Shoshone hydroelectric generation plant Glenwood Canyon via the Colorado River DistrictShoshone Falls hydroelectric generation station via USGenWebThe blown-out penstock in 2007 at the Shoshone plant. Photo credit: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen JournalismXcel truck at Shoshone plant. Photo credit: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen JournalismThe penstocks feeding the Shoshone hydropower plant on the Colorado River in Glenwood Canyon. Photo credit: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen JournalismThe Shoshone plant and boat ramp on the Colorado River. Photo credit: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen JournalismThe Shoshone hydro plant in Glenwood Canyon, captured here in June 2018, uses water diverted from the Colorado River to make power, and it controls a key water right on the Western Slope. Photo credit: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen JournalismShoshone Hydroelectric plant. Photo credit: The Colorado River DistrictThis historical photo shows the penstocks of the Shoshone power plant above the Colorado River. A coalition led by the Colorado River District is seeking to purchase the water rights associated with the plant. Credit: Library of Congress photoPhoto: 1950 โPublic Service Damโ (Shoshone Dam) in Colorado River near Glenwood Springs Colorado.View of Shoshone Hydroelectric Plant construction in Glenwood Canyon (Garfield County) Colorado; shows the Colorado River, the dam, sheds, a footbridge, and the workmen’s camp. Creator: McClure, Louis Charles, 1867-1957. Credit: Denver Public Library Digital CollectionsThe twin turbines of Xcel Energyโs Shoshone hydroelectric power plant in Glenwood Canyon can generate 15 megawatts. The plant was down for about a year and a half, according to the Colorado Division of Water Resources. Credit: Heather Sackett/Aspen JournalismWater runs down a spillway at the Shoshone hydro plant in Glenwood Canyon. Rockfalls, fires and mudslides in recent years have caused frequent shutdowns of plant operations. Credit: Heather Sackett/Aspen JournalismThe Shoshone hydro plant in Glenwood Canyon. The River District has made a deal with Xcel Energy to buy the water rights associated with the plant to keep water flowing on the Western Slope. Credit: Heather Sackett/Aspen Journalism
Get used to it: Iโm probably going to be using that quote at the head of every post here for the near future at least; nothing so perfectly summarizes the history not just of the past several months, but of the past century, beginning โ so I would argue โ in the 1920s with the first crash of over-financialized hog-trough capitalism, resolved with the construction of Hoover Dam, and the birth of a growing government partnership with the private sector in financing and building what we came to accept as 20thcentury reality.
Since the 1990s and the creation of the internet and virtual reality, we have seen the process of imperial reality creation speed up โ now to a literally unbelievable speed with leadership standing firmly athwart the line between the merely incredible and the absolutely ridiculous.
Science has been puffing and panting along behind the juggernaut of industrial civilization for that whole century, trying to point out theโreal realitiesโ we have to ultimately confront and learn to live with, real realities whose consequences for what we have been doing are measurable, documentable โ and increasingly alarming. So alarming that the Trumpty-Mumpty masters of the universe are telling us we can ignore, deny them. No, not can, but will deny and ignore them, because in their new reality such things as โclimate crisis,โ โsocial inequity,โ โresource depletionโ (including potable water) either do not exist, or are deported, or are otherwise under control.
A Big Beautiful Joke: How many Republicans does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: None; Trump just says Iโve fixed it, and the Republicans sit in the dark and applaudโฆ.
Okay โ moving on. Iโll begin with a couple of corrections to the last post, about the Trumpish assault on the public lands, specifically the lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). First, the correct name of the law mandating the BLM Resource Management Plans that the MAGAs donโt like, is the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA). And second, the Gunnison Sage Grouse is not a subspecies of Sage Grouse; it has been recognized as a distinct species. My apologies, and thanks to Arden Anderson, a retired BLM agent living in Gunnsion.
But now โ well, Iโm confused.
In my last post here, I got about halfway through some historical perspective on a bill proposed by my occasional congressional representative, Jeff Hurd, a lawyer from Grand Junction. (By โoccasional representative,โ I mean I occasionally feel represented by Congressman Hurd, a definite improvement over the Repugnican Lauren Boebert whom he replaced.) But โ now heโs got me almost as confused as Trump gets us all on tariffs.
Hurdโs bill to the House is for a โProductive Public Lands Actโ (โPPL Actโ). In Hurdโs own words: โThis bill would force the Bureau of Land Management to reissue nine Biden-era Resource Management Plans (RMPs) which locked up access to viable lands throughout Colorado and the West. A reissue of these RMPs will put us on a path to energy dominance allowing for a more secure and prosperous United States.โ This is a direct legislative response supporting Trumpโs trumped-up โnational energy emergency,โ announced his first day in office with an executive order titled โUnleashing American Energy.โ One โFirst Dayโ promise he did keep. We will look at more closely at the โnational energy emergencyโ in the next post (if it is still part of official reality).
Meanwhile,ย however, at about the time my post about Hurdโs PPL Act was appearing in your inbox, Hurd announced that he was introducing in the House, as a bipartisan legislation proposal, the bill that Coloradoย Democratย Senator [Michael Bennet] had just introduced in the Senate, for a โGunnison Outdoor Resources Protection Actโ (โGORP Actโ).
The GORP Act, if passed, according to Senator [Bennet’s] website description, โwill protect over 730,000 acres of public lands in Western Colorado, safeguarding the regionโs local economy, world-class recreation, ranching heritage, wildlife habitat, and clean air and water.โ Itโs a true mulitple-use bill, in the spirit of the FLPMA, that includes:
Enlargement of existing wilderness areas into undeveloped land around their edges;
โProtection Areasโ designated to protect the natural and undeveloped character of public lands;
โRecreation Management Areasโ to provide for sustainable management of both motorized and unmotorized recreation;
โSpecial Management Areasโ set aside for โbroadly conserving, protecting, and enhancing the natural, scenic, scientific, cultural, watershed, recreation and wildlife resourcesโ;
A โRocky Mountain Scientific Research and Education Areaโ in the upper East River valley, above and below the Rocky Mountain Biological Lab in Gothic;
โWildlife Conservation Areasโ to conserve and restore wildlifeย andย wildlife habitat (including the Gunnison Sage Grouse);
Existing mineral claims or oil and gas leases can be developed, but there will be no further withdrawals for minerals or oil and gas on the public lands covered by GORP, and the oil and gas rights under some of the land can only be developed with no surface disturbance (by horizontal drilling or tunneling).
If the GORP bill were to pass, it would require new Resource Management Plans that would, in Repugnican terminology, be โlocking upโ a large quantity of public land for a diversity of uses valued in the local economy and culture โ with no accommodation for the โnational energy emergency.โ The GORP bill includes practically everything the โProductive Public Landsโ bill wants to undo in nine existing BLM Resource Management Plans.
It is not, in short, a bill anyone would expect from even a Republican, let alone a Repugnican โ and certainly not from the congressman who put the โProductive Public Landsโ bill before the House. Iโve submitted a question to Congressman Hurd asking for his rationale, in submitting one bill that essentially contradicts another bill he had submitted. Iโve received no answer yet, but will pass it along when I do.
The simplest explanation โ maybe just simplistic, fitting the Trumpty-Mumpty era โ is that Rep, Hurd knows that the โProductive Public Landsโ bill will probably be passed by the Republican-majority House (the usual one or two vote โlandslideโ), while the GORP Act has practically no chance of passing. But proposing it will make him some friends among the conservationists and environmentalists that continue to be a growing part of his district, grasping at any straw in these times. Or maybe, Iโve heard it suggested locally, his work session with the Gunnison County Commissioners, between his presentation of the two bill, was a low voltage version of the biblical bolt that struck Saul/Paul on the road to Damascus. The commissioners did make a well-informed and passionate defense of the grassroots input on and support for the amended Gunnison Sage Grouse RMP that Rep. Hurdโs PPL Act would throw out.
And the amended Sage Grouse Resource Management Plan deserves a defense, in whatโs left of our democratic system of governance. Rep. Hurd and other Repugnican supporters blame these RMPs on President Biden, but all President Biden did was what other presidents this century, excepting Trump, have done: they have stood back and let the 1970 National Environmental Policy Act, and the two 1976 Acts, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act and the National Forest Management Act, work as Congress intended, back in the way-too-short 1970s โenviro-populistโ era.
That legislation happened before the Supreme Court turned our elections over to the plutocrats who only want to get richer. From the mid-1960s through the 1970s, the people elected a series of Congresses that actually performed the will of the people, who saw the forests dying from acid rain, rivers too polluted to even swim in let alone drink from, air sometimes unbreathable, and who wanted to protect and restore what was still salvagable on the planet after a century of pedal-to-the-metal, balls-to-the-wall industrial capitalism. That, in at least my mind, is one of the times when America was great. And needs to be great again in that way, even greater as the challenges escalate โ but that wonโt happen during the Trumpty-Mumpty hog-trough administration.
The GORP bill is a synthesis of portions of the plans evolving since the turn of the century to keep the Gunnison Sage Grouse viable as a species, and also of a โGunnison Public Lands Initiativeโ that has been evolving since 2014. The โGPLIโ is a collaboration involving ranchers, motorized and non-motorized recreational users, whitewater and flatwater interests, and other stakeholders whose joint purpose is to strike a balance between conservation (in culture as well as nature), preservation, and tourism on the 2.5 million acres of public lands in Gunnison County โ four-fifths of the County. Sage Grouse concerns spread the GORP bill into counties beyond Gunnison County where the bird is found in small populations.
The national public land agencies โ mainly the BLM and Forest Service โ accept the need for public participation in resource management planning, and respect the level of knowledge that most stakeholders bring to the table; but they also have top-down management priorities to work into the mix, and are a little reluctant about โcitizen initiativesโ with a more local economic and ecological focus. Senator Bennett used the Gunnison Public Lands Initiative as a foundation document for his GORP bill, but the U.S. Forest Service mostly ignored it in the recent Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forest planning process for the next decade.
They prefer citizen response to alternatives established (with citizen participation) through the NEPA environmental analysis procedure; various alternative management action plans are outlined and analyzed according to the exhaustive (and often exhausting to read) environmental analysis that had been assembled. There is always a โno action, continue current managementโ alternative; there is usually a โheavy industrialโ alternative that the environmental and recreational users donโt like, a โheavy recreation and preservationโ alternative that the loggers and miners donโt like, and gradations between leading to a โpreferred alternativeโ that tries to balance the various multiple uses in a way that everyone can live with.
So that is where we stand now: Senator [Bennet] and Representative Hurd are presenting the grassroots, multiple-use โGunnison Outdoor Resource Planning Actโ bill (GORP Act) in the two houses of Congress, with thirty West Slope participating organizations signed on, including eleven County Boards of Commissioners. And Representative Hurd is presenting in the House of Representatives the โProductive Public Lands Act bill (PPL Act). The GORP bill, if passed, would require Resource Management Plans of exactly the type that the PPL bill, if passed, would seek to rescind, in favor of a top-down, single-use bill to โUnleash American Energy.โ
Next time, we will take a deeper look at the unleashing of American energy on our public lands. (And after that, I promise, itโs back to the river โ the beautiful, the beautiful and also useful river.
The San Juan River near Navajo Dam, New Mexico, Aug. 23, 2015. Photo credit: Phil Slattery Wikimedia Commons
From email from Reclamation (Conor Felletter):
June 23, 2025
The Bureau of Reclamation has scheduled an increase in the release from Navajo Dam from 350 cubic feet per second (cfs) to 450 cfs for Tuesday, June 24th, at 4:00 AM.
Releases are made for the authorized purposes of the Navajo Unit, and to attempt to maintain a target base flow through the endangered fish critical habitat reach of the San Juan River (Farmington to Lake Powell). The San Juan River Basin Recovery Implementation Program recommends a target base flow of between 500 cfs and 1,000 cfs through the critical habitat area. The target base flow is calculated as the weekly average of gaged flows throughout the critical habitat area from Farmington to Lake Powell.
This scheduled release change is subject to changes in river flows and weather conditions. If you have any questions, please reply to this message, call 970-385-6500, or visit Reclamationโs Navajo Dam website at https://www.usbr.gov/uc/water/crsp/cs/nvd.html
The Yampa River Environmental Release Program is a collaboration between several local and state entities to ensure the Yampa River remains at a healthy flow and water temperature. Three of the main partners are the Colorado Water Trust, the city of Steamboat Springs and Friends of the Yampa. Friends of the Yampa is essentially the managing body for the finances of the Yampa River Fund, which provides necessary money for ideal water flow into the Yampa. Mike Robertson, the Yampa River Fund manager, explained the fund is a committee made up of groups throughout the Yampa Valley that help allocate and provide a sustainable funding source for flow releases. The money is held with Yampa Valley Community Foundation, which doles out the grants, while Friends of the Yampa acts as the managing entity. Each year, the Yampa River Fund provides about half of the money Colorado Water Trust needs to lease water from Stagecoach and Elkhead reservoirs. According to Blake Mamich, programs director at the Colorado Water Trust, the other half of the funding comes from the Colorado Water Conservation Board. The financial support of these two groups is crucial to the success of the release program in keeping the Yampa River at a safe temperature and flow rate for its ecosystem…
The Colorado Water Trust is set to release 5,100 acre feet from Stagecoach Reservoir in addition to 2,000 acre feet from Elkhead Reservoir over the course of this summer. This water will be released during times when the river is considered to be at a low flow…This water is not released all at once but must be stretched out and conserved to ensure that there is enough to sustain the Yampa during its critical period in late summer and early fall. Mamich noted that during this time, about half the water that runs through downtown Steamboat originates from Stagecoach.ย Factors that determine low-flow status are measured by the city. These criteria are primarily water temperature and water flow. According to city municipal code, recreational activity is closed if any or all of these conditions are met: the Yampa River flow drops below 85 cubic feet per second, the dissolved oxygen level average is less than 6 milligrams per liter and/or the water exceeds 75 degrees Fahrenheit for two or more consecutive days.ย
In aย 36-page ruling, Supreme Court justices said the Surface Transportation Board, a federal agency that oversees rail transit, had sufficiently considered the proposalโs environmental impacts when it approved the plan in 2021.ย Justice Brett Kavanaugh, writing the opinion for the other justices, said the board โidentified and analyzed numerous โsignificant and adverse impacts that could occur as a resultโ of the railroad lineโs construction and operation โ including disruptions to local wetlands, land use, and recreation.โ
[…]
The planย had been on holdย after a lower appeals court in 2023 ruled in favor of a lawsuit brought by Eagle County and five environmental groups that claimed the transportation boardโs review had underestimated the railwayโs environmental impact.ย The lawsuit garnered support from a coalition of local governments, including Pitkin, Routt, Grand and Boulder counties, the cities of Basalt, Avon, Minturn, Red Cliff, Crested Butte, Glenwood Springs and Grand Junction, and the Northwest Colorado Council of Governments…
At the heart of the lawsuit and the question before the Supreme Court was whether the transportation board had sufficiently followed the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA,ย when it approved the railway…The 55-year-old law requires federal agencies to consider the environmental impacts of their decisions, and the transportation board issued a 3,600-page environmental analysis as part of that review.ย
This historical photo shows the penstocks of the Shoshone power plant above the Colorado River. A coalition led by the Colorado River District is seeking to purchase the water rights associated with the plant. Credit: Library of Congress photo
Denver, Aurora, Colorado Springs and Northern Water voiced opposition Wednesday to the Western Slopeโs proposal to spend $99 million to buy historic water rights on the Colorado River.
The Colorado River Water Conservation District has been working for years to buy the water rights tied to Shoshone Power Plant, a small, easy-to-miss hydropower plant off Interstate 70 east of Glenwood Springs. The highly coveted water rights are some of the largest and oldest on the Colorado River in Colorado.
The Front Range providers are concerned that any change to the water rights could impact water supplies for millions of people in cities, farmers, industrial users and more. The Front Range providers publicly voiced their concerns, some for the first time,ย at a meeting of the Colorado Water Conservation Board, a state water policy agency.
The proposed purchase taps into a decades-old water conflict in Colorado: Most of the stateโs water flows west of the Continental Divide; most of the population lives to the east; and water users are left to battle over how to share it.
โIf this proposal were to go forward as presented in the application, it could harm our ability to provide water for essential use during severe or prolonged drought. I think itโs important for the board to understand that,โ Jessica Brody, an attorney for Denver Water, told the 15-member board Wednesday.
Denver Water, the oldest and largest water provider in Colorado, delivers water to 1.5 million residents in the Denver area.
The Colorado River District, which represents 15 Colorado counties west of the Continental Divide, wants to keep the status quo permanently to support river-dependent Western Slope economies without harming other water users, district officials said.
The overstressed and drought-plagued river is a vital water source for about 40 million people across the West and northern Mexico.
โThat right is so important to keeping the Colorado River alive,โ Andy Mueller, Colorado River District general manager, said during the meetingโs public comment period. โThis is a right that will save this river from now into eternity โฆ and thatโs why this is so important.โ
Over 70 people, nearly twice the usual audience, attended the four-hour Shoshone discussion Wednesday, which involved 561 pages of documents, over 20 speakers and a public comment period.
The Western Slope aims to make history
The water rights in question, owned by Public Service Company of Colorado, a subsidiary of Xcel, are some of the most powerful on the Colorado River in Colorado.
Using the rights, the utility can take water out of the river, send it through hydropower turbines, and spit it back into the river about 2.4 miles downstream.
One right is old, dating back to 1905, which means it can cut off water to younger โ or junior โ upstream water users to ensure it gets its share of the river in times of shortage. Some of those junior water rights are owned by Denver Water, Aurora, Colorado Springs Utilities and Northern Water.
The rights are also tied to numerous, carefully negotiated agreements that dictate how water flows across both western and eastern Colorado.
Bicycling the Colorado National Monument, Grand Valley in the distance via Colorado.com
Over time, Western Slope communities have come to rely on Shoshoneโs rights to pull water to their area to benefit farmers, ranchers, river companies, communities and more.
The Colorado River District wants to buy the rights to ensure that westward flow of water will continue even if Xcel shuts down Shoshone (which the utility has said, repeatedly, it has no plans to do).
Theyโve gathered millions of dollars from a broad coalition of communities, irrigators and other water users. The state of Colorado plans to give $20 million to help fund the effort.
Supporters sent over 50 letters to the Colorado Water Conservation Board before Wednesdayโs meeting.
โI wanted to just convey the excitement that the river district and our 30 partners have, here on the West Slope, to really do something that is available once in a generation,โ Mueller said.
The Front Range water providers all said they, too, wanted to maintain those status quo flows. They just donโt want to see any changes to the timing, amount or location of where they get their supplies.
Under the districtโs proposal, the state would be able to use Shoshoneโs senior water rights to keep water in the Colorado River for ecosystem health when the power plant isnโt in use.
The Colorado Water Conservation Board is tasked with deciding whether it will accept the districtโs proposal for an environmental use. The meeting Wednesday triggered a 120-day decision making process.
โAny change to the rights will have impacts both intended and unintended, and it is important for the board to understand those impacts to avoid harm to existing water users,โ Brody said.
