The river ecosystem will be getting a health check up this year as part of the Grand Valley River Initiative, a planning effort for the river corridor being coordinated by One Riverfront, RiversEdge West and the Hutchins Water Center at Colorado Mesa University. RiversEdge West Executive Director Rusty Lloyd said Lotic Hydrological was recently selected to perform a riparian and floodplain assessment this year, which will help establish a baseline of the river ecosystem.
“This would really identify areas of restoration and conservation that would support native riparian vegetation, versus maybe areas where recreation or development might happen,” Lloyd said. “That riparian and floodplain assessment is really supposed to get at where are our good quality ecosystem values and habitat along our river in the valley. That assessment will feed into the decision making processes, hopefully.”
Lloyd said the state of the river has been changing in recent years with more recreation and development along the river. He said the initiative is intended to help local planners and policy makers as they make decisions about the future of the river corridor. OV Consulting has also been selected to coordinate communications with local municipalities and stakeholders about how to plan for the future of the river, Lloyd said. He said what that looks like could vary from a framework local governments could use to a signed agreement on planning around the river between local governments.
A motorboat on Yellowstone Lake. (NPS/Diane Renkin)
Click the link to read the article on the WyoFile website (Angus M. Thuermer Jr.):
March 12, 2024
To protect the headwaters of three major Western rivers from invasive, troublesome mussels, Yellowstone National Park wants to require larger boats to undergo a 30-day “dry time” before launching.
New rules up for comment also would ban any boat that’s once been contaminated by invasive Dreissena zebra or quagga mussels, regardless of decontamination cleaning.
The proposal builds on existing rules, including inspection of all watercraft, designed to protect Yellowstone and downstream waters from the fingernail-sized freshwater bivalves that cling to hard structures like boat hulls, docks and irrigation headgates. The proposal would help protect the ecological integrity of Yellowstone Park and the Yellowstone, Missouri and Snake rivers downstream in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.
Map of the Snake River watershed, USA. Intended to replace older File:SnakeRiverNicerMap.jpg. Created using public domain USGS National Map data. By Shannon1 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=62294242
Under the proposed rules, boats with inboard, inboard/outboard and inboard jet motors — as well as sailboats — would have to be dried under a certified program for 30 days before launch. “Large, complex, trailered watercraft pose the highest risk of transporting and introducing invasive mussels … because they are difficult to inspect and less likely to … be fully decontaminated,” the park said in a release.
Manual cleaning is not 100% effective, the park said.
Mussels were recently discovered in waters within a day’s drive of Yellowstone, including the first found in the Columbia/Snake drainage last year near Twin Falls, Idaho. The year before, mussels showed up in Pactola Reservoir, South Dakota, not far from Wyoming’s eastern state line.
People can comment online through April 5 or to Yellowstone Center for Resources, Attn: AIS Proposed Changes, PO Box 168, Yellowstone National Park, WY 82190.
Spreading threat
The zebra mussel is native to the Black, Caspian, and Azov Seas and the quagga also comes from that area of Europe. They have infected the Midwest and lower Colorado River drainage.
Zebra Mussels in Lake Ontario. (John Manier/USGS)
They could threaten Yellowstone cutthroat trout, a species the park has spent more than two decades restoring. The mussels can also be destructive to water and power infrastructure, according to the U.S. Department of Interior. There are no known ways to eradicate the mussels. Any invasion would be expensive to mitigate.
Motor- and sailboats falling under the new rule would be inspected and sealed to a trailer for the 30-day dry period. Seals from Yellowstone National Park, Idaho State Department of Agriculture, Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks and Wyoming Game & Fish Department would be honored.
Once-infected boats would be banned because of the possibility they could, even if cleaned, cause a false detection during routine DNA monitoring and consequently waste resources.
GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. – Colorado Parks and Wildlife has finalized a new plan to eradicate zebra mussels at Highline Lake State Park after five adult mussels were found while removing buoys on Sunday, Oct. 1.