The water provider plans to contest the Colorado River Districtโs plan within that 120-day period.
How much water is at stake?
The Front Range providers voiced another concern: The River Districtโs proposal could be inflating Shoshoneโs past water use.
Water rights come with upper limits on how much water can be used. Itโs a key part of how water is managed in Colorado: Setting a limit ensures one person isnโt using too much water to the detriment of other users.
For those who have a stake in Shoshoneโs water rights โ which includes much of Colorado โ itโs a number to fight over.
The River District did an initial historical analysis, which calculated that Shoshone used 844,644 acre-feet on average per year between 1975 and 2003. One acre-foot of water supplies two to three households for a year.
Denver Water said the analysis ignored the last 20 years of Shoshone operations. Colorado Springs, Northern Water and Aurora questioned the districtโs math. Northern was the first provider to do so publicly in August.
โWe think the instream flow is expanded from its original historic use by up to 36%,โ said Alex Davis, Aurora Waterโs assistant general manager of water supply and demand.
She requested the board do its own study of Shoshoneโs historical water use instead of accepting the River Districtโs analysis โ which would mean the state agency would side with one side of the state, the Western Slope, against the other, Davis said.
The River District emphasized that its analysis was preliminary. The final analysis will be decided during a multiyear water court process, which is the next step if the state decides to accept the instream flow application.
Water court can be contentious and costly, Davis said.
โThis could be incredibly divisive if we have to battle it out in water court, and we donโt want to do that,โ Davis said.
We are an empire now, and when we act, we create our own realityโฆ. And while youโre studying that realityโjudiciously, as you willโweโll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and thatโs how things will sort out.โ
That is indeed the way things seem to be sorting out today, in imperial America, under the imperious Trump, breakers of things. โThe administrationโ breaks a law in the process of creating Trumpโs still vaguely formulated imperial reality. Citizen groups bring suit against his action, and the action is studied by judges in the context of the Constitutional rule-of-law, part of our existing (recently existing?) triumvirate reality of legislate-execute-evaluate, checks-and-balances, et cetera.
The judges tell Trump that he is exceeding his Constitutional authority, and he must undo most of what he has done. But by then he has distracted us from that by breaking something else in his chainsaw massacre of 250 years of American evolution, another action the judges must study and pass judgment on, thanks to suits brought by groups faithful to Constitutional reality.
But Trump ignores all of their judgments by appealing them, as he continues to commit actions reshaping reality and warranting further judicial study. And the Constituttional reality weโve taken for granted for 250 years suddenly begins to seem somewhat less real than it was back in good old 2024. When we should have known better โ but those damn grocery prices, and Trump promised that on day oneโฆ. Well, fool us once, shame on the fool; fool us twice (or fifty or a hundred times), shame on us.
So on to damage control. Today I want to look at the unfolding situation with the nationโs public lands โ always a sore spot with many true conservative Republicans from western states as well as Trumpโs Repugnicans. The map below shows the situation โ more than 630 million acres of public land, most of it by far in the West: small dots and patches of it east of the Great Plains, but vast swaths west of the plains. This land is our land, as the song says, but how the composite โwe the peopleโ can or should relate to and live with this land has been an ongoing debate at all levels of governance for more than 250 years.
Youโll quickly note from the map above that public land is almost half of what we call the โIntermountain Westโ โ the region between (and including) the Rocky Mountains on the east and the Sierra-Cascade ranges on the West. The importance of these particular public lands and their resources extends well beyond their actual geography. Most all of the water for the Colorado River, for example, starts on public lands in the green areas (National Forest lands) in the states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, and nurtures the entire River Basin and some out-of-basin extensions all the way to southern California. Coal trains continue to rumble eastward from Wyoming, Utah and Colorado carrying low-sulphur coal to the remaining back-east coal-fired power plants โ and the Trumpsters want to make coal great again (โclean, coalโ of course). Trucks roll down from the publicโs mountain forests carrying 150-year-old spruce logs like we will not see again for four or five generations, if then, destined for suburban housing โ and the Trumptsters want to increase logging from those lands by 25 percent.
But what I want to focus on today is the yellow land on the map, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land that makes up around half of the Intermountain West, and a large portion of the Colorado River Basin, mostly below 8,000 feet elevation. The BLM is a bureaucracy in the Interior Department, Iโll remind you, charged with managing all of the public lands that have not yet been designated for more specific uses, like National Forests or National Parks.
This gets the BLM nicknamed the โBureau of Leftover Management,โ but that misses the real picture. The BLM lands do include a lot of brown or just barren land that makes one think nature is still trying to figure out what to do with it. But the BLM lands also include a very diverse and often spectacularly beautiful array of ecological landscapes from which areas are regularly designated (and sometimes undesignated then redesignated) as National Monuments (28 of them now on former BLM land), Wilderness Areas (221), and more than 600 others areas designated as part of the National Conservation Lands, including National Scenic Rivers, National Scenic and Historic Trails, and,refuges for various threatened and endangered species. There are treasures yet to be discovered, and either used or protected from use, in the BLM lands.
Significant segments of this land made the news recently when my congressman, Jeff Hurd of Coloradoโs Third District (the West Slope, headwaters of the Colorado River), introduced a bill for a โProductive Public Lands Act.โ Rep. Hurd, I will note, occasionally behaves more like a true Republican than a Repugnican. He was one of the few Republican congressmen brave enough to voice disapproval of Trumpโs pardon of all the January Sixth rebels. Most recently, he was the only Republican to vote against the suspicious sale of some BLM lands in the vicinity of โgrowth hot spotsโ in Nevada and Utah. He has shown some spine in not drinking all of the Trump koolaid.
But the โProductive Public Lands Actโ bill, and the language used to sell it, are pure Trumpish bullshit. I will let Congressman Hurd speak first for it: โThis bill would force the Bureau of Land Management to reissue nine Biden-era Resource Management Plans (RMPs) which locked up access to viable lands throughout Colorado and the West. A reissuance of [the Trump-era] RMPs will put us on a path to energy dominance allowing for a more secure and prosperous United States.โ
A colleague in the Western Republican Caucus, California Congressman Doug LaMalfa, chimes in: โThe Biden Administration was hell-bent on locking up public lands, threatening the prosperity of rural economies across the countryโฆ. Fortunately, a new era has dawned, and we have the opportunity to reverse these lockups and reinstate the multiple-use mandate on Americaโs public lands.โ
Thatโs raw meat to the Trump base, but itโs also disinformation of the sort that sounds good to the uncommitted but under-informed โ and most of us are somewhat under-informed on the public lands. โMultiple useโ โ who can object to that? Especially if Joe Biden was trying to โlock upโ the pubic lands and threatening our rural prosperity!
But as usual the barefoot lie has legs and runs off in all directions while the truth is still pulling on its support hose. The nine Resource Management Plans in question wereย notย created by President Biden and his โdeep stateโ cronies in Washington; they were created in accord with the rule of law, in this case, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act. (FLMPA), passed in 1976 in a couple of remarkable decades of what might be called โeco-populismโ: a nation of people deeply concerned about the growing impacts of a century of unbridled industrial capitalism supercharged by fossil-fuel technology โ acid rain killing the forests, industrial pollution killing the rivers, out-of-sight-out-of-mind buried barrels of unidentified stuff killing people drinking from aquifers. The people elected Congresses in the 1960s and 70s that โ imagine this! โ actually addressed the peopleโs concerns with legislation that began to change the game; tempering the enthusiastic power to change the planet with a growing sense of responsibility for the changes being wrought, and their consequences.
American Progress (1872) by John Gast is an allegorical representation of the modernization of the new west. Columbia, a personification of the United States, is shown leading civilization westward with the American settlers. She is shown bringing light from east to west, stringing telegraph wire, holding a book, and highlighting different stages of economic activity and evolving forms of transportation. By John Gast – This image is available from the United States Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID 09855.This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing for more information., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=373152
Passage of the FLMPA in 1976 marked a major step in the evolution of public land management โ which did not even exist overall until after World War II. From the 1780s until 1946, all of the new nationโs undesignated lands were under the U.S. General Land Office, which essentially had one purpose: to get as much of that land as possible into private hands as soon as possible, through vehicles like the 1864 Homestead Act, the 1872 General Mining Act, and others going back the 1787 Northwest Ordinance. The American expansionist vision was a land full of rugged American individuals, farming, mining, logging, stockgrowing, all with their own piece of land, and all living in modest decentralized self-sufficient communities that would be the safely dispersed foundation of American democracy.
But by 1900 we were beginning to take ever-larger segments of the public lands out of Land Office control, realizing that cheap land was often getting treated cheaply. Congress began setting aside National Parks and Monuments, beginning with Yellowstone in 1872. In the 1890s presidents began establishing โForest Reservesโ to protect valuable forest land from โtimber minersโ; early in the 20th century these became National Forests, and were moved administratively to the Department of Agriculture, with rangers to protect them and set up grazing fees and timber sales.
Charging for uses on the unclaimed public lands that had basically been used free was not popular (still isnโt), but there was a grudging acknowledgment that management was probably necessary. This was affirmed in the 1930s when a group of Colorado ranchers worked with their congressman Edward Taylor to create the 1934 Taylor Grazing Act, and 80 million acres were withdrawn from General Land Office disposition to be managed by a new Grazing Service โ with fees for users.
That paralleled another big cultural change happening in America through the first half of the 20th century: rural Americans were moving to the cities; around 1920 the growing urban population passed the declining rural population, and while the nation still paid lip service to the โfamily farm,โ there were few people going out to homestead on the public lands. Instead, an increasingly well-off and mobile urban โmiddle class,โ with two-week paid vacations, rediscovered the public lands as a resource for recreation, relaxation and renewal; they wanted the public lands to stay forever beautiful, spectacular, adventuresome โ and accessible.
These two changes led to the Grazing Service and the General Land Office being quietly combined in 1946 into the Bureau of Land Management โ with the Land Office gradually fading into irrelevance: the United States were no longer in the business of selling off national treasures cheap.
What we see in this evolution is a nation of people gradually waking up to the reality of needing to begin taking responsibility for the consequences of a century of enthusiastic exploitation. The final step came 30 years later with the Federal Land Management and Planning Act in 1976 noted earlier โ following the foundational National Environmental Policy Act of 1970. NEPA mandated that any project involving federal funding would be preceded by a full environmental impact analysis: we will look before we leap. And if it involved public land, it would have to fit in with developed Resource Management Plans, and some larger projects would have to do their own RMP. This was tedious, difficult, often contentious work โ but essential to serious democratic governance. Impatience with this hard work is the first seed of submission to tyranny.
The Resource Management Plans for public lands are all required to have two components. One is planning for multiple uses โ all the uses practiced or potentially practiced on the land in question had to be fit into the overall purposes of each plan. The other requirement is public participation at every stage of the process, from all groups with a practical or potential use interest in that land.
โMultiple useโ does not mean โeverything going on everywhereโ; it means determining how much of every use represented at the table can go on with reasonable accommodation to every other use, and where in the planning area it should happen. There are land and resource uses that are compatible with other uses, and there are uses destined to be the only thing happening in specific places. Mining/drilling, logging, and intensive farming are obviously single uses on any given piece of land, while grazing and hiking and some conservation uses can all go on in the same area, with reasonable accommodations to each other. And the โmandatedโ public participation means that all would-be users will be heard from in the planning process โ participate or shut up.
A Gunnison sage-grouse hen leads her chicks in the Gunnison basin during the summer of 2019. Some private landowners have undertaken habitat restoration projects on placed conservation easements on their property in an effort to protect the bird. Photo credit: Greg Petersen via Aspen Journalism
I canโt speak to all nine of the Resource Management Plans that Hurd and LaMalfa want to repeal, but I am quite familiar with one of them: โThe Gunnison Sage-Grouse Record of Decision and Approved Resource Management Plan Amendment, dated October 2024.โ This is a RMP to try to save a species of Sage Grouse that has been listed as โThreatenedโ by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, under the Endangered Species Act. Without going into the multiple decades of detail, this plan was worked out among ranchers, outdoor recreational users (both motorized and unmotorized), fishermen, environmental organizations, scientists, local government representatives, state and federal agencies, industrial reps when relevant, and citizens just interested.
There are places in the basin where some of the single-use land users are indeed โlocked outโ for restoration needs, but this is not โJoe Biden locking them outโ; this is the people establishing priorities based on difficult efforts to balance economic and ecological needs, in places at least as dependent on recreational uses as extractive uses. Bidenโs only relationship with the whole process was to give the rule of law (FLMPA/NEPA) his blessing, and the time and space it warrants to get it hashed out down on the ground where the problem shapes lives.
To hammer the point home, in case you donโt get it โ This is not an absence of โmultiple use planningโ; it is a stellar example of it. The RMP has been worked out over the past two decades by multiple users of landscapes shared with a threatened species who are all willing to try to live with the plan โ the kind of local governance that was once celebrated by โMain Street Republicansโ (as opposed to โWall Street Republicansโ). I expect the other eight plans have somewhat the same rooted authenticity.
So long as we have the legal mandate to do this, and the local patience and will to work it out in our down-on-the-ground reality, we have not yet fully succumbed to the imperial โcreated realityโ that Trump and our local Congressman want to impose on us.
The next logical step here is to ask whether the poor oppressed oil and gas industry, which the Repugnicans want to โliberateโ through the Productive Public Lands Bill, really needs liberating โ which requires looking at what they can and cannot do now, and whose fault that is or isnโt. But Iโve taken so long here in providing some background for that discussion that itโs time to give you a breather. Iโll be back with the rest of the story in a couple weeks. Stay tuned.
Meanwhile, Iโll leave you with this irrelevant reflection on Trumpโs rejection of the low-flow showerhead:
An anti-BLM sticker (referring, presumably, to the federal land agency, not the Black Lives Matter movement) at another Phil Lyman rally against โfederal overreachโ and motorized travel closures in southeastern Utah back in 2014. Photo credit: Jonathan P. Thompson/The Land Desk
The wetlands of the Prairie Pothole Region provide essential benefits to communities and are a premier waterfowl breeding ground. Explore how CASC science is informing the strategic restoration and management of the Prairie Pothole Region in the face of climate change. Photo credit: USGS
Click the link to read the article on the USGS website:
Waterfowl hunting. Credit: Chuck Traxler, USFWS
Climate Change and the Prairie Pothole Region
The Prairie Pothole Region’s economic and recreational significance is deeply rooted in its unique ecological characteristics. Extending across the northern Great Plains, the region’s rich, glaciated soils are a foundation for high-yield agriculture, contributing to the production of key commodities like wheat, soybeans, and corn. Across this landscape, depressional wetlands are interspersed with neighboring grasslands. These wetlands, commonly referred to as prairie potholes, provide essential benefits to communities like mitigating flood risks and regulating water flow, filtering pollutants, improving downstream water quality, storing significant amounts of carbon, and providing habitat for fish and wildlife.
The Prairie Pothole Region is a both a premier waterfowl breeding ground, attracting a large number of hunters, and major contributor to hunting opportunities across the continent. The region’s reputation as “North America’s Duck Factory” draws waterfowl hunters from within and outside the United States. Hunting and associated travel expenditures generate substantial revenue for local communities. An estimated 10,000 jobs and $760 million in labor income is generated in the region due to hunting and wildlife viewing. In recognition of these services provided by prairie pothole landscapes, conservation investment from federal programs like the Farm Bill and the North American Wetlands Conservation Act (NAWCA) provide significant funding for conservation initiatives. These investments support habitat restoration, land management, and research, creating jobs and stimulating economic activity in the conservation sector. Finally, national wildlife refuges and other public lands provide the public with additional access to these habitats so they can enjoy the many recreational opportunities.
Climate change is increasing temperatures and changing precipitation patterns, leading to pronounced shifts in this region. More frequent, high intensity storms over the last 25 years have been observed, causing a shift from snow-melt driven hydrology to summer and fall storm driven hydrology. At the same time, more frequent and severe droughts are causing changes in the diversity of wetland sizes, negatively impacting habitat quality of smaller-sized wetlands and landscape heterogeneity important to diverse waterfowl and wildlife populations. Land-use change, combined with these effects of climate change, are diminishing the region’s capacity to support viable populations of waterfowl and other wildlife populations. Climate adaptation scientists can provide the expertise and research needed to inform future adaptations important to maintaining the recreational and economic benefits of this region.
Supporting Prairie Pothole Management and Sustaining Recreational Opportunities
Since 2018, the USGS Climate Adaptation Science Centers has been documenting key impacts of climate change on this region. Results from multiple research efforts can inform strategic acquisition, restoration, and management in the Prairie Pothole Region to maintain its ecological, economic, and cultural importance to the United States.
Waterfowl on Lake Andes; Lake Andes National Wildlife Refuge. Public domain
Impacts of Climate-Driven Shifts in Prairie Pothole Wetlands on Waterfowl
Recent science indicates that climate and land use change are affecting Prairie Pothole wetlands in unexpected ways, indicating that new areas may need to be targeted for restoration to maintain suitable waterfowl breeding habitat. Partnering with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, CASC scientists used new models to simulate how these wetlands would change under different future climate change scenarios, and how those changes would impact the ability of the wetlands to support waterfowl breeding.
Results showed that areas that currently have the highest densities of intact wetlands and support large numbers of breeding ducks will also likely be the most successful in maintaining these habitats under future climate conditions. Additional follow up work used extensive datasets in collaboration with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service scientists to generate actionable insights that can inform conservation strategies for grassland and wetland ecosystems in the Prairie Pothole Region.
Prairie Pothole Landscape on Broken Arrow WPA Lake Andes Wetland Management District South Dakota. Sources/Usage Public Domain. Credits: Marcie Hebert, USFWS
How Climate Change is Linking Prairie Pothole Wetlands to River Wetlands
Wetlands in the Upper Mississippi River Basin help control floods, filter pollution, and provide critical habitat for migratory birds. However, high intensity rainfall events can cause these depressional wetlands to overflow and connect with Mississippi River tributaries. This reduces the ability of wetlands to process nutrients and mitigate nutrient pollution in the Mississippi River. These overflow events are expected to increase due to climate change and land management, as extreme precipitation events become more frequent and severe.
CASC scientists are working with managers to identify how wetlands along the Minnesota River, a large tributary of the Mississippi River, will respond to floods, and the resulting implications for water quality and migratory bird habitat. This information will feed into a tool that will allow management agencies to balance wildlife and water quality objectives in future conservation actions.
Mallard Hen in Flight over Lake Andes Wetland Management District South Dakota. Sources/Usage Public Domain.
How Weather Patterns and Land Use Influence Where Ducks are During the Fall and Winter
Ducks from the Prairie Pothole Region are important for both the economy and culture of the region. However, climate and land use change are altering their habitat are causing ducks to move to new areas during the hunting season. Partnering with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Ducks Unlimited, CASC scientists tracked these changes in duck distributions, using data from bird banding, hunting, and counts. They found that while many ducks are spending winters farther north, but it’s not a simple story. Different duck species are shifting their winter locations in different ways. Understanding these specific changes is key to figuring out what’s driving them and will inform decisions about managing habitats and harvest.
The USGS helps Department of the Interior partners explore possible management decisions to prevent invasive fish from spreading into the Grand Canyon.
Sources/Usage: Public Domain.ย View Media Details Learn about how USGS scientists work with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Bureau of Reclamation to protect Grand Canyon ecosystems from invasive smallmouth bass. From modeling fish population growth to forecasting the effects of future dam operations, the USGSโs unbiased, high-quality science helps on-the-ground managers rise to new challenges brought on by climate change. (Click to view the video)
Part 1: The River
The Colorado River is not a naturally flowing river, not anymore. With Glen Canyon Dam upstream and Hoover Dam downstream, the Colorado River in Grand Canyon is one of the most highly regulated water systems in the world. Its flow generates hydroelectricity, irrigates crops and provides water to nearly 40 million people across seven U.S. states, 30 Tribal Nations and two Mexican states.
Graphic via Holly McClelland/High Country News.
Managing the Colorado River Basin is complicated. Federal, state and Tribal agencies balance the needs of many user groups, from anglers to farmers to city municipalities. They also care for the river as an ecosystem, home to rare fish and the foundation of Grand Canyon, one of the Nationโs natural treasures. In an era of heat waves and drought, when there is less water than ever to go around, managers increasingly need high-quality science to respond to emerging challenges.
The USGS provides critical science to resource managers in the Colorado River and Grand Canyon. Our stream gages monitor water quality and flows, our researchers track fish populations and our modelers forecast how resources may respond to future conditions. We help managers anticipate new threats and consider potential outcomes of management decisions.
And on a scorching day in June 2022, the summer Lake Powell reached its lowest water level in five decades, we sprang into action when one of our predictions became suddenly real.
Did you hear what they caught in Lees Ferry?ย
For the first time, National Park Service staff caught baby smallmouth bass in the lower Colorado River, south of the Glen Canyon Dam holding back Lake Powell. While this voracious, predatory fish had previously been caught in very low numbers in the relatively pristine Grand Canyon ecosystem, such captures had been rare, and they had never been observed reproducing.
The finding raised fresh concerns about the future of native fish of the Grand Canyon.
Part 2: The Fish
Smallmouth bass were originally stocked in Lake Powell as a valued catch for anglers and have since established healthy populations throughout the lake. But with low lake levels in recent years, smallmouth bass can be sucked through the dam and spat into the Colorado River. Worse, extended drought means river temperatures are warmer than usual, creating especially hospitable conditions for the warm-water fish to proliferate.
To slow the spread, Eppehimer and USGS research statistician Charles Yackulic worked with academic, state and federal cooperators to develop models predicting when and where the fish might invade, based on projected temperatures and Lake Powell water levels. These models help the National Park Service prioritize locations for smallmouth bass monitoring and eradication.
Adding extra urgency: Smallmouth bass threaten to erase years of conservation gains for the threatened and endangered species of Grand Canyon. Most of the fish in the park today are native species, a hard-fought accomplishment in an era of constant non-native species invasions. And the humpback chub was recently downlisted from โendangeredโ to โthreatenedโ after successful conservation efforts from park staff.
But smallmouth bass are a particularly lethal threat. Laboratory predation trials by the USGS and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) show that smallmouth bass eat native fish at all life stages, from small babies to grown adults.
โMost of the sport fish species have big mouths and big teeth and they like to eat native fish,โ says David Ward, fish biologist and assistant project leader for USFWS Conservation Office in Flagstaff, AZ. โWhen you get all those species preying on the chubs at all different life stages, they just donโt get a break.โ
Part 3: The Dam
If managers want to prevent smallmouth bass from becoming a permanent addition to Grand Canyon, they need to act fast. Once a species becomes established, it becomes virtually impossible to eradicate completely.
Smallmouth bass management is a high priority for the Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Program (GCDAMP) and the Adaptive Management Work Group (AMWG), a Federal Advisory Committee in the Colorado River Basin. Led by the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR), this group brings together twenty-five stakeholder and rightsholder groups representing different interests, including states, Tribal Nations, economic sectors, non-profit environmental organizations and hobby groups. Together, they provide recommendations to the U.S. Secretary of the Interior for how to manage flows from Glen Canyon Dam.
The USGSโs Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Group (GCMRC) is a fixture of these quarterly meetings, tasked with providing science to help members understand environmental change happening on the landscape and how different management alternatives may perform under future conditions.
A major discussion point for the advisory committee is how water should flow out of the dam โ how often water should be released, how much water at a time, which part of the dam it should be released from, etc. These questions are important, impacting everything from hydroelectricity production to downstream rafting conditions.
Eppehimer, Yackulic and other USGS researchers created models to predict how changes to Glen Canyon Dam flows may affect different systems, including energy production, river hydrology and sandbar formation. Of particular interest: they explored how pumping cold water from the damโs deep bypass jet tubes could impact smallmouth bass viability below the dam. They identified ideal water temperatures for bass to grow and reproduce and modeled how cooling river temperatures using dam flows could impact overall population growth.
Using one of the USGS-modeled alternatives, the Bureau of Reclamation has begun modifying Glen Canyon Dam flows to try to prevent smallmouth bass spawning. When river temperatures reach 60ยฐF (15.5ยฐC) in the Colorado River at the confluence with the Little Colorado River tributary (76 miles downstream from the dam), the BOR releases deeper, cooler flows from Glen Canyon Dam to create less favorable conditions for smallmouth bass growth and reproduction. They began these releases on July 9, 2024, and are now working with the USGS and other DOI agencies to actively monitor the effects on river conditions and smallmouth bass populations.
This work was funded by USGSโs Southwest Climate Adaptation Science Center (Southwest CASC), Ecosystems Mission Area, Water Mission Area, and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. The project embodies the USGSโs actionable science model, which prioritizes applied research designed to meet on-the-ground needs.
โIt is an excellent example of partnership-based science,โ says Sarah LeRoy, Research Coordinator with the Southwest CASC. โFrom the very beginning, managers asked a question about what’s going to happen to fish, native and invasive, in the Colorado River Basin, and the scientists answered their questions in a way that helps them better care for the river in the future.โ
Endangered bonytail chub were released into a Colorado River lagoon south of Laughlin, Nev., in spring of 2024 as part of the MSCP. (Source: Bureau of Reclamation)
WESTERN WATER IN-DEPTH: As the 50-year Multi-Species Conservation Program hits the 20-year mark this month, new questions about how to keep it strong hang over its future
Before the construction of Hoover Dam on the lower Colorado River, as well as a slew of smaller sisters downstream, the stretch downriver served as a biological oasis in the middle of the unrelenting Mojave and Sonoran deserts. The marshes and backwaters along the riverโs edge provided sheltered areas for fish to spawn and rear their young, and mesquite and cottonwood-willow forests provided important habitat for numerous species of birds and other animals. But when Lake Mead began filling behind Hoover Dam in 1935, it drastically reduced the amount of water flowing downstream, radically altering the habitat there.
In the decades that followed, the river flow captured by Hoover Dam became a critical source of water for farms and cities across Southern California, Nevada and Arizona โ transforming deserts into some of the nationโs most productive farmland and creating some of the most populous cities such as Los Angeles, Phoenix and Las Vegas. Today, more than 27 million people in the three states rely on water from the Colorado Riverโroughly two-thirds of the total population that the river serves. Yet even as that dependence on the river grew, a collision between human and environmental needs was brewing.
Historically, the Colorado River was home to more than 30 mostly endemic native fish species. In 1967, a native fish called the pikeminnow and another called the humpback chub were classified as endangered under federal law. They were the first of what are known as the four โbig riverโ fish species to be added to the endangered species list. Thirteen years later, in 1980, came the bonytail chub. Then, in 1991, came the fourth โ the razorback sucker. (An endemic bird called the Yuma clapper rail had also been classified as endangered in 1967.)
For municipal and agricultural water managers who depended on the Colorado, the growing list of endangered species was a wakeup call. It spurred a decade-long effort to craft a multi-party agreement that allowed water agencies to continue delivering water to their users while staying ahead of the mounting endangered species issues. That effort has largely proven successful, but as the program now crosses the 20-year mark, new questions are arising about how to keep it strong for the next three decades in the face of grinding drought, contentious negotiations over the riverโs future, and new uncertainties about the federal governmentโs role in its continued implementation.
A New Approach on Habitat
In November 1994, the federal Bureau of Reclamation, which operates the big Colorado River dams and makes water deliveries, agreed to work together with state and local agencies to mitigate the effects of water and power operations on threatened and endangered species. The effort didnโt come a moment too soon: Four months later, another species โ a bird called the southwestern willow flycatcher โ was also declared endangered.
โWhen the big-river fishes were listed, it was a kick in the pants for folks along the river to put together something broad enough to anticipate most of whatโs going to happen in the next 50 years,โ said Jessica Neuwerth, the executive director of the Colorado River Board of California, which represents the stateโs agricultural and urban users of the riverโs water. โThen the southwestern willow flycatcher kicked it into overdrive.โ
As it happened, a new approach had recently appeared on the horizon that focused on restoring and protecting habitat not just for individual endangered species, but for a broad range of them existing in a particular region. Long-term, large-scale โmultispecies habitat conservation plansโ were taking shape in a variety of places, including Californiaโs San Diego County, southwestern Riverside County and the Coachella Valley.
The four so-called big river fish, from top: razorback sucker, Colorado pikeminnow, bonytail chub and humpback chub. (Source: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)
The new approach was championed by Bruce Babbitt, the former governor of Arizona who, at the time, was Interior secretary under Bill Clinton. โBabbitt was a big advocate for this style of landscape-level species and habitat management,โ said Chris Harris, who preceded Neuwerth at Californiaโs Colorado River Board and was involved in the early discussions. โAnd he really urged all of us to keep our noses to the grindstone and put something together that could work.โ
The effort to create a broad habitat conservation program for the Lower Colorado dragged on for a decade. But it quickly became clear that all the participants would be better off if they tackled the endangered species issue together. Finally, in April 2005, the federal government and non-federal participants signed an agreement that officially launched the Lower Colorado River Multi-Species Conservation Program. Under it, the Bureau of Reclamation, irrigation districts and municipal water agencies committed to a 50-year, $626 million inflation-adjusted program, splitting the cost evenly between the federal government and state parties.
The Lower Colorado River MSCP โis unique in a lot of ways โ partly because it is a federal and non-federal program, where we really havenโt even tried necessarily to disentangle whose impact is whose,โ said Neuwerth. โThereโs so much overlap between what the feds do and what the state or local agencies do that we really are bound together. Weโve blended both the non-federal and federal compliance into one package, and itโs more efficient than everybody going off and doing their own thing.โ
Managed by the Bureau of Reclamation, the program pledged to create 512 acres of marsh and 360 acres of backwaters โ habitat for Colorado River native fish โ as well as 1,320 acres of mesquite woodland and 5,940 acres of cottonwood-willow forest along the river for the imperiled birds. In addition, the program would pay for rearing and stocking more than 660,000 razorback suckers and 620,000 bonytail; fund ongoing maintenance of the newly created habitat; and carry out monitoring and research to adaptively manage restoration efforts based on an
Intended to last over the long term, the MSCP was also designed to be flexible. โThatโs always been the goal,โ said Neuwerth, โto be proactive and make sure that we have this umbrella thatโs going to protect us for a pretty wide range of future conditions.โ
Seth Shanahan, Colorado River Program Manager for the Southern Nevada Water Authority. (Source: Water Education Foundation)
The program was not designed to recover endangered species populations. But it was, at its root, an insurance program to protect Lower Basin water users and the federal government against potential violations of the Endangered Species Act, or ESA, as they continued their primary mission of delivering water to cities and farms.
โWe couldnโt do what we do on a day-to-day basis without this program,โ said Seth Shanahan, the Colorado River Program Manager for the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA), which supplies water to the Las Vegas metropolitan area. He noted that water agencies are dependent on the Bureau of Reclamationโs ability to store water in Lake Mead and deliver it downstream, as well as to develop plans for when to take shortages and how to share water among themselves to lessen the impacts of drought. โAll of that is enabled by the MSCP.โ
Helping Species Survive and Thrive
In contrast to an endangered-species recovery program, the MSCP isnโt explicitly intended to increase endangered species populations to the point that they can be taken off the endangered species list, or their protection status at least downgraded.
โMSCP is a habitat creation program,โ said Vineetha Kartha, Colorado River programs manager for the Central Arizona Project (CAP), which transports river water to Phoenix, Tucson, farms and tribes. โWe are creating habitat so that species thrive and can still survive under these changed circumstances.โ
Twenty years in, the program has already created roughly 75 percent of the habitat it initially pledged to take on.
โWeโre trying to do the best we can with what is available,โ said SNWAโs Shanahan. โRestoring the functionality of habitat for species is the important part, not necessarily (restoring) it to what was there 500 years ago.โ
Workers plant seedlings of cottonwoods, willows and mesquite trees at an MSCP habitat restoration project south of Blythe, California. (Source: Bureau of Reclamation)
MSCPโs adaptive management, or adjust-as-you-go, approach has helped it adapt to changing conditions and a constantly improving understanding of how to meet the needs of individual species. โFolks early on realized they didnโt know everything. So they gave us an opportunity to modify the course as we learn more information, and thatโs really useful,โ Shanahan said. โWe need to have some space to try different things and see what works.โ
One important part of the program focuses on stocking hatchery-raised razorback suckers and bonytail into their native habitat below Hoover Dam. But because the natural system has been so drastically altered, ensuring their survival hasnโt been easy.
โItโs a tough hand of cards for native fish in this part of the world,โ said Neuwerth, an environmental scientist by training. โWe have dams, we have diversions, we have introduced fish, and thereโs really no way of turning that clock back. Weโre doing the best we can with the system as it is, and weโre trying out new stuff all the time. Anything that can give our fish an edge, weโve looked at it.โ
Giving native fish โ which are raised in hatcheries as far away as eastern New Mexico โ that edge has gone as far as running โfish survival campsโ to teach them the kind of street smarts they need to survive in the modern-day river. At one point, fisheries biologists even used Botox injections to paralyze the jaws of non-native fish and then released them, along with a dose of predator-alarm pheromones, into ponds filled with razorback suckers and bonytail chub to teach them how to recognize and avoid predators.
Outside-the-box experimentation like that has been just one of the ways the MSCP has been able to adapt to changing realities on the river.
Humpback chub swim in the waters of the Lower Colorado River. (Source: Bureau of Reclamation)
โWe always knew that what we were doing was not going to be the be-all, end-all, for the full 50-year term,โ Harris said. To accommodate unanticipated events such as the discovery of new protected species within the MSCP project area, the programโs creators adopted what he called a โplug and playโ approach.
In 2015, biologists discovered the presence of the threatened Northern Mexican gartersnake upstream of Lake Havasu, a key reservoir for Southern California and Arizona, possibly drawn in by habitat improvements made under the MSCP.
โThat wasnโt on our list (in 2005) but then became threatened, and it was found within our program area,โ said SNWAโs Shanahan. โSo we also had to go back and consult on the impacts to that species. But there were mechanisms in the permits that allowed us to do that pretty efficiently.โ
โA String of Pearlsโ
The heart of the MSCP is its commitment to create conservation areas that provide the marshes, backwaters and riverside forest on which endangered species depend. One of the MSCP conservation areas lies on tribal land of the Fort Yuma Quechan Indian Tribe.
โThe tribe had a strong interest in pursuing a project that would reconnect the tribal people and the larger community back to the river,โ said Brian Golding, Sr., the Quechan tribeโs economic development director. As dams, levees and irrigation projects were developed, โthe river was forgotten. Anything on the river side of the levees essentially became overgrown and invaded by invasive species and became a no-manโs land.โ
Lower Colorado River Multi-Species Conservation Program
Since 2005, the Lower Colorado River Multi-Species Conservation Program has grown to include 18 habitat conservation areas along the river. The map below highlights the six stretches of the river with MSCP-managed habitat.
In 2004 the tribe, in partnership with the Yuma Crossing National Heritage Area, the city of Yuma and the Arizona Game and Fish Department, began restoring wetlands on the tribeโs reservation along the Colorado River, creating a mosaic of marshes and stands of mesquite, cottonwood and willow that benefit an array of endangered species. In 2013, the tribe finalized an agreement with the MSCP to include the 380-acre Yuma East Wetlands within the program in exchange for operation and maintenance funding over 50 years.
That has helped the tribe develop its own ability to restore and maintain natural habitat along the river. Today, six members of the tribe work on habitat restoration and maintenance, along with a tribe member-owned contracting company, and Golding said the tribe is in talks with the MSCP program to restore another 30 to 40 acres of wetlands along the river.
The Yuma East Wetlands are just one piece of the bigger network of conservation areas, which has grown to 18 sites between Hoover Dam and the Mexican border.
When the MSCP first started, โI think people thought this was just a Band-Aid and duct tape approach,โ said Harris. โNow, these conservation areas are really a string of pearls, and theyโre all sort of connected together. Every few miles, thereโs a huge patch of native riparian marsh and aquatic habitat thatโs being managed by the program so the species can travel up and down the riverine corridor โ whether theyโre birds or fish or terrestrial species โ and have these areas of safe haven.โ
Although the MSCP is a stand-alone program, itโs ecologically linked with an ambitious restoration effort taking place across the border in Mexico. There, a coalition of non-governmental organizations including National Audubon Society, Restauremos el Colorado, the Sonoran Institute and Pronatura have been working to restore portions of the Colorado River Delta. โMany of the ideas and techniques that have been developed and utilized in the MSCP have now been applied in the Mexican restoration program,โ Harris said, โso thereโs been a lot of carryover and cross pollination from work done under the MSCP down to the environmental program in Mexico.โ
The Hart Mine Marsh was initially created by historic flood flows from the Colorado River, but as the river system changed, including from water operations, the marsh deteriorated. Reconstruction of the marsh is among the habitat projects undertaken through the MSCP. (Source: Bureau of Reclamation)
Ecologically, both those efforts also tie together with the ongoing initiative to restore habitat at the Salton Sea, Harris said. โIf you can link those three areas,โ he said, โyouโve got a pretty good mosaic now from Lake Mead downstream all the way to the Gulf of California.โ
Julia Morton, Audubonโs Colorado River program manager, said MSCPโs comprehensive approach and its rigorous scientific monitoring program can help improve conditions not just for the species itโs specifically designed to protect, but for the entire ecosystem along the lower reaches of the river. โThatโs a huge improvement over โone-offโ mitigation projects,โ she said.
In late April, the MSCPโs steering committee will vote on a request by Audubon to join the committee โ a move that would only strengthen the synergy between the U.S and Mexican restoration efforts. โThe frameworks and the driving forces of each program are pretty different,โ said Morton, โbut at the end of the day, these programs are both creating quality habitat.โ
The Catch-22 of Historic Drought
Those efforts seem to be yielding positive results. In 2021, for instance, the humpback chub was โdown listedโ from endangered to threatened. But along the way, the MSCP has been forced to contend with a number of unanticipated challenges โ especially drought.
โA lot of thought was put into MSCP,โ said CAPโs Kartha. But when the program was designed, โwe didnโt understand how bad the hydrologies could tank.โ
Vineetha Kartha, Colorado River programs manager for the Central Arizona Project. (Source: Central Arizona Project)
When the MSCP was officially launched in 2005, the Colorado River Basin was already five years into a major drought, which has only gotten worse in the years since. The drought is now dragging into its 25th year, and studies suggest that it could be the worst drought on the river in the past 1,200 years.
โHydrology has been our biggest surprise so far,โ said Kartha. โAnd basically, we have had to move with the times.โ
In 2019, the seven Colorado River states and the federal government agreed to a pair of โdrought contingency plansโ to save water and store it in lakes Mead and Powell, the riverโs two largest reservoirs. In 2024, the Lower Basin states agreed to a follow-on plan to conserve an additional 3 million acre-feet over three years and store that in Lake Mead. Those actions helped the states prop up their water supply, but that also meant somewhere around 1.7 million acre-feet less water was released from Hoover Dam per year.
Those efforts to weather the drought have revealed a Catch-22. For decades, water use contributed to the decline in the riverโs native species. Now, though, using less water potentially harms the environment, because as that conserved water is stored in Lake Mead, less water flows down the lower Colorado River, potentially amplifying damage to habitat.
โWe are in this strange paradox where folks doing the right thing for the system and leaving water behind (in Lake Mead) could potentially have an impact on the river channel,โ Neuwerth said. โSo weโre balancing those two things and trying to avoid getting caught in a situation where weโre penalized for saving water.โ
The 2019 and 2024 drought-protection strategies forced the Bureau of Reclamation to initiate two rounds of โreconsultation,โ a process under which the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reviews any new federal actions that may harm endangered species or their habitat. In response, the Fish and Wildlife Service issued a pair of biological opinions that required the MSCP to create another 180 acres of marsh and backwater habitat to offset the potential loss of habitat caused by the reduced flows.
Uncertain Future Federal Role
Questions about water availability, funding and regulatory oversight may only sharpen in the future. The change in presidential administration earlier this year has already raised uncertainty about the federal governmentโs role going forward.
In March, the Bureau of Reclamation declined comment for this story โdue to our on-going mission requirements, the increased workload to accommodate the new administrationโs priorities and awaiting the appointment of the new Reclamation Commissioner and their direction.โ The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service also declined comment, using nearly identical language.
The lowland leopard frog, one of the species covered by the MSCP. (Source: Bureau of Reclamation)
Itโs indisputable that the federal government has played a critical role in the success of the MSCP โ and its role in assuring reliable water supplies for some 27 million people in the riverโs Lower Basin states.
โWhen (the non-federal participants) were originally talking about putting together the program, they were considering whether to hire a third party to do the work. But instead, we have Reclamation as the implementing agency, and their workers are the ones that build the habitats and maintain them,โ said Neuwerth. โThatโs really helped us keep the cost down. And I think it just makes a lot of sense to have one of the parties to the MSCP responsible for the actual on-the-ground work.โ
The Trump administration has already signaled its intent to rescind at least parts of both the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). On April 16, it proposed a rule that would strip federal protections for habitat needed by threatened and endangered species to survive. Fully repealing the ESA and NEPA would take an act of Congress, but if that were to happen it would gut the primary drivers behind the creation of the MSCP.
Yet even if federal environmental and endangered species-protection laws were gutted, Californiaโs Endangered Species and Environmental Quality acts (known as CESA and CEQA) โ which are even more stringent than their federal equivalents โ would almost certainly remain in place.
Under California law, โthe California permittees have made certain commitments. If there was no more ESA and there was no more MSCP, those commitments would still exist,โ said Neuwerth. โItโs tough to know exactly how it would all shake out, but I think CESA and CEQA provide a backstop in California that wouldnโt go away if the MSCP did.โ
The Southwestern willow flycatcher, listed as an endangered species by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. (Source: USFWS)
While Arizona and Nevada arenโt subject to similar state requirements, they may not be willing to step away from the program, either. Water agencies would face tremendous uncertainty in their long-term planning with a federal abandonment of the ESA and NEPA and the drawn-out legal challenges sure to follow โ to say nothing of the fact that the MSCP, as originally agreed to by the participants, would still have a quarter-century left to run after the end of the current presidential administration.
โWith the agreements we have in place, I donโt know that it would be all that easy for any administration to reel that back,โ Harris said. โThis program works, and it works well. It gives the feds what they need to be able to optimize their management flexibility for the entire Colorado River system โ and particularly from Glen Canyon Dam downstream. And from a federal perspective, I think thatโs got to be hugely important.โ
โHaving that environmental regulatory compliance package in place,โ he added, โgives all the stakeholders โ whether itโs the agricultural water users, the municipal water users or the federal agencies operating the system โ a pretty significant measure of reliability and certainty for future operations.โ
Regardless of what happens on the regulatory front, the MSCPโs participants are already contemplating potential big changes in how the Colorado River will be managed over roughly the next two decades. The current set of guidelines governing Colorado River operations expires next year, so states and the federal government are scrambling to agree on a new set of post-2026 operating guidelines.
That negotiation has proven particularly contentious and nearly broke down last year, so itโs far from clear what the final guidelines might look like โ but they are nearly certain to include at least an additional 1 million acre-foot per year reduction in river flows below Hoover Dam. Regardless of what the exact numbers are, the MSCPโs steering committee is already anticipating the need to initiate a third, much more significant round of reconsultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Sunrise at the Laguna Division Conservation Area near Yuma, Arizona, where Reclamation has worked on riparian and marsh restoration as part of the Lower Colorado River MSCP. (Source: Bureau of Reclamation)
The 2022 and 2024 biological opinions gave MSCP participants โa pretty wide band of coverageโ through 2028, but โthatโs sort of a short-term patch,โ said Neuwerth.
โWeโd like to make sure that the umbrella going forward is big enough to cover us through 2055, so that requires a little bit of crystal-ball reading of what could be coming down the line,โ she said. โWeโre also struggling with the effects of climate change reducing the amount of water thatโs available, and what does it look like for a recovery program to navigate through that?โ
Despite the uncertainty over the programโs future, Neuwerth said the MSCP has already proven its worth. โWeโve seen over the past 20 years that weโre all pulling in the same direction.โ
Now, at a time when tensions over future operations on the Colorado River are exceptionally high, MSCP โhas provided us a lot of certainty, and itโs allowed us breathing room to do things like (water conservation and drought management) without having to scramble to put together compliance every time something new is happening on the river,โ she said. โThatโs really helped provide stability on the Lower Colorado River, and itโs one less thing to fight over if weโre making changes.โ
Matt Jenkins. Photo credit: Water Education Foundation
My friend Joe’s son and the Orr kids at the top of the Crack in the Wall trail to Coyote Gulch with Stevens Arch in the Background. Photo credit: Joe Ruffert
Kevin Fedarko was the keynote speaker at the symposium and he is as inspirational a speaker as you could ask for. It doesn’t hurt that the landscape that he spoke about is the Grand Canyon. He urged the attendees to, “Take your children out into these landscapes so that they can learn to love them.” He is advocating for the protection of the Grand Canyon in particular but really he is advocating for the protection all public lands.
Kevin Fedarko and Coyote Gulch at the Rio Grande State of the Basin Symposium hosted by the Salazar Rio Grande del Norte Center at Adams State University in Alamosa March 29, 2024.
What an inspirational talk from Kevin. I know what he is saying when he speaks about the time after dinner on the trail where the sunset lights up the canyon in different hues and where, he and Pete McBride, his partner on the Grand Canyon through hike, could hear the Colorado River hundreds of feet below them, continuing its work cutting and molding the rocks, because the silence in that landscape is so complete. He and I share the allure of the Colorado Plateau. Kevin was introduced to it through Collin Flectcher’s book The Man Who Walked Through Time, after he received a dog-eared copy from his father. They lived in Pittsburgh in a landscape that was industrialized but the book enabled Kevin to imagine places that were unspoiled.
My introduction to the Colorado Plateau came from an article in Outside magazine that included a panoramic photo of the Escalante River taken from the ledges above the river. Readers in the know can put 2 and 2 together from the name of this blog — Coyote Gulch — my homage to the canyons tributary to Glen Canyon and Lake Foul.
Stevens Arch viewed from Coyote Gulch. Photo via Joe Ruffert
Kevin’s keynote came at the end of the day on March 29th after a jam-packed schedule.
Early in the day Ken Salazar spoke about the future of the San Luis Valley saying, “Where is the sustainability of the valley going to come from.” Without agriculture this place would wither and die.” He is right, American Rivers and other organizations introduced a paper, The Economic Value of Water Resources in the San Luis Valley which was a response to yet another plan to export water out of the valley to the Front Range. (Currently on hold as Renewable Water Resources does not have a willing buyer. Thank you Colorado water law.)
Claire Sheridan informed attendees that their report sought to quantify all the economic benefits from each drop of water in the valley. “When you buy a bottle of water you know exactly what it costs. But what is the value of having the Sandhill cranes come here every year?”
Sandhill Cranes Dancing. Photo by: Arrow Myers courtesy Monte Vista Crane Festival
Russ Schumacher detailed the current state of the climate (snowpack at 63%) and folks from the Division of Water Resources expounded on the current state of aquifer recovery and obligations under the Rio Grande Compact.
The session about the Colorado Airborne Snow Measurement Program was fascinating. Nathan Coombs talked about the combination of SNOTEL, manual snow courses, Lidar, radar, and machine learning used to articulate a more complete picture of snowpack. “You can’t have enough tools in your toolbox,” he said.
Coombs detailed the difficulty of meeting the obligations under the Rio Grande Compact with insufficient knowledge of snowpack and therefore runoff volumes. Inaccurate information can lead to operational decisions that overestimate those volumes and then require severe curtailments in July and August just when farmers are finishing their crops. “When you make an error the correction is what kills you,” he said.
If you are going to learn about agriculture in the valley it is informative to understand the advances in soil health knowledge and the current state of adoption. That was the theme of the session “Building Healthy Soils”. John Rizza’s enthusiasm for the subject was obvious and had me thinking about what I can do for my city landscape.
Amber Pacheco described how the Rio Grande Basin Roundtable and other organizations reach out to as many folks in the valley as possible. Inclusivity is the engine driving collaboration.
Recent freezing of federal budgets and layoffs of federal employees have had many effects on our public lands in New Mexico, including at Bosque del Apache (BdA). The impacts will continue to compound in time and will be felt by wildlife and the public alike, as community events, public lands access, and even local economies are affected.
New Mexico is privileged to be home to a wide array of Americaโs precious public land sites, including nine Fish & Wildlife Service Wildlife Refuges and two National Fish Hatcheries, fifteen National Parks and Monuments, five National Forests, and thousands of Bureau of Land Management acres. Employee layoffs and budget freezes or cuts across these sectors will damage the New Mexico economy, which is heavily reliant upon tourism, especially in the stateโs already struggling rural areas.
This comes on the heels of the last two decades, wherein steep budget cuts have meant that land management agencies have already been doing more with less and less each year. The workforce of the entire US Fish & Wildlife Service has now shrunk to just over 2,000 employees โ down 30% from where they were fifteen years ago โ to manage 95 million land acres and 750 million marine acres! Over the course of the last two decades, staffing levels at BdA, which manages 57,331 acres, have been cut in half from where they previously were. Refuge staff are critical for planning and implementing complex year-round habitat management prescriptions to serve wildlife and migrating flocks at this wetland refuge with steadily decreasing available water, as well as handling the flow of hundreds of thousands of annual visitors who come to the refuge each year seeking to enjoy the birds, wildlife, natural beauty, and other outdoor recreational opportunities. During recent years the refugeโs budget was further reduced from around $2 million to $1.6 million. But one thing that has not decreased in all of this time is the refuge staffโs passion to provide for wildlife. Another is the workload! Rather, because of the growing challenges presented by a river โ the lifeblood of the refuge โ that is increasingly more heavily-taxed by climatic and population growth factors, the work of maintaining this critical habitat is more important now than ever before.
Budgetary and staffing reductions at the refuge also put at risk the approximately $17 million positive economic impact created by BdA in Socorro County. This economic impact includes local jobs, hotel stays, gasoline, store, and restaurants purchases, etc., as noted in the May 2019 Banking on Nature report by US Fish & Wildlife Service. The report also states that there were 306,000 recreational visits to BdA in 2017 and expenditures from these visits totaled $15.8 million within Socorro County, with nonresidents accounting for $15.5 million or 98% of all expenditures. The contribution of recreational spending in local communities was associated with 181 jobs, $4 million in employment income, $2.4 million in total tax revenue, and $17.4 million in economic output. The impact on the local economy of BdAโs annual Festival of the Cranes alone has been as high as $3 million. How many other public investments provide an eight-fold economic benefit to the local community, as well as multiple recreation possibilities (including hiking, photography, hunting, fishing and birding opportunities, easy access to nature, environmental education, and more)?
What wonโt get done at Bosque del Apache as employees are fired?ย
Parts of refuge trails and the fourteen miles of driving loops may need to close due to lack of manpower to maintain, clean, and clear them, resulting in less access for the public.ย ย
Fields, trails and waterways/wetlands will become overgrown with invasive species (salt cedar, johnson grass, kochia, cocklebur, parrotfeather, etc.) when there is insufficient staff to control or eradicate them. Lack of trail maintenance (correcting erosion, clearing fallen trees) means trails will become unusable. All of this leads to less access for the public and a less desirable habitat for wildlife, leading to fewer visitors and ultimately undermining an already struggling economy.ย ย
Less food will be grown for migratory flocks (sandhill cranes, geese, ducks, etc.) due to lack of enough staff to run heavy equipment to disc, plant, mow, and manage water. This will create a domino effect on wildlife and the visitors who come to watch and photograph them. With BdA not producing the food it once did, although the Middle Rio Grande Valley flock appears to be stable, it is becoming more concentrated at Bernardo Wildlife Area to the north, with potential avian health problems that come with crowded conditions.ย ย
Insufficient visitor services at the Visitor Center โ less help, and less events and educational talks for the public and children. Though we continue to utilize volunteer manpower to implement tours and environmental education, they must be onboarded, trained, and managed by staff. Visitor Center hours will be reduced, leading to less access for the public.ย ย
Bathrooms wonโt be cleaned or stocked as often or as well for the public.ย ย
With no or fewer staff to stop people going into closed areas, wildlife will be disturbed and wonโt be as protected. During periods of past government shutdowns, poaching has unfortunately even occurred on the refuge.ย ย
Environmental education programs for local school groups will be decreased and/or be halted with fewer staff to implement them.ย ย
Annual events, such as Festival of the Cranes and Spring Migration Celebration, will be impacted and potentially cancelled in the future if there are insufficient refuge staff to help plan and implement these events, creating a major impact to the local economy. (See financial data at the beginning of this article). Before the Covid-19 pandemic, Festival of the Cranes brought in 1,000+ participants and had an economic impact of nearly $3 million. Since Covid, these numbers have been steadily rebuilding, but that cannot be sustained without refuge staff support.ย ย
Partnerships with local universities will be affected. With reduced access to refuge trails and waterways, and less (or no) refuge staff and funding, researchers will not be able to consistently do their work, seriously hampering the future of ecological and environmental progress.ย ย
Summer internships will be curtailed if there is no staff to guide interns, affecting the training of the next generation of biologists and conservationists.ย ย
Innovative solutions for New Mexicoโs challenges around water, such as Friends of Bosque del Apacheโsย Regenerative Agriculture Projectย andย Pollinator Habitat Enhancement Projectย will be affected by lack of staff to assist with irrigating and keeping invasive plants managed on the refuge. These programs will be curtailed or have to be discontinued, stunting the future ability of the refuge to resourcefully meet the environmental challenges of these times, including decreased water and declining pollinator species. Note that pollinators are essential for growing food for people as well as wildlife.ย
Up to this point, services have been maintained and some of the essential damages of decreased funding have been mitigated with the support of Friends of Bosque del Apache. For example, Friends covered costs for some of the fuel that runs critical equipment, much needed well and equipment maintenance and the projects described above, which are working toward solving water and pollinator problems. However, fully offsetting the extensive impacts of staffing and budget cuts is beyond what the Friends organization can manage.
What can you do to help?
If you care about supporting the local economy and conserving New Mexicoโs precious wildlife and habitats, please take action to help us continue our mission of supporting this critical wetland habitat, among the last remaining 2% of wetlands in the Desert Southwest.
Your Voice Matters!ย โ Contact your representatives and let them know how important Americaโs National Wildlife Refuges are. If youโve never done this before and donโt know where to start,ย go to this websiteย and enter your zip code.ย
Your Support Can Help Fill the Gapย โย Give a donationย to help minimize interruptions to important refuge programs and projects.ย
Spread the Wordย โ tell your friends and family about the importance of this critical wetland oasis in the desert, or better yet โ invite them toย join our mailing listย so they will receive regular updates and newsletters.ย The more people who understand the importance of conservation, the bigger the impact we can have together! Also, bring them for a refuge visit so they can experience the magic of Bosque del Apache firsthand!
Birds and water at Bosque de Apache New Mexico November 9, 2022. Photo credit: Abby Burk
This 2025 edition of the State of the Birds report is a status assessment of the health of the nationโs bird populations, delivered to the American people by scientists from U.S. bird conservation groups.
5 Years After the 3 Billion Birds Lost Research, America Is Still Losing Birds. A 2019 study published in the journal Science* sounded the alarmโshowing a net loss of 3 billion birds in North America in the past 50 years. The 2025 State of the Birds report shows those losses are continuing, with declines among several bird trend indicators. Notably duck populationsโa bright spot in past State of the Birds reports, with strong increases since 1970โhave trended downward in recent years.
Conservation Works. Examples spotlighted throughout this reportโfrom coastal restoration and conservation ranching to forest renewal and seabird translocationsโshow how proactive, concerted efforts and strategic investments can recover bird populations. The science is solid on how to bring birds back. [ed. emphasis mine] Private lands conservation programs, and voluntary conservation partnerships for working lands, hold some of the best opportunities for sparking immediate turn-arounds for birds.
Bird-friendly Policies Bring Added Benefits for People, and Have Broad Support. Policies to reverse bird declines carry added benefits such as healthier working lands, cleaner water, and resilient landscapes that can withstand fires, floods, and drought. Plus birds are broadly popularโabout 100 million Americans are birdwatchers, including large shares of hunters and anglers. All that birding activity stimulates the economy, with $279 billion in total annual economic output generated by birder expenditures.
Early March is usually when I emerge from my wintry water nerd slumber and begin tracking the rise in my beloved hometown river, Albuquerqueโs Rio Grande.
Yesterday morning the core family unit packed sandwiches and went down to the Rio Bravo Bridge, on Albuquerqueโs south side. Itโs a favorite spot because of the graffiti โ the engineers built a lot of canvas for the artists to work with.
Bridge, with art. Photo credit: John Fleck/Inkstain.net
The county crews had recently painted over the graffiti on the bridge abutments, which always means a fun new canvas and a bunch of new art.
The riverโs low โ at around the 10th percentile on the dry side at the Central Avenue gage, the nearest measurement point upstream of here. I dashed off Tuesdayโs post in a hurry because news, but whatโs about to happen deserves more attention.
One of the deep/fierce discussion underway Iโm having with some smart colleagues is the question of how much our community values a flowing river. One of the reasons weโre arguing, umm, I mean discussing, is that evidence about public attitudes is thin.
Weโre about to have a Rio Grande through Albuquerque substantially drier than weโve seen since the early 1980s. Before that time, summer drying was common because of community water management choices: larger supplies were diverted into irrigation ditches, leaving the Rio Grande to go dry. The river essentially dried through Albuquerque in eight out of ten years during the 1970s. That began shifting in the 1980s because of wetter climate, but more importantly because of water management choices that reflected a shift in community values.
Rio Grande Silvery Minnow via Wikipedia
Beginning in the 1990s, the federal Endangered Species Act became the water policy driver, keeping water in the riverโs main channel to keep the Rio Grande silvery minnow alive. โThis little fish, that human efforts keep alive,โ my Utton Center colleague Rin Tara has written, โis a powerhouse for dictating river flows in the Middle Rio Grande.โ
For those who care about the Rio Grande (you wouldnโt have read this far if that didnโt include you), the whole paper is worth a read. It is the first time anyone has pulled together in a single narrative the history of the role of the silvery minnow in the last three decades of water management on New Mexicoโs Middle Rio Grande. Rinโs legal scholarship also sheds new light on the way the Endangered Species act functions in practice in a situation like ours โ an effort to keep a species alive in a river far removed from the ecosystem in which the species evolved. This disconnect is at the heart of the challenge posted by the ESA in the third decade of the 21st century. As I said, terrific new paper.
Given the current context โ a river at risk of drying in 2025 โ the challenge to community values around the Rio Grande is something Iโll be watching closely. Hereโs Rin (โ2028 BiOpโ is a new minnow management plan now in development โ read the whole paper, Rin explains):
Rio Grande, March 12, 2025. Photo credit: John Fleck/InkStain.net
Big Dog
I rode back out to the river for this morningโs bike ride.(I am trying to ride and picnic more and work less, with mixed results.) The ride took me through downtown and across what used to be swampland to the Rio Grande. What we think of today as โthe river,โ the narrow channel snaking through the valley between levees, is a tiny fraction of what the Rio Grande used to be before we decided to build a city here. Even as I acknowledge the loss of the expansive wetlands that used to spread across the valley floor, I also love my city. Both of those things can be true, as is often the case with the most interesting moral tensions.
I stopped at one of my favorite river views to snap a picture for a friend Iโd been texting with who loves the Rio Grande, but has moved to a city on a different (also beloved!) river.
Itโs just above Central Avenue/Route 66. Thereโs a bike trail bridge over the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy Districtโs Central Avenue Wasteway, and when thereโs water you feel like youโre out in the river. The wasteway delivers water from the irrigation system back to the main river channel, and when I was riding by this morning it was flowing at ~40 cubic feet per second. Itโs a popular fishing spot, for both humans and cormorants, though I saw neither this morning taking advantage of the flows.
The journalist in me canโt resist small talk in a place like that. A woman was walking by with a big, beefy, happy dog. I asked if it was OK to pet, and did, though she had to restrain the friendly animal from jumping up on me with his wet, muddy paws. Theyโd walked down from their neighborhood just up the valley, so the pooch could play in the river. One of the weird things about low flow is that it actually makes the river more accessible for picnics and dog play. As it drops, youโll see people out on the sandbars.
Until, of course, thereโs no water left for frolicking. I assume there were silvery minnows out there in the channel. They cannot know what is coming, nor, frankly, can we.
Rio Grande and Pecos River basins. Map credit: By Kmusser – Own work, Elevation data from SRTM, drainage basin from GTOPO [1], U.S. stream from the National Atlas [2], all other features from Vector Map., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11218868
A high desert thunderstorm lights up the sky behind Glen Canyon Dam — Photo USBR
Click the link to read the article on the KNAU website (Melissa Sevigny). Here’s an excerpt:
February 24, 2025
This weekโs scheduled meeting of a group focused on the management of Glen Canyon Dam was canceled by the Trump administration. It’s one of many scientific conferences and federal meetings that have been canceled or indefinitely postponed. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation says the meeting will be rescheduled to ensure new Department of the Interior and Reclamation leadership are โfully briefedโ on the Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Work Group. The group advises the Secretary of the Interior on how best to manage Glen Canyon Dam in keeping with the 1992 Grand Canyon Protection Act. Matt Rice of American Rivers says that involves balancing the needs of water and hydropower users with cultural, environmental, and recreational values.
“And this group is the forum to balance and make management decisions based on all those values, to protect those values. So massively important.”
[…]
The canceled meeting comes amid a funding freeze that has stalled Colorado River conservation projects and amid layoffs at the U.S. Geological Survey, National Park Service and other federal agencies.
Scientists also declared several other extinctions, including the first documented plant extinction in New Hampshire
Extinction Countdown
In 2009 teams of volunteers fanned out across 35 countries in Europe, Africa, and Asia looking for something that, in all likelihood, no longer existed.
The object of their quest: a 14-inch-long shorebird with long legs, a curved beak, and a mix of white and gray feathers.
Last officially seen in 1995, the slender-billed curlew (Numenius tenuirostris) had once been plentiful enough to hunt โ perhaps most notably for museum specimens. That pressure, combined with habitat destruction, reportedly pushed the birds into decline.
In November 2024, after years of searches, scientistsย declared that the species was gone for goodย โ the first documented extinction of a bird species from mainland Europe, North Africa and West Asia.
โIt is a tragedy on a par with the dodo and the great auk, and we should hang our heads in shame,โ wrote Mary Colwell of the conservation group Curlew Action. โOur disregard for wildlife speaks volumes for who and what we are. The slender-billed [curlew] may not have had an economic value, it contributed nothing to the bottom line of anyoneโs financial spreadsheet, no one relied on these birds for their jobs or wellbeing, there was no conceivable reason to drive them to extinction. But it seems that is exactly what we have done.โ
The biggest tragedy about this birdโs loss: We didnโt act soon enough to save it.
โConservation attention came too late for the slender-billed curlew,โ researchers wrote in the paper announcing its probable extinction. โThe potential decline of the species was highlighted [in 1912] and stated more explicitly [in 1943]. These warnings were not acted on however, and the species was not recognized as being of conservation concern until 1988. After this, a [1991] review of the species and an action plan [in 1996] followed. Our analysis indicates the species was on the verge of extinction or extinct when the action plan was published.โ
They continued, warning that this extinction is a call to action to prevent future species losses:
โSuch extinctions are an indicator of the failure of international cooperation on biodiversity conservation as surely as climbing carbon levels currently measure our failure adequately to address climate change. With more advanced technologies than were available even 20โyears ago โ including optical and photographic equipment, bird-tracking and remote-sensing methods, and an evidence base on methods for protection, management and restoration โ there is even less excuse for further failures.โ
But the slender-billed curlew wonโt be the last species we lose, and it wasnโt the only species scientists declared extinct (or regionally extinct) in 2024. Here are some of their stories.
Key Largo tree cactus (Pilosocereus millspaughii) โ This coastal plant still grows on a few scattered islands, but not on the island that gave it its name. Encroaching seas have wiped it out in the past couple of years, making it โthe first local extinction of a species caused by sea-level riseโ in the United States. Thatโs shocking for a population that was considered โthrivingโ as recently as 2021.
โUnfortunately, the Key Largo tree cactus may be a bellwether for how other low-lying coastal plants will respond to climate change,โ Jennifer Possley, director of regional conservation at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, said in a statement announcing the extinction.
Key Largo cactus, photo courtesy Florida Museum of Natural History
Expect more in future. But we can also use this as an opportunity: Scientists saw it coming and collected enough cactus flowers and fruits to keep the species growing in a greenhouse. Maybe one day theyโll be able to return to Key Largo. Until then the island has a hole in its ecosystem.
Obliterated whitefish (Coregonus obliterus), รren whitefish (Coregonus trybomi) and Zug whitefish (Coregonus zugensis) โ These Swiss fish were among seven species redescribed and taxonomically reassigned by scientists in 2023. The IUCN assessed them as extinct in 2024, reflecting a greater scientific consensus.
The obliterated whitefish (a name that just kills me) was last seen in Lake Zug in 1939 and, according to a press release, โwould have been completely forgotten if specimens had not been found by Eawag scientists Oliver Selz and Ole Seehausen in the historical Steinmann-Eawag Collection.โ It and other species died out from eutrophication โ lack of oxygen in lake water caused by algal blooms, themselves caused by phosphates from domestic wastewater and fertilizer runoff from agriculture. (The รren declined due to introduced predators like Eurasian pikeperch and acid rain.)
Lest we get completely depressed, the press release presents a lovely counterpoint, noting that โthe only whitefish species still found in Lake Zug today, spawning near the shore, is the โBalchen.โ Testifying to its survival is its new scientific name โย Coregonus supersumย (โI have survivedโ).โ
The seven Coregonus species. Courtesy: Eawag
Java stingaree (Urolophus javanicus): This small Indonesian stingray was only observed once, at a fish market in 1862. The IUCN declared it extinct in December 2023 โ calling it the first marine fish extinction caused by human activity โ although the media didnโt notice until after January (which is why itโs on this yearโs list).
โIntensive, generally unregulated fishing was likely the major threat resulting in the depletion of the Java stingaree population, with coastal fisheries catches already declining in the 1870s,โ the extinction assessment reads. โCatches on the northern coast of Java in 1940 were down to almost half the annual catch landed in the 1860s. Additionally, the northern coast of Java, particularly Jakarta Bay, is heavily industrialized, and extensive habitat loss and degradation may also have impacted this species.โ
Round Island hurricane palm (Dictyosperma album var. conjugatum) โ As reported by Mongabay, the last wild tree of its kind โsnapped during a windstorm.โ The tree had stood on Mauritius โfor decades as the only survivor of its kind.โ
Bogardilla (Squalius palaciosi) โ Last seen in 1999, this Spanish fish disappeared after dams and weirs limited its habitat and a half-dozen introduced species either ate it, outcompeted it for resources, or brought new pathogens to the area. It serves as a reminder that extinction is often the result of multiple factors chipping away at a speciesโ survival โ a death of a thousand indignities.
Seven plants in Bangladesh:ย The Asian nation released its updated Plant Red List in November and announced thatย seven native plant speciesย were no longer found within its borders. Most appear to be regional extinctions and still grow in other countries or in private collections, with the sad exception of the last plant on this list.
Fita champa (Magnolia griffithii)
Ironweed tree (Memecylon ovatum)
Jiringa (Archidendron jiringa)
Kathphal (Myrica nagi)
Syzygium venustum
Drypetes venusta
Thurma jam (Syzygium thumri)
Four Egyptian plants:ย Aย paperย published last January assessed many native plants of Egypt and declared four species and one subspecies extinct:
Bellevalia salah-eidiiย โ a perennial bulb that grew in sandy areas but hasnโt been since 1966.
Muscari salah-eidiiย โ a perennial bulb last seen in the field in 1967.
Vicia sinaicaย โ an annual or perennial herb once restricted to North Sinai and last collected in 1955.
Limonium sinuatum romanumย โ a perennial herb last collected in the field in 1949. The main species is known as wavyleaf sea lavender.
The paper doesnโt speculate on what causes these species to disappear but notes a long list of threats to Egyptian plants, including climate change, extreme weather, droughts, pollution, habitat alteration, roads and railways, agriculture, and biological resource use.
Ethiopian wolf (Canis simensis citernii) with Helichrysum citrispinum, Sanetti Plateau, Ethiopia. By Charles J. Sharp – Own work, from Sharp Photography, sharpphotography.co.uk, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=66000154
Ethiopian wolves (Canis simensis) โ A paper published this July reports several regional extinctions for this embattled predator, now down to a population of about 450 animals. โWe describe three population extinctions and three local extinctions within fragmented populations, and present evidence of factors accelerating the extinction process, such as disease (rabies and canine distemper virus), persecution, road kills and poisoning.โ The situation isnโt likely to improve: โHard borders imposed by expanding subsistence agriculture lock Ethiopian wolves into further isolation, with few opportunities for dispersal and recolonization,โ they write. Shockingly, this species is still assessed as โendangered,โ when its plight has obviously reached critical levels.
Sangihe dwarf kingfisher (Ceyx sangirensis) โ A bird we didnโt know to keep looking for before it disappeared. A paper published this past March details decades of taxonomic confusion โ enhanced by poor documentation of the first scientific specimen in the 1870s โ that kept the animal from being recognized as its own species. Once native to Sangihe Island in the Philippines, it apparently no longer exists there.
Malagodon honahona โ A paper published this past April described this newly recognized fish species from Madagascar โฆ and also announced its possible extinction. The researchers โ Emily M. Carr, Rene P. Martin, and John S. Sparks from the American Museum of Natural History โ recount how they first encountered this species in a small, isolated swamp in 1994, where introduced mosquitofish (Gambusiaholbrooki) were competing with the native fish for resources.
But that wasnโt the only pressure, as they wrote: โThe region upstream of their only known habitat lies outside the Rรฉserve Spรฉciale de Manombo protected area and is afforded no protection. As a result, the watershed has experienced rapid deforestation in recent decades such that the fragile type locality has suffered severe degradation. It is likely M. honahona became extinct in the late 1990s, not long after it was first discovered.โ In that fate it joins a similar species, M. madagascariensis, which Sparks and other researchers declared extinct in 2018 as part of an IUCN assessment of Madagascarโs freshwater fish.
Smooth hornwort (Phaeoceros laevis) โ This wide-ranging plant isnโt extinct, but a 2024 assessment of liverwort and hornwort species in Serbia calls it โpossibly extinctโ within that country, making it a noteworthy regional extinction.
Digitaria laeviglumis โ This species of smooth crabgrass once grew in New Hampshire but was last seen in 1931 and had since almost been forgotten. A paper published this July declared it extinct. Some of the last samples of the crabgrass have sat in the University of New Hampshireโs Albion R. Hodgdon Herbarium for generations; recent DNA analysis helped to identify it as a unique species, revealing it as the first documented plant extinct in the Granite State.
โDocumenting the extinction of Digitaria laeviglumis has significant implications for biodiversity conservation,โ herbarium collections manager Erin Sigel said in a press release. โIt highlights the vulnerability of endemic species, particularly those with very limited geographic ranges, and understanding the factors that led to the extinction of this grass can help inform conservation strategies for other at-risk species. This case underscores the vital role herbaria play in preserving specimens and providing essential data for scientific research.โ
Hieracium tolstoiiย โ This Italian plant presented scientists with some challenges. Theย Hieraciumย genus (better known as hawkweed) has more than 10,000 documented species, many of which remain under debate due to variations in their appearance and frequent hybridization, as well as a mutation process called polyploidization that can cause dramatic shifts in chromosomes. But a paper published this past Septemberย examined the recordsย and confirmsย H. tolstoiiย (which once grew on โancient brick wallsโ but hasnโt been seen since 1938) as a unique species โ one that went extinct at some point in the 20th century. (Previous research had also declared it extinct but maintained some doubt it was a unique species.)
Fucus virsoidesย โ This โglacial relictโ algae species isnโt extinct, but itโs rapidly disappearing and deserves a shoutout. A paper published this past Augustย warnedย that we could be heading toward โthe first documented extinction of a marine macroalga in the Mediterranean Sea.โ The researchers wrote that โF. virsoidesย could be considered functionally extinct in Istria (Croatia), critically threatened with extinction in Italy and Montenegro and locally extinct in Slovenia.โ They hypothesize its decline has been caused by โa variety of anthropogenic stressors (e.g. habitat destruction, pollution, overgrazing) exacerbated by climate change,โ all of which increased the Adriatic Seaโs surface temperature and salinity.
Taiwanese swallowtail butterfly (Papilio machaonsylvina) โ Rumors of this butterflyโs extinction have fluttered around for years. It was last seen in 1999, before the Jiji earthquake struck Taiwan, killing more than 2,400 people, destroying the homes of 100,000 more, and causing $300 billion in damage. According to a paper published this past November, the earthquake also caused โmultiple landslidesโ that โpermanently alteredโ the butterflyโs habitat. Research published in 2018 and 2023 suggested the earthquake caused the butterflyโs extinction. This new research examines its morphological characteristics and DNA to confirm that it was a unique subspecies and notes that it โwas well on its evolutionary track to become its own distinct lineage as a separate species.โ
The paper also notes the butterflyโs importance to Taiwanese culture โ โits image is imprinted on the personal ID cards of Taiwanese citizens,โ the researchers write. They also suggest we keep looking for it: โEven though the butterfly has not been seen or collected since 1999, one can always hope that it still persists in the remote mountain regions in the Taiwan highlands.โ
White-chested white-eye (Zosterops albogularis) โ The Australian government has listed this 5-inch bird as extinct since 2000, but scientists kept looking for it for several years. The IUCN finally reassessed it as probably extinct in 2024. Native to Norfolk Island, the bird suffered most of their declines due to introduced black rats, which predated on their eggs. They were last officially observed in 1979, although possible sightings persisted into this century.
Multiple Polynesian tree snails โ The IUCN listed several snail species as extinct this past year (although the scientific assessments were all done several years earlier). They include:
Partula langfordiย โ Last seen in 1992, wiped out by deforestation and the predatory invasive rosy wolfsnail.
Partula magistriย โ A โlarge, conspicuousโ species observed alive just one time. The sole specimen was found in 1992 amid empty โfreshly killedโ shells left behind by wolfsnail predation.
Partula dentiferaย โ Last seen in 1972, although it persisted until at least 1991, when only empty shells were found. The rosy wolfsnail again gets the blame.
Partula diminutaย โ Last seen on Tahiti in 1980, three years after the rosy wolfsnail arrived on the island. You can guess what happened next.
Pohnpei ground partula snail (Partula guamensis)ย โ Another โlarge, conspicuous speciesโ last recorded in 1936. This one has deforestation and a host of introduced species to blame: the New Guinea flatworm, three rat species, and possibly the rosy wolfsnail.
้ๆตท็ฝ้ญ or Qionghai white fish (Anabarilius qionghaiensis) โ A freshwater fish frequently caught and eaten by the people living around Chinaโs Qionghai Lake for decades (if not centuries), this species was last observed around 1970. Development, pollution from pesticides and fertilizers, overfishing, introduced species, and destruction of aquatic vegetation all conspired to do this fish in.
Limnophila limnophiloides โ Scientists only documented this aquatic plant once, in 1918, in Indiaโs Bhushi lake. Extensive surveys have failed to find it, so the IUCN this year declared it extinct. We donโt know exactly why or how it disappeared, but the assessment notes that the โarea is converted into high intensity tourism area and the habitat is completely altered to a small reservoir which is used for bathing, swimming and other recreational purposes by more than a lakh (100,000) of people every year.โ
Vachellia polypyrigenes and V. zapatensis โ These Cuban plants were last seen in 1951 and 1940, respectively. The IUCN declared them extinct in 2024, blaming urbanization and petrochemical activity for the first species, and โthe expansion of human activityโ for the second.
Starnberg whitefish (Coregonus renke)and Chiem whitefish (Coregonus hoferi) โ Native to the lakes in southern Germany for which they were named, these fish were last seen in the late 1800s and 1940s-1980s, respectively. They were assessed as extinct by the IUCN in 2024.
Orkney charr (Salvelinus inframundus) โ This Scottish cold-water fish hasnโt been seen since the 1950s. Scientists suspect dams and other engineering projects build during the 19th century โdisturbed tributary streams into which this species migrated to spawn.โ The IUCN listed this species as โdata deficientโ for years but moved them into the โextinctโ category in 2024. Nonetheless, some sources say the fish or another species that looks like it has recently been observed in Loch Meallt, soโฆfins crossed?
This list isnโt comprehensive, in several notable ways โ because it canโt be.
First, these extinctions are not reported in real time. The last days of the last members of a species are rarely observed by human eyes. They occur in the cracks beyond our perception, out of sight, the disappearance of a shadow or a sunbeam, here and then gone.
Second, even when scientists suspect a species has died out, they donโt give up hope. They keep looking โ often for decades. And on a not-uncommon basis, theyfindthem.
Thereโs an incentive to keep searching: Giving up too early ensures that a species wonโt get the protection it deserves. Species have gone extinct simply because they were declared extinct too soon, protections were removed, and threats worsened as a result.
These endless quests arenโt easy: Tiny frogs who hide in deep jungles or plants that only flower a few nights a year donโt make themselves easily known.
Itโs also hard to prove a negative: If you lay eyes on something, you know if exists. If you donโt see it, thatโs not proof that itโs gone.
Itโs also been a hard few years for science. Fewer researchers got into the field during the pandemic, and people still have a lot of catching up to do. Budgets have also gotten tighter or more unpredictable. Weโll see (or not see) the effects of the Trump administrationโs slash-and-burn of federal research funding in the months and years ahead.
Finally, we must remember that most of the species we lose are โinvisible extinctionsโ โ species that have never been observed, documented, named, or studied by modern science. One study last year estimated that humans have caused 1,500 bird extinctions, half of which were of species weโd never documented. Another study estimated that Australia loses 1-3 invertebrate species every week. If a species doesnโt have a name and goes extinct, did it ever really exist?
Of course, it did โ which is why stories of these extinct species remain so important. Theyโre a reminder to celebrate the diversity of life around us โ and to protect it while we still can.
Itโs time for an agreement in the Colorado River Basin, Colorado water and climate experts say.
Colorado River officials are at odds over how to store and release water in the basinโs reservoirs when the current rules lapse in 2026. Publicly, state negotiators stick close to their original, competing proposals, released early in 2024. Colorado experts watching the process understand the difficulty โ itโs painful to talk about cutting water use โ but time is of the essence.
Jennifer Pitt, the National Audubon Society’s Colorado River program director, paddles a kayak through a restoration site. (Source: Jesus Salazar, Raise the River)
โI have no idea whatโs going to get them to agreement,โ said Jennifer Pitt, the Colorado River program director for the National Audubon Society. โTo me, the biggest pressure seems like time is running out.โ
But there seems to be a lack of trust between the state negotiators, said Jennifer Gimbel, senior water policy scholar at the Colorado Water Center at Colorado State University.
โNot only is there this lack of trust, but there almost seems to be this effort to promote your own proposals by denigrating other proposals,โ Gimbel said. โThat frustrated me to no end. Itโs like they have these political rallies.โ [ed. emphasis mine]
If states are going to propose a united plan, then they need to do it by the end of 2025, preferably sooner, experts said.
โWe continue to stand firmly behind the Upper Division Statesโ Alternative, which performs best according to Reclamationโs own modeling and directly meets the purpose and need of this federal action,โ Coloradoโs negotiating team said in a prepared statement Tuesday.
The basin is also about to see new leadership at the federal level. Colorado water experts are waiting to know who President Donald Trump will appoint to key positions, like the commissioner of Reclamation and the assistant secretary for water and science.
โTheyโre in a really tough spot. I would understand that,โ said John Berggren with the environmental group Western Resource Advocates. โI hope theyโre continuing to negotiate and have productive conversations, and I hope theyโre open to some more creative options.โ
Planning for the extremes
So what options are they considering? In the absence of a seven-state agreement on how to manage the basinโs water supply, the Bureau of Reclamation outlined five possible plans in November:
No action: Included as a formality and shows the risk of doing nothing
Federal authorities: Includes maximum Lower Basin cuts of 3.5 million acre-feet in extremely dry years
Federal authorities hybrid: Includes maximum cuts of 3.5 million acre-feet in the Lower Basin and conserving up to 200,000 acre-feet in the Upper Basin
Cooperative conservation: Includes maximum cuts of 4 million acre-feet in the Lower Basin and conserving up to 200,000 acre-feet in the Upper Basin
Basin hybrid: Includes maximum cuts of 2.1 million acre-feet in the Lower Basin and conserving up to 100,000 acre-feet in the Upper Basin
Colorado experts want to make sure the federal planning process is broad enough to include the worst possible conditions.
Udall/Overpeck 4-panel Figure Colorado River temperature/precipitation/natural flows with trend. Lake Mead and Lake Powell storage. Updated through Water Year 2024. Credit: Brad Udall
The Colorado River Basinโs flows are about 20% lower now than in the 20th century, said Brad Udall, senior water and climate research scientist at the Colorado Water Center at Colorado State University. Thatโs a drop from about 15.2 million acre-feet per year to about 12.4 million acre-feet, he said.
Thatโs not enough for the 15 million acre-feet allotted to the seven U.S. states, much less the additional water owed to Mexico and tribal nations.
Udall wants to make sure officials are planning for scenarios in which the riverโs flow drops by an additional 10%, or down to 11 million acre-feet.
โThe question is โฆ who takes the pain? Is it all Lower Basin? Is Upper Basin sharing that?โ he said.
One new detail for the Colorado experts who reviewed the report was the duration of the next management plan: Reclamation wants it to last for at least 20 years after 2026. It is unlikely to be a short-term, interim plan to give negotiators more time to reach a unified agreement.
The revised proposal submitted by the Upper Basin states โ Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming โ also highlighted conserving up to 200,000 acre-feet of water (depending on river conditions), which seemed to move the states closer to alignment with Reclamation, experts said…
The Upper Basinโs revised proposal, and the federal options, include different โpoolsโ in Lake Powell on the Utah-Arizona border, which would function like savings accounts and could store water conserved by Upper Basin states. Colorado water experts are keeping a close eye on how these accounts might work.
โPutting water in Powell is a good thing, but nobody in the Upper Basin wants to send water to protect Powell that ultimately just runs downstream,โ said Steve Wolff, general manager of the Southwestern Water Conservation District based in Durango.
The experts wanted to know more about how conservation pools would function; how federal authorities in the basin might expand; which reservoirs will be included in the plan; what the impacts to the Grand Canyon would be under the different plans; and ultimately, what plan will stabilize the system.
Theyโll have to wait to find out: The bureau is expected to release a deeper analysis of how each alternative could impact water management in different conditions later this year.
The Bureau of Reclamationโs final selection will likely mix and match elements of the different alternatives, said Carly Jerla, senior water resource program manager with the Bureau of Reclamation in a December presentation in Las Vegas.
โItโs a shame we donโt have a combined Upper Basin and Lower Basin plan right now,โ Udall said. โOnce Reclamation does its modeling, weโll learn a lot. But we need a combined plan.โ
Dillon Reservoir is Denver Waterโs largest reservoir. It sends water to the Front Range via the 23-mile-long Roberts Tunnel under the Continental Divide. Photo credit: Denver Water.
On Friday, in the last hours of the Biden administration, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced it would spend $388.3 million for environmental projects in Colorado and three other Colorado River Basin states.
Now that funding is in limbo.
The money was set to come from a Biden-era law, the Inflation Reduction Act. On Monday, President Donald Trump ordered federal agencies to halt spending money under the act. Lawmakers were still trying to understand whether the freeze applied to the entire Inflation Reduction Act or portions of it as of Wednesday afternoon.
Shoshone Falls hydroelectric generation station via USGenWeb
The new executive order focused on energy spending but also raised questions about funding for environmental projects in the Colorado River Basin, including $40 million for western Coloradoโs effort to buy powerful water rights tied to Shoshone Power Plant on the Colorado River and 16 other projects in Colorado.
Past regulations have been burdensome and impeded the development of the countryโs energy resources, according to the executive order.
โIt is thus in the national interest to unleash Americaโs affordable and reliable energy and natural resources,โ the order said. โThis will restore American prosperity โ including for those men and women who have been forgotten by our economy in recent years.โ
Where spending is stalled, federal agencies will have 90 days to review their funding processes to make sure they align with the Trump administrationโs policies.
The proposed projects focus on improving habitats, ecological stability and resilience against drought in the Colorado River Basin, where prolonged drought and overuse have cast uncertainty over the future water supply for 40 million people. Reclamation also awarded $100 million for Colorado River environmental projects in Arizona, California and Nevada.
Coloradans were promised up to about $135 million from the Inflation Reduction Act as part of the Upper Basin Environmental Drought Mitigation Program. Itโs one of many buckets that have distributed money from the act to Colorado.
This map shows the 15-mile reach of the Colorado River near Grand Junction, home to four species of endangered fish. Map credit: CWCB
With the funding, people around the state hope to upgrade infrastructure to help protect 15 miles of key habitat near Grand Junction for endangered species on the Colorado River. They want to improve aquatic habitats along rivers in Grand County, where low flows threaten fish and aquatic life, and restore ancient, water- and carbon-storing fens.
โIt wasnโt surprising, but we still need to wait to see how it gets interpreted, and what itโs going to apply to or not apply to,โ said Steve Wolff, general manager of the Southwestern Water Conservation District. The district joined with local partners to apply for funding for 17 projects in southwestern Colorado and was awarded $25.6 million.
โWe would all be very disappointed if any of this money was removed,โ Wolff said. โThese funds are really bipartisan and are meant to get put on the ground and do good work.โ
One of those projects aims to restore ancient fens along Highway 550, known as the Million Dollar Highway, between Silverton and Ouray in southwestern Colorado.
These fens, between 6,000 and 14,000 years old, naturally store carbon and slow runoff from the mountains, helping to maintain flows into the summer when water runs low and demand outpaces supply. Drought, a history of mining, and human impacts in the area have degraded the fen ecosystems over time, said Jake Kurzweil, a hydrologist with Mountain Studies Institute in southwestern Colorado.
The project managers want to hire locally to help the rural economy. And the work would help restore river ecosystems where they begin โ at their headwaters โ if the funding actually comes through.
โUntil thereโs a contract in place, we wonโt be including it in our budgets,โ Kurzweil said. โWeโre optimistically hopeful, but not counting our chickens before they hatch.โ
Southern Ute Indian Tribeโs Pine River Environment Drought Mitigation Project: Up to $16.7 million:ย The funding would improve the health of the Pine River watershed, fish passage,ย deteriorating infrastructure,ย and water quality while addressing drought impacts.
Shoshone Hydroelectric Plant back in the days before I-70 via Aspen Journalism
Shoshone Water Rights Preservation Project: Up to $40 million:ย The funding would go toward the $99 million purchase of theย Shoshone Power Plantโs water rightsย by the Colorado River Water Conservation District. The district says it will protect future water supplies for ecosystems, farms, ranches, communities and recreational businesses.
The Dolores River shows us whatโs at stake in the fight to protect the American West — Conservation Colorado
Addressing Drought Mitigation in Southwestern Colorado: Up to $25.6 million:ย The funding would support 17 projects in the Dolores and San Juan river basins in southwestern Colorado. The projects aim to restore ecosystems and enhance biodiversity and water resources while supporting local communities and endangered species.
Tomichi Creek, a tributary of the Gunnison River, runs through the Peterson Ranch property. The Colorado Water Conservation Board holds an instream flow water right for 18 cfs on the creek in this stretch.
CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Grand Mesa and Upper Gunnison Watershed Resiliency and Aquatic Connectivity Project: Up to $24.3 million:ย The funding would restore watersheds to combat drought impacts to water quality and habitat in western Colorado.
Orchard Mesa circa 1911
Orchard Mesa Irrigation District Conveyance Upgrades for 15-Mile Reach Flow Enhancement: Up to $10.5 million:ย The funding would convert open canals into pressurized pipelines, improving water delivery efficiency and reducing environmental stressors. This upgrade aims to support endangered fish species by enhancing streamflow in a critical stretch of the Colorado River.
A man fishes along Blue River. The federal government Dec. 19, 2023, announced a $1.8 million grant for a habitat restoration on a section of the Blue River. Blue River Watershed Group/Courtesy photo
Enhancing Aquatic Habitat in Colorado River Headwaters: Up to $7 million:ย The funding would restore streamย habitats along the Fraser,ย Blue and Colorado rivers in Grand County through channel shaping and bank stabilization.
Coyote Gulch on the Yampa River Core Trail August 24, 2022.
Yampa River/Walton Creek Confluence Restoration Project: Up to $5 million:ย The funding would restore river and floodplain habitat around Steamboat Springs.
Yellow-billed cuckoos have nearly been extirpated from the western U.S. Photo courtesy Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory.
Drought Resiliency on Western Colorado Conserved Lands: Up to $4.6 million:ย The funding would help improve wetlands, floodplains, erosion control structures and habitat for at-risk species like the yellow-billed cuckoo and Gunnison sage-grouse.
The Colorado River, which feeds into Lake Powell, begins its 1,450-mile journey in Rocky Mountain National Park near Grand Lake, Colorado. Denver Water gets half of its water from tributaries that feed into the Colorado River. Some of these tributaries include the Fraser River in Grand County and the Blue River in Summit County. Photo credit: Denver Water
Upper Colorado Basin Aquatic Organism Passage Program: Up to $4.2 million:ย The funding would restore stream habitat in Grand County to improve biodiversity, habitats, fish passage and drought resilience.
Palisade peach orchard
Conversion of Wastewater Lagoons into Wetlands: Up to $3 million:ย The funding would turn outdated sewer lagoons intoย wetlands to improve biodiversityย and habitat for migratory waterfowl and endangered fish species in Palisade.
Fruita Reservoir Dam Removal: Up to $2.8 million:ย The funding would remove a dam on Piรฑon Mesa to restore wetlands, habitat and biodiversity.
Beaver dam analog. Photo: Juliet Grable
Monitoring and Quantifying the Effectiveness of Beaver Dam Analogs on Drought Influenced Streams in the Upper Colorado River Basin: Up to $1.9 million:ย The funding would restore degraded headwater meadows by implementing structures that mimic theย natural functions of beaver dams.
Uncompahgre River Valley looking south
Uncompahgre Tailwater Rehabilitation Project: Up to $1.8 million:ย The funding would stabilize stream banks, restore aging infrastructure and improve the river habitat to help with ecological health and recreational opportunities.
Photo credit: Town of Gypsum
Eagle River Habitat Improvement, Gypsum Ponds State Wildlife Area: Up to $1.5 million:ย The funding would improve fish habitat and water quality along the Eagle River in Eagle County.
Bicycling the Colorado National Monument, Grand Valley in the distance via Colorado.com
Orchard Mesa and Grand Valley Metering Efficiency Project: Up to $1.5 million:ย The funding would improve water management in the Grand Valley through the installation of advanced metering technology and real-time remote monitoring systems.
Biologists say federal target numbers are too low to ensure recovery of the Gunnison sage-grouse, which is listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. The bird’s largest population is in the Gunnison basin. Photo credit: Colorado Parks and Wildlife.
Habitat Restoration in the Gunnison Basin: Up to $750,000:ย ย The funding would use low-tech restoration structures to restore habitat for the endangeredย Gunnison sage-grouseย in the Gunnison River Basin.
Toxic-algae blooms appeared in Steamboat Lake summer of 2020. The lake shut down for two weeks after harmful levels of a toxin produced by the blue-green algae were found in the water. As climate change continues, toxic blooms and summer shutdowns of lakes are predicted to become more common. Photo credit: Julie Arington/Aspen Journalism
Cyanobacteria Monitoring and Treatment for Drought-driven Blooms in a High Elevation, Upper Colorado Reservoir to save Ecosystem Function: Up to $518,000:ย The funding would use real-time water quality monitoring tools and targeted treatments toย combat algal bloomsย and restore aquatic health at Williams Fork Reservoir.
Since the late 1980’s, this waterfall formed from interactions among Lake Powell reservoir levels and sedimentation that redirected the San Juan River over a 20-foot high sandstone ledge [Dominy Formation]. Until recently, little was known about its effect on two endangered fishes. Between 2015-2017, more than 1,000 razorback sucker and dozens of Colorado pikeminnow were detected downstream of the waterfall. Credit: Bureau of Reclamation
From email from Reclamation (Western Colorado Area Office):
Releases are made for the authorized purposes of the Navajo Unit, and to attempt to maintain a target base flow through the endangered fish critical habitat reach of the San Juan River (Farmington to Lake Powell). The San Juan River Basin Recovery Implementation Program recommends a target base flow of between 500 cfs and 1,000 cfs through the critical habitat area. The target base flow is calculated as the weekly average of gaged flows throughout the critical habitat area from Farmington to Lake Powell.
A news release from the SWCD said the funding will support 17 projects aimed at supporting aquatic ecosystems during periods of drought across the Dolores and San Juan River Basins in Southwest Colorado. General Manager of SWCD, Steve Wolff, said the projects will address three broad categories: the removal of invasive plants, erosion control and habitat connectivity…One example Wolff provided was the rebuilding of headgates โ structures at the tops of stream diversions that regulate water flow โ to allow fish to move upstream and downstream during periods of drought. The projects were selected on their feasibility, readiness and level of local engagement, and had the support of 37 different federal, state, tribal and local entities representing regional and local stakeholders.
In 2023, the SWCD board of directors organized a partnership of over 30 regional groups in preparation for the B2E grant application after recognizing the need for rural stakeholders in Southwest Colorado to compete more effectively for federal funding. Southwest Colorado has always needed a lot of funding; it has numerous small conservation districts, irrigation districts and conservation groups that individually lack the capacity to prepare applications for large federal grants, Wolff said. The final grant contract isnโt expected to be executed until late 2025 or early 2026. All funding must be spent by Sept. 30, 2031.
WASHINGTON โ The Bureau of Reclamation today announced initial selections under the Upper Colorado River Basin Environmental Program for a $388.3 million investment from President Bidenโs Investing in America agenda to improve wildlife and aquatic habitats, ecological stability and resilience against drought. The funding supports 42 projects in Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, as well as Tribal initiatives that will provide environmental benefits or the restoration of ecosystem and natural habitats. To view a full list of projects, visit Reclamationโs website. Individualized criteria for some projects are included in the descriptions at the link.
Additionally, Reclamation announced approximately $100 Million funding opportunity for the companion program in the Lower Basin, which seeks to fund projects that provide environmental benefits in Arizona, Nevada, and California.
โThese historic environmental investments will restore and improve natural resources supporting the long-term sustainability of the Colorado River Basin, which includes nine National Parks across the seven states and is an essential habitat for more than a dozen endangered species,โ Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton said. โAs we continue to develop the drought resiliency of the basin through investments in water conservation and efficiency projects, we canโt forget that a sustainable basin can only exist if there is a healthy environment.โ
This is the first round of projects funded from the Upper Basin Environmental Drought Mitigation Program through the Inflation Reduction Act. More announcements are expected in the coming months, including projects from the most recent Upper Basin environmental announcement, which closed Jan. 10, 2025. Reclamation will begin negotiations with successful applicants to ensure funding conditions are met before funding is obligated. Funding for the Shoshone Water Rights Preservation Project will not be obligated until the Colorado water court enters a final decree; in addition, the agreement will contain provisions requiring Reclamationโs written consent for any water right changes. The conditions precedent set by the State of Colorado for their funding of the Shoshone Water Rights Preservation Project must also be met prior to the obligation of federal funds. Funding for the Pine River Environment Drought Mitigation Project is subject to negotiation concerning operation, maintenance and replacement costs and other appropriate considerations.
Reclamationโs new funding opportunity for proposed ecosystem restoration or improvements projects in the Lower Colorado River Basin is also funded by the Inflation Reduction Act, and will consider projects that provide environmental benefits, or ecosystem and habitat restoration projects that address issues directly caused by drought in the Lower Colorado Basin Region under Phase 3 of the Lower Colorado River Basin System Conservation and Efficiency Program. Reclamation expects to announce projects by spring 2025 and award approximately $100 million for planning, design, construction, and/or implementation of projects. Project and applicant eligibility information is available on the Bureau of Reclamation website.
The Biden-Harris administration has led a comprehensive effort to make Western communities more resilient to climate change and address the ongoing megadrought across the region by harnessing the full resources of President Bidenโs historic Investing in America agenda. As climate change has accelerated over the past two decades, the Colorado River Basin experienced the driest period in over one thousand years. Together, the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law provide the largest investment in climate resilience in our nationโs history, including $15.4 billion for Western water across federal agencies to enhance the Westโs resilience to drought and deliver unprecedented resources to protect the Colorado River System for all whose lives and livelihoods depend on it. This includes $5.35 billion for over 577 projects in the Colorado River Basin states.ย
Projects in Colorado
Shoshone Water Rights Preservation Project: Up to approximately $40m
Funding is provided to permanently protect the Shoshone Water Rights in the Upper Colorado River Basin to ensure a reliable water supply for ecosystem, agricultural, municipal, and recreational uses. Key components include maintaining the historical flow regime, eliminating risks of abandonment due to plant decommissioning, and facilitating instream flow use by the Colorado Water Conservation Board. Funds will not be obligated or expended until a final Colorado water court decree is entered confirming water rights and the agreement will contain provisions requiring written consent of Reclamation on any water right changes. The conditions precedent set by the State of Colorado for their funding of the Shoshone Water Rights Preservation Project must also be met prior to the obligation of federal funds.
Addressing Drought Mitigation in Southwest Colorado: Up to approximately $25.6m
Funding is provided for restoring ecosystems and improving river and connection of waterways in southwestern Colorado. It involves a collaborative effort to enhance biodiversity and water resources while supporting local communities and endangered species.
Grand Mesa and Upper Gunnison Watershed Resiliency and Aquatic Connectivity Project: Up to approximately $24.3m
Funding is provided to implement watershed restoration actions to combat drought effects in western Colorado. Through a variety of strategies, it enhances water quality, habitat resilience, and connectivity for aquatic species.
Orchard Mesa Irrigation District Conveyance Upgrades for 15-Mile Reach Flow Enhancement: Up to approximately $10.5m
Funding is provided to convert open canals into pressurized pipelines, improving water delivery efficiency and reducing environmental stressors. This upgrade supports the recovery of endangered fish species by enhancing streamflow in the critical 15-mile reach of the Colorado River.
Enhancing Aquatic Habitat in Colorado River Headwaters: Up to approximately $7m
Funding is provided to restore stream habitats along the Fraser, Blue and Colorado rivers in Grand County, enhancing aquatic ecosystems through channel shaping and bank stabilization through collaboration with key conservation partners.
Yampa River/Walton Creek Confluence Restoration Project: Up to approximately $5m
Funding is provided to restore river and wetland ecosystems in Steamboat Springs through restoration of river and floodplain habitat and the rehabilitation of riparian and wetland area thereby enhancing ecological health and promoting biodiversity. It addresses drought impacts by improving water quality, habitat complexity, and community resilience.
Drought Resiliency on Western Colorado Conserved Lands: Up to approximately $4.6m
Funding is provided to implement various ecological restoration strategies, including the restoration of wetlands, reconnection of floodplains, the installation of erosion control structures to reduce sediment transport and enhance water quality, while promoting habitat restoration for at-risk species like the yellow-billed cuckoo and Gunnison sage-grouse.
Upper Colorado Basin Aquatic Organism Passage Program: Up to approximately $4.2m
Funding is provided to restore stream habitat in Grand County, promoting biodiversity and resilience against drought conditions while enhancing habitat connectivity and improving fish passage for native species, particularly Colorado River cutthroat trout.
Conversion of Wastewater Lagoons into Wetlands: Up to approximately $3m
Funding is provided to transform outdated sewer lagoons into wetlands, enhancing biodiversity and providing habitat for migratory waterfowl and endangered fish species in the town of [Palisade]. Once completed, the wetlands will improve water quality and increase native plant diversity, recharging groundwater and supporting up to 75% of commercially harvested fish.
Fruita Reservoir Dam Removal: Up to approximately $2.8m
Funding is provided to remove a dam on Pinon Mesa, restoring wetlands and enhancing biodiversity and wildlife habitat while ensuring ecological resilience through water pooling, pipeline removal and comprehensive habitat restoration efforts.
Monitoring and Quantifying the Effectiveness of Beaver Dam Analogs on Drought Influenced Streams in the Upper Colorado River Basin: Up to approximately $1.9m
Funding is provided to restore degraded headwater meadows by implementing structures that mimic the natural functions of beaver dams. These interventions enhance ecosystem resilience, improve water retention, and support native species.
Uncompahgre Tailwater Rehabilitation Project: Up to $1.8m
Funding is provided to address habitat degradation, enhancing ecological health and recreational opportunities through rehabilitation of river habitat, restoration aging structures, and implementation of bank stabilization techniques.
Eagle River Habitat Improvement, Gypsum Ponds State Wildlife Area: Up to approximately $1.5m
Funding is provided to enhance Eagle River in Eagle County, improving fish habitat and increasing resilience to low flows and drought while supporting local ecosystems and enhancing water quality.
Orchard Mesa and Grand Valley Metering Efficiency Project: Up to approximately $1.5m
Funding is provided to enhance water management in the Grand Valley through the installation of advanced metering technology and SCADA systems. This project addresses drought conditions by improving water use efficiency and supporting local aquatic ecosystems.
Habitat Restoration in the Gunnison Basin: Up to approximately $750k
Funding is provided to restore stream habitats in the Gunnison Basin, implementing low-tech restoration structures to enhance ecosystem resilience and support habitat for the endangered Gunnison Sage-Grouse.
Cyanobacteria Monitoring and Treatment for Drought-driven Blooms in a High Elevation, Upper Colorado Reservoir to save Ecosystem Function: Up to approximately $518k
Funding is provided to restore aquatic health at Williams Fork reservoir by deploying real-time water quality monitoring tools and implementing targeted hydrogen peroxide treatments to combat algal blooms. It enhances water quality management to protect ecosystems and support community recreational activities.
Itโs a native species endangered (in the colloquial sense, not the legal sense) by both anthropogenic habitat changes (warm temperatures, less water, dams and stuff) and non-native immigrant species.
USFWS identified non-native hybridization and competition as the most significant threat, and concluded that collective action by a collaborative effort including federal, state, and tribal governments, along with NGOs, has successfully stabilized the fishโs population since discussion about possible listing first began a quarter century ago.
“The 119 populations are distributed across a wide geographic area, providing sufficient redundancy to reduce the likelihood of large-scale extirpation due to a single catastrophic event. Furthermore, the Rio Grande cutthroat trout Conservation Team has a demonstrated track record of responding to negative events to protect and even expand populations in the aftermath of large-scale changes to streams. Populations cover the breadth of the historical range, ensuring retention of adaptive capacity (i.e., representation) to promote short-term adaption to environmental change. The SSA report describes the uncertainties associated with potential threats and the subspeciesโ response to these potential threats, but the best available information indicates the risk of extinction is low. Therefore, we conclude that the Rio Grande cutthroat trout is not in danger of extinction throughout all of its range and does not meet the definition of an endangered species.”
ESA questions
Iโve not followed the Rio Grande cutthroat trout saga closely. My primary interest is in its value in highlighting broader issues around the ESA that my Utton Center colleagues and I have been discussing of late.
Collective action
Collective action by a broad coalition of stakeholders before ESA listing seems to have been key in protecting whatโs left of the species and avoiding listing.
Question: Is this driven by a societal environmental value (We love this fish and the ecosystems on which it depends, and want to protect them!) or a desire to avoid the messiness of ESA listing and the resulting land and water management craziness that would result therefrom?
In the new book, we note a clear distinction between these two types of cases in the history of Albuquerqueโs relationship with the Rio Grande: environmental actions growing out of collective community values, and environmental actions driven by statutory (in this case ESA) mandates.
Charisma
Charismatic?
We know that charismatic species get more societal love. (Woe is our diminutive Rio Grande silvery minnow.) The Rio Grande cutthroat trout is charismatically beloved. Does this help explain the energetic collective action weโve seen?
Loper Bright for the โforeseeable futureโ
Reading the USFW federal register notice in light of the Supreme Courtโs Loper Bright decision, is interesting. IANAL, but my shorthand for the decision is that the courts no longer must defer to an implementing agencyโs interpretation of ambiguous statutory provisions. Hereโs USFWS in the cutthroat trout decision:
Maybe language like that was always included in USFW Federal register notices? I expect a lot more post-Loper Bright debates about what Congress intended.
As I stood on a bridge and looked upstream along the Klamath River, I felt confused. For over 15 years, I had stood in the same stop and gazed on the earthen face of Iron Gate Dam. But on this day, I sawโฆspace. Framing the edges of that space, I saw canyon walls, river bed, floodplains and terraces, and miles of vista.
I lost my dad last year, so I understand having the experience of noticing the absence of someone who had been monumental in my life โ both physically and metaphorically. I understand the confusion that results from seeing a space where he used to be and being keenly aware of his absence. I noticed the absence of Iron Gate Dam in the same way โ the loss of something that had been monumental in my life and in the lives of thousands of others. But unlike the absence of my dad, seeing the absence of Iron Gate Dam stirred feelings of wonder, joy, hope, and gratitude.
Undammed: The KLamath River Story
The history of water in the West has been shaped by conflict, greed, and scarcity, but in a remote pocket of Southern Oregon and Northern California, a different Western water story is taking shape. The largest dam removal in history is on the verge of completion on the Klamath River. This moment is the result of a historic decades-long Tribally-led campaign to free the Klamath River and restore salmon and steelhead populations, which are core to Native traditions and foodways. This is undoubtedly a huge triumph.
The first episode of this in-depth podcast dives into the past, present, and future of the worldโs largest dam removal project and features Dr. Ann Willis, American Riversโ California Regional Director.
RAZORBACK SUCKER The Maybell ditch is home to four endangered fish species [the Humpback chub (Gila cypha), Bonytail (Gila elegans), Colorado pikeminnow (Ptychocheilus lucius), and the Razorback sucker (Xyrauchen texanus)] ยฉ Linda Whitham/TNC
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 presidentโs 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 governmentโs trust responsibility to tribes, according to a news release from Hickenlooperโs 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.
An area chapter of Trout Unlimited recently partnered with a landowner to restore a portion of the West Fork of the Dolores River their property borders…Besides the West Forkโs beauty, itโs the largest tributary of the Lower Dolores. Itโs also home to all four kinds of trout, including the only one native to Colorado, the cutthroat…
Over time, modern practices and a change of land use along the riverbanks โ such as ranching, grazing, or simply cutting out big fields โ has resulted in less and less โlarge woody debrisโ falling into the river, Rose said. That debris is not only a source of food, it also can be something of an anchor to slow down the water flow, and to offer fish and other critters a refuge.
In effect, the restoration project was in the name of something Rose called โstructural complexity.โ
โThatโs the most important term youโll pick up in this whole project,โ Rose said. โIf you donโt have complexity and have homogeneity, you donโt have the richness you need to accommodate all of the aquatic co-evolutions.โ
To create this structural complexity โ and put simply โ the project involved strategically arranging big boulders in different ways and places along the stretch of river.
A salmon on the Klamath River is captured just downstream from Wards Canyon, California, to have a radio-tag device attached to its fin on its way upstream. This device will transmit location data to scientists in the Upper Basin, demonstrating information about the salmon’s return to its historic reaches in the freed river. Paul Robert Wolf Wilson/High Country News
Click the link to read the article on The High Country News website (Kylie Mohr):
December 25, 2024
Climate change and encroaching development continue to threaten biodiversity. At the same time, Westerners saw dozens of success stories in 2024. Two national monuments were expanded in California, while conservation gained equal footing with mining and drilling under the Bureau of Land Managementโs Public Lands Rule. Alaska saw half of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska protected from new oil and gas leases, and the previous approval for the Ambler Road project in the Brooks Range was rescinded. Elsewhere in the region, fish returned to their former habitats and swam off the Endangered Species List, while wolf and gray whale populations continued to grow.
Fall-run Chinook Salmon, Oct. 16, 2024, photo by Mark Hereford, ODFW.
Salmon return to once-dammed reaches of the Klamath River
For over a century, dams blocked salmon from returning to their spawning grounds near the headwaters of the Klamath River. But the removal of four of the riverโs six dams was completed this year, and in October, biologists saw several hundred chinook salmon above the dam sites. While scientists had expected salmon to return eventually, the appearance of so many fish so soon surprised and delighted the tribes who had ardently campaigned to remove the dams.
Fences come down
Every year, migrating elk, deer, pronghorn and moose are slowed, injured, and even killed by the Westโs thousands of miles of barbed-wire fencing. Groups like the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) are working hard to remove barbed wire or replace it with more permeable barriers. According to theย Mountain Journal, since 2021, the NWF and its partners have removed 40 miles of fencing from the High Divide region along the Montana-Idaho border. Sublette County, Wyoming, another leader in the wildlife-friendly fencing movement, has worked with state and federal partners to remove or improve more than 700 miles of fencing since 2017.
Gray whale populations rebound
Between December 2023 and mid-February 2024, researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimated that 19,260 gray whales migrated along the Pacific Coast โ a 33% increase from the previous season. โThe numbers are trending up,โ NOAA spokesman Michael Milstein told the Oregon Capital Chronicle. โThe indications are consistent that the whales have gone from a decline to a recovery.โ
The fence line separating sagebrush and historic pastureland marks the north end of of the state of Wyomingโs school trust parcel in Grand Teton National Park, a tract known as the Kelly Parcel. (Mike Koshmrl/WyoFile)
Wyoming parcel approved for sale to Grand Teton National Park
Last year, it looked like an iconic parcel of state trust land outside Jackson, Wyoming, might be sold to a developer, prompting outrage from locals and conservationists. Known as the Kelly parcel, the land offers panoramic views of the Tetons and provides important habitat for migrating pronghorn and other wildlife species. But by law, state trust land must generate revenue for public schools. In November, Wyomingโs top-five state elected officials approved the sale of the parcel to the adjacent Grand Teton National Park for $100 million. The state will likely use the proceeds to purchase oil and gas-rich land in the Powder River Basin.
Wolves part of the pack discovered last summer in Tulare County called the Yowlumni Pack. The pack was found in the Sequoia National Forest near the Tule River Tribe of Californiaโs reservation and ancestral lands.California Department of Fish and Wildlife
Wolf populations boom
An estimated 70 wolves are now living in California, an increase of 26 animals from last year. Two new wolf packs formed in Northern California this year, too. Meanwhile, Colorado saw the formation of its first pack since wolves were reintroduced last year.
Washington river gets legal rights โ and other ballot wins
In Everett, Washington, voters approved a ballot initiative that grants the Snohomish River watershed the rights to exist, regenerate and flourish. City residents, agencies and organizations can now sue on behalf of the watershed, and any recovered damages will be used to restore the ecosystem. Also in Washington, voters upheld the 2021 Climate Commitment Act by voting no on Initiative 2117. The act caps and reduces carbon emissions for the stateโs largest carbon emitters and raises money for conservation, climate and wildfire resilience statewide. In California, voters passed a $10 billion climate bond that will fund climate resilience projects, protect clean drinking water and help prevent wildfires.
Bear River Massacre site restored
One of the deadliest massacres of Native people in U.S. history happened near whatโs now Preston, Idaho, in January 1863. Over 150 years later, the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation is reclaiming the site of the massacre, a place their people once lived, celebrated and danced. Along the Bear River, the tribe is replacing thirsty invasive vegetation with native plants and restoring degraded agricultural fields to wetlands. Eventually, they hope to return an estimated 13,000 acre-feet of water to the parched Great Salt Lake annually. โFor thousands of years, this wasnโt a massacre site,โ Brad Parry, the tribeโs vice chairman, told High Country News. โWe want to make this a place to come to again.โ
Volunteers plant native vegetation along the banks of Battle Creek at the Bear River Massacre site in Preston, Idaho. Russel Albert Daniels/High Country News
Apache trout removed from Endangered Species List
In September, after 50 years on the federal endangered species list, Arizonaโs state fish โ the Apache trout โ was declared recovered and removed from the list. The first American sportfish to achieve delisting, it owes its recovery to the White Mountain Apache Tribe as well as to federal and state agencies and nonprofits. In a statement, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland paid tribute to โthe transformational power that collaborative conservation efforts โ grounded in Indigenous Knowledge โ can have on fish and wildlife.โ
Extra wetland habitat created for birds
Californiaโs Central Valley is vital to migrating birds, but its wetlands have been almost destroyed by agricultural and urban development. BirdReturns, a program that started in 2014, pays the valleyโs rice farmers to create โpop-upโ wetland habitat by flooding fields earlier in the fall and leaving them flooded later in the spring. Since its inception, BirdReturns has created 120,000 acres of temporary bird habitat.
Tribally led projects win big
TheAmerica The Beautiful Challenge funds voluntary conservation and restoration projects around the country, consolidating funding from federal agencies and the private sector. Numerous projects led by tribes in the West received money from the program this year, including the Summit Lake Paiute Tribe, which received $2.5 million for fish passage and riparian restoration projects in Nevada; the Pueblo of Jemez, which received $2.1 million for stream and wetland restoration in New Mexico; the Native Village of Tazlina, which received $2 million to incorporate Indigenous knowledge of migratory birds into state and regional meetings and management in Alaska; the Hoopa Valley Tribe, which received $4.5 million to remove invasive barred owls across Northern California; and the Eastern Shoshone Tribe, which received $3 million to expand the Yellowstone Bison Conservation Transfer Program.
Welcome to theย Landline, a monthly newsletter fromย High Country Newsย about land, water, wildlife, climate and conservation in the Western United States.ย Sign upย to get it in your inbox. Screenshot from the High Country News website.
In mid-November, 10 days after 77 million of our fellow Americans chose Donald J. Trump to be their next president, I found myself at the old Navajo Bridge, which spans Marble Canyon and the Colorado River downstream from Lees Ferry in northern Arizona. I got out of my car, stretched and ambled toward the pedestrian bridge, which mirrors the newer one for automobiles.
As I reached the bridge, I noticed some onlookers looking intently downstream with binoculars. I followed their gaze to see a trio of giant, bald-headed, feathered creatures perched on the steel beams of the automobile bridge, looking a bit like the flying monkeys in the old Wizard of Oz film. They were California condors, maybe 10 in all, apparently waiting for an afternoon carrion snack to float by on the slow-moving emerald waters far below.
I wandered back and forth on the bridge for the next hour or so, stopping frequently to snap another photo, meditate vertiginously on the river and limestone cliffs or to gaze again in awe at the magnificent, uncanny creatures. Politics and the election results became irrelevant, at least for a moment, and it was with a newfound sense of serenity that I finally got back into the car and headed north.
Condors 6Y and 2A (Iโm sure they have their own, more interesting names, but โฆ) at the Navajo Bridge. According to condorspotter.com, 6Y is a male born in March 2019 at the Oregon Zoo. And 2A is a female hatched at the World Center for Birds of Prey in May 2021. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
My mental calm was quickly shattered, however, as news trickled out about Trumpโs Cabinet picks and plans. It is becoming increasingly clear that we are entering a perilous political era in which the federal governmentโs role is fundamentally altered. This includes a multi-pronged assault on our public lands and the rules, regulations, laws and agencies designed to protect them. Those condors on the Colorado River could be among the many victims.
Judging from the record of Trumpโs first term, his campaign platform, his Cabinet picks so far and Project 2025, the right wingโs โpresidential playbook,โ itโs clear that he will once again attempt to dismantle the administrative state โ and heโll likely be better at it this time. The destruction will include gutting federal agencies, replacing experienced staffers with Trump loyalists and eviscerating protections for human health and the environment. The goal is to shrink the government, slash spending on safety nets and social programs to fund more tax cuts for the wealthy, and (of course) remove regulatory barriers standing in the way of ever-growing corporate profits. With the likes of Elon Musk buying his way into the administration, it promises to be a government of the billionaires, by the billionaires, and for the billionaires.
Trump actually summed up this ethos better than I ever could in a social media post, when he vowed to give anyone who invested at least $1 billion โin the United States of America โฆ fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals. GET READY TO ROCK!!!โ He seemed to be responding to global mining corporation Rio Tinto, which is behind the proposed Resolution Copper Mine at Oak Flat in Arizona, urging the new administration to weaken environmental laws and expedite permitting for big mines.
During his first term, Trump made his hostility toward public lands clear as he reduced national monuments and rolled back regulations on fossil fuel extraction. This time, he promises a repeat performance, backed by a GOP-dominated Congress, a conservative-leaning Supreme Court and an army of professional ideologues who have been eagerly preparing for this moment for the last four years.
We can expect him to try to shrink or entirely rescind national monuments โ particularly Bears Ears, Grand Staircase-Escalante and the Baaj Nwaavjo Iโtah Kukveni-Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon โ potentially reopening hundreds of thousands of acres of uranium-rich lands to new mining claims during a time when the domestic uranium industry is experiencing a revival.
He will likely reward petroleum companies for donating generously to his campaign by implementing his โdrill baby drillโ policies. Heโll open up more public land to oil and gas leasing, including in the Alaskan Arctic, and rescind drilling bans on Thompson Divide in western Colorado and around Chaco Culture National Historical Park in New Mexico. Heโll roll back new EPA rules aimed at reducing greenhouse gas and mercury pollution from coal power plants.
If Trumpโs hunger for โenergy dominanceโ and corporate freedom donโt come for your public lands, the โCult of Efficiencyโ probably will. Musk donated $277 million to Trumpโs campaign. In return, he has been chosen to co-chair the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, where he has vowed to slash some $2 trillion in allegedly โwastefulโ spending.
What this will actually mean remains unclear. But Trumpโs suggestion that he may try to privatize the U.S. Postal Service because itโs not โprofitableโ and must be โsubsidizedโ gives a good indication of what Muskโs quasi-department will be targeting. The USPS is designed to provide a public good, not a profit, and its priorities are fulfilling that mission, not maximizing efficiency. After all, how could delivering a letter to some remote rural backwater for some 50 cents ever be efficient?
And if the USPS is a problem, then what about public lands and the agencies that manage them? Sure, they provide ecological benefits, stewardship of and free access to millions of acres of stunning landscapes, wildlife habitat and so much more. And yet, they are โsubsidizedโ to the tune of tens of billions of dollars each year, making them ripe for Muskโs chopping block. Utah, with the support of other conservative states, has offered to make Muskโs job easier with a lawsuit seeking to seize control of the โunappropriatedโ federal land in its midst. Because those states canโt afford to manage those lands at a loss, they would almost certainly sell them off to private interests.
And what about those condors? For years, industry and conservative politicians have tried to weaken the Endangered Species Act because it stood in the way of development and profits. Project 2025 calls for an escalation of these efforts, which now have more support in Congress โ and from the efficiency cult.
The federal government has spent at least $35 million so far on the California condor program. Itโs an effort that has so far paid off by helping to bring the species back from the brink of extinction; the wild population is up to almost 600 from an 1980s low of just 22 birds. Public goods such as species restoration simply donโt fit into narrow Muskโs profit-focused vision. And the condor remains fragile, threatened by lead poisoning, power lines, wind turbines and avian influenza, and it is not yet self-sustaining.
In the weeks since the election, Iโve seen a number of pundits, politicians and even advocates calling on land, water and air defenders to take a more conciliatory approach, to forge alliances with oil and gas companies, to abandon calls to โkeep it in the ground,โ to work with Republicans to speed up permitting reform in order to expedite renewable energy development, even if it does mean more fossil fuel development as well. Yet if ever there was a timeย notย to give in, this is it. Americaโs public lands are under unprecedented attack from nearly every front. Now we need to be even more vigilant and fierce in our defense of it. [ed. emphasis mine]
Out on that bridge, something compelled me to hang my body a little too far over the rail so I could gaze straight through the empty space toward the river. My vertigo was overcome by the thrill of seeing, just below me on a steel girder, a juvenile condor, its pink beak jutting from a thatch of dark brown feathers. That, I thought, is certainly worth fighting for.
Condors perched on steel girders some 450 feet above the Colorado River. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
The threatened Humpback Chub is one of four fish species that programs in Colorado and other Western states have been working to recover for nearly three decades. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service/ Courtesy Photo
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 programโs federal funding for seven more years.ย The bill was included in the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act, which is heading to President Joe Bidenโs desk. Sens. John Hickenlooper, D-Colo., and Mitt Romney, R-Utah, sponsored theย fish recovery programโs reauthorization act. Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., sponsored theย billย in the House.ย
โLocal communities, Tribes, water users, and Congress โ weโre all in to protect our native fish and rivers,โ Hickenlooper stated in a news release. โThese programs are tried and true. Our extension will help continue them to save our fish and make our rivers healthier.โ
Federal authorization for the two fish recovery programs โ 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 โ expired this September.ย 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 Septemberย 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.ย Both programs have sought to recover populations of four species โ the humpback chub, razorback sucker, Colorado pikeminnow and bonytail fish โ 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.ย
Students from Palisade High School kissed good-bye to hatchery-raised juvenile razorback suckers before releasing them into the Colorado River May 2023. The fish are listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act, but populations have recovered enough that U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed to downlist them to threatened. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Endangered fish recovery programs in Colorado and three other Western states were given renewed access to federal funds thanks to a bill passed Wednesday by Congress.
Lawmakers gave the go-ahead to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to spend tax dollars on the programs with just days left in a lame-duck session, which adjourns Friday. The news was welcomed in Colorado, where the programs help protect four threatened and endangered species in the Colorado River and San Juan River basins.
โLocal communities, Tribes, water users, and Congress โ weโre all in to protect our native fish and rivers,โ U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper, a Colorado Democrat who sponsored the Senate bill, said in a news release. โThese programs are tried and true. Our extension will help continue them to save our fish and make our rivers healthier.โ
Lawmakers voted to reauthorize the federal funding for seven years for two programs: the Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program โ which operates in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming โ and the San Juan River Basin Recovery Implementation Program โ which spans Colorado and New Mexico. The total funding amount is yet to be determined. The federal government allocated about $16.6 million, total, for the two programs between October 2023 and September 2024.
The recovery program bill was included in the annual National Defense Authorization Act, which sets national security policy and recommended spending levels for the Department of Defense. The act still awaited President Joe Bidenโs signature as of Wednesday.
Rep. Lauren Boebert, a Republican who currently represents the 3rd Congressional District in western Colorado, sponsored the bill in the House of Representatives to reauthorize funding for the programs.
Through the programs, a wide network of federal, local and state agencies work together to try to stabilize and rebuild the populations of certain endangered species, including the razorback suckers, Colorado pikeminnow and bonytail. A fourth species, the humpback chub, has recovered enough that it was downgraded to threatened from endangered.
The fish species have lost vital habitat along the Colorado River and its tributaries, in part because of human uses, like developing former wetland areas, damming rivers, or diverting the flow of water to farms and cities. Dry years, lower flows and higher temperatures have led to warmer water, offering prime habitat for nonnative predator fish, which eat and compete with the threatened and endangered species.
Farmers, reservoir operators, city water managers, and conservationists across Colorado coordinate their water management plans to try to improve conditions for the species.
These plans also help ensure that Colorado River water continues to flow through western Colorado โ instead of being used elsewhere โ supporting agriculture and communities along the way.
Even students are involved in the effort. Every year, Palisade High School students help the Upper Colorado River program raise razorback suckers until they are old and large enough to be released into the river upstream from Grand Junction. The school released its thousandth sucker in May.
Students from Palisade High School transfer baby razorback suckers from a tank into the Colorado River. The students raised the endangered fish in a hatchery as part of the Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Pat Steele, a science teacher at the high school who helped found the program, said it is awesome to see lawmakers from both parties work together.
โThatโs exactly what our lawmakers should be doing,โ he said. โWorking together and showing that example of bipartisanship, and showing our young people that this is how you get things done.โ
For program managers, the move offers greater clarity going forward.
There was never a question that the programs would fold, but Reclamation is a major source of funding, said Michelle Garrison, a water resources specialist for the Colorado Water Conservation Board, one of the top water agencies in Colorado, and a representative of Colorado water users in the recovery efforts.
Without the legislation, the flow of funding could have been disrupted, potentially requiring cutbacks or making it harder to hire seasonal staff and order equipment, she said.
โKnowing itโs good to go really helps the planning process,โ she said. It allows the network of partners to identify and prioritize what they need to focus on in coming years. โWhen youโre comfortable that youโre doing the best you can for the species, that gives you more certainty that youโre going to make sufficient progress.โ
Ron Rogers biologist with Bio-West Inc., holds a large razorback sucker captured in Lake Mead near the Colorado River inflow area
A Colorado pikeminnow taken from the Colorado River near Grand Junction, and in the arms of Danielle Tremblay, a Colorado Parks and Wildlife employee. Pikeminnows have been tracked swimming upstream for great distances to spawn in the 15-mile stretch of river between Palisade and Grand Junction. An apex predator in the Colorado, pikeminnows used to be found up to six feet long and weighing 100 pounds. Photo credit: Lori Martin, Colorado Parks and Wildlife via Aspen JournalismWild bonytail chub
he Rio Grande cutthroat trout, icon of Southern Colorado and New Mexico, after years of fighting for survival with the help of countless human hours, will not find itself on the endangered species list. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently announced the trout is not in danger of extinction or likely to become so in the foreseeable future, after two and half decades of review and conservation work.
After completing a final review, the Service concluded that the Rio Grande Cutthroat troutโs current status in the mostly remote water ways of Colorado and New Mexico doesnโt meet the definition of a threatened or endangered species, and wonโt be listed under the Endangered Species Act.
โCPW staff have worked tirelessly for decades to ensure Rio Grande cutthroat trout continue to persist,โ said Matt Nicholl, Colorado Parks and Wildlifeโs assistant director of aquatic wildlife. โThe responsibility of successfully managing this species deeply aligns with our mission, and we are thankful for the continued support and collaboration with all of the partners who have made this announcement possible.โ
Photo credit: Colorado Parks & Wildlife
Over the course of the past three decades, biologists from Colorado have added 94 populations of pure Rio Grande cutthroats to 239 miles of stream, through chemical reclamations and habitat and connectivity enhancements related to these species.
The Rio Grande cutthroat trout is one of 14 subspecies of cutthroat trout. It lives in mostly remote, mountainous streams in New Mexico and southern Colorado. The fish is a colorful red, orange and yellow, peppered with dark spots.
Cutthroat trout historic range via Western Trout
Rio Grande cutthroat trout can be found in high-elevation streams and lakes of the Rio Grande, Canadian and Pecos River drainages in Colorado and New Mexico, making it the southern-most cutthroat trout. Currently, the fish only occupies 12 percent of its historic habitat in about 800 miles of streams. Biologists estimate that 127 conservation populations now exist in the two states, and 57 of those populations are considered to be secure.
โThe Rio Grande cutthroat trout has been New Mexicoโs state fish since 1955,โ said Amy Lueders, the Serviceโs southwest regional director. โThis fish is extremely important for recreational angling in New Mexico and Colorado and management efforts have focused on population restoration, habitat improvement and research. We are thankful to the Rio Grande Cutthroat Trout Conservation Team because their continued work, along with efforts by other partners, will support the health of both the subspecies and its habitat into the future.โ
To complete its life cycle, the cutthroat trout needs a network of slow and fast streams with clear, cold, and highly oxygenated water and highly biodiverse streambeds.
Since 2003, Colorado Parks and Wildlife and multiple partners, including federal agencies, states, tribes, municipalities, non-government organizations and private landowners, have worked to conserve the species and implement long-term management actions to ensure its persistence and survival.
A series of collaborative frameworks of this group was updated in 2013 and again in 2023 with a conservation agreement and conservation strategy that aimed for long-term conservation.
โThis decision is in response to all of our hard work between all of our partners,โ said CPW aquatic biologist Estevan Vigil. โThe whole Rio Grande Cutthroat Conservation Team, this is a win for all of us and shows weโre working hard to conserve the species without making that federal protection necessary and that we are making gains for the species. The decision to not list the Rio Grande cutthroat doesnโt mean we can stop. It just means we are on the right track.โ
The past, present and future threats to the Rio Grande cutthroat trout have been monitored and evaluated closely. The primary factor impacting the survival of the subspecies is the presence of nonnative species of trout, including rainbow trout, brook trout and brown trout. The conservation populations of Rio Grande cutthroat trout, or populations with less than 10 percent genetic introgression from nonnative trout, occupy approximately 12 percent of the speciesโ historical range. Additional threats include habitat loss, reduced habitat connectivity and whirling disease.
Those other fish will outcompete, prey upon and hybridize with Rio Grande cutthroats. As a result, pure populations of Rio Grande cutthroat trout are restricted primarily to headwater streams to avoid an overbearing mix of disease and genetics.
View the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Serviceโs findings here.
Credit: Colorado Parks & Wildlife
The trout has had a specialized team focusing on its survival throughout the restoration effort. The Rio Grande Cutthroat Trout Conservation Team is made up of state agencies in New Mexico and Colorado, as well as federal agencies, tribes, and non-government organizations.
In the past 10 years, the conservation team has conducted 13 population restorations by removing nonnative trout and reintroducing Rio Grande cutthroat trout.
The Rio Grande Cutthroat Trout Conservation Team meets in January each year to coordinate rangewide goals and objectives. Vigil said the team serves to provide checks and balances to each other to make sure holistic goals are met.
โFollowing that meeting, we all go back to the areas we manage and divide and conquer all summer to meet the goals set of conserving this species,โ Vigil said. โThrough this shared commitment to collaborate and take actions, the future for this native species is bright throughout the Rio Grande Basin.โ
The conservation team has conducted 13 reclamation projects to restore the fish to its native streams in the past decade, and additional projects in Colorado will soon lead to further conservation populations.
Recognizing declines, CPW began conservation efforts for this species in the early 1980s. Work included genetic testing, invasive species removal, habitat protection and enhancement, and broodstock development.
In Colorado, Rio Grande cutthroats are spawned in the wild by CPW biologists and eggs are raised at the Monte Vista Hatchery. Since 2020, CPW has stocked 24 waters with Rio Grande cutthroats raised at the hatchery.
A new conservation population of Rio Grande cutthroat trout was designated in 2023 when a survey revealed multiple age classes of the species following a successful 2015 restoration project on the Roaring Fork drainage upstream of Goose Creek in the Weminuche Wilderness.
Recent reclamation projects also have been conducted on the North Fork and South Fork of Trinchera Creek, Sand Creek, and Rito Hondo Reservoir, but those populations wonโt count as conservation populations until future surveys reveal multiple age classes of Rio Grande cutthroats.
โWe are continuing to reclaim waters for native cutthroat trout by removing non-native fish and restocking with natives,โ Vigil said. โWe have a lot of projects and some in the process of being rebuilt. We know we are making good progress on the conservation of the species, and this is confirmation we are doing our jobs correctly and making progress.โ
Over the past two years, species experts from CPW have served on the Technical Advisory Team to support USFWS in developing a Species Status Assessment. This included thorough input on early drafts of the assessment and enhancing scientific accuracy and defensibility of this document to support the final decision.
โCPW biologists played a significant role in the writing of this strategy, which details specific conservation actions and collaborative approaches that will reduce and/or eliminate threats to the long-term viability of the species,โ said CPW senior aquatic biologist Jim White. โFollowing this announcement from the USFWS, we look forward to continued partnership with the conservation team as we continue to advance conservation goals for these unique species.โ
Rio Grande cutthroat trout via Colorado Parks and Wildlife
Kevin Terry, a project coordinator for Colorado Trout Unlimited, holds up a Rio Grande cutthroat trout at Upper Sand Creek Lake.Workers administer the plant-based chemical compound rotenone at Upper Sand Creek Lake in the Sangre de Cristo range. The chemical kills all fish in the waterway so that Rio Grande cutthroat trout, a native species, had be restored to the habitat. (Provided by Colorado Fish and Wildlife)The Rio Grande cutthroat trout has dwindled in its native habitat. A multi-agency effort to restore it still can inspire anger and concern. (Provided by Colorado Fish and Wildlife)A Rio Grande cutthroat trout is pictured in 2014. Photo courtesy of U.S. Fish & Wildlife ServicePhoto credit: Colorado Parks & Wildlife