“We did not make this decision lightly or in haste,” said Invasive Species Program Manager Robert Walters. “Over the past year we have had numerous discussions with CPW’s Northwest Region aquatic, regional, and state park staff, and we have come up with a plan that builds upon that work that was performed last spring.”
The new plan will once again be a phased approach. The first phase will begin late 2023, with the second phase taking place gradually over 2024. During the first phase, CPW staff will apply a higher concentration of EarthTec QZ, the same EPA-registered copper-based molluscicide that was applied to the lake in March. The goal of this application is to suppress the population to minimize reproductive potential in 2024.
“While the efforts in early 2023 did not achieve our ultimate goal of eradicating zebra mussels, we believe it helped to keep population numbers at a manageable level,” said Walters. “A single female zebra mussel can produce more than 30,000 eggs per reproductive cycle. Any mussel we can keep from reproducing in the immediate future increases the probability of our success next fall.”
In early 2024, CPW will begin slowly lowering Highline Lake with an anticipated complete emptying of the lake by the end of the year.
With the lower water levels, CPW is announcing Highline Lake will be closed to all motorized boating for the 2024 boating season.
“We understand that this isn’t ideal for our boating and angling community,” said Alan Martinez, Highline Lake State Park Manager. “What we hope is that people see this and understand how serious this problem is, and that it can be avoided by simply cleaning, draining, and drying your boat or any equipment that comes in contact with the water in between each and every use.”
Unfortunately, CPW cannot move fish out of Highline Lake into other waters prior to draining due to the risk of moving viable mussels on or inside fish. In this case, the only option is to reduce fish loss by removing bag and possession limits.
Anglers are reminded, effective Monday, Oct. 9, that an emergency fish salvage is in place at Highline Lake until further notice. All bag and possession limits for the reservoir are removed for the duration of the salvage. Anglers can keep all of the fish they catch from the shoreline utilizing the lawful angling methods currently allowed at the lake. CPW reminds anglers that all fish must be dead prior to transport away from the lake.
“Eradication of zebra mussels has been, and will continue to be, our goal at Highline Lake,” said Ben Felt, Northwest Region Senior Aquatic Biologist. “Earlier this year, we pursued an option that had the potential to eradicate the mussels while maintaining the fishery. Based on this recent discovery, we recognize achieving both is not feasible. To do nothing would be detrimental to Highline Lake and would put fisheries across the state at risk. CPW is committed to rebuilding the Highline Lake fishery once the zebra mussel eradication project is complete.”
Rusty crayfish. Photo credit: Colorado Parks & Wildlife
Click the link to read the release on the Colorado Parks & Wildlife website (Rachael Gonzales):
GRAND LAKE, Colo. – Colorado Parks and Wildlife announces the discovery of rusty crayfish in Lake Granby, south of Grand Lake, Colorado.
Multiple crayfish were found at Lake Granby during routine Aquatic Nuisance Species (ANS) sampling by CPW’s ANS Sampling and Monitoring team near Sunset Point campground, on Aug. 17. Samples were collected by the tam, preliminary species identification was performed at CPW’s ANS laboratory and suspect specimens were sent to Pisces Molecular in Boulder for genetics testing, where the samples were confirmed to be rusty crayfish on Aug. 31.
CPW’s ANS Sampling and Monitoring team and area aquatic biologists set multiple crayfish traps around Lake Granby and other waters in close proximity to determine the extent of the rusty crayfish population in the area during the week of Sept. 11. Sampling traps were left overnight before being collected. Crayfish traps collected from the surrounding lakes did not contain crayfish; however, two traps from Lake Granby did contain rusty crayfish. A trap was set below the dam on the Colorado River in addition to the lakes. No crayfish were found in this trap upon removal.
“While this is not the first time we have found rusty crayfish west of the divide here in Colorado, it is the first detection in the Upper Colorado River basin,” said Robert Walters, CPW’s Invasive Species Program Manager. “While finding any invasive species is detrimental to our state’s aquatic ecosystems, finding rusty crayfish in Lake Granby, which feeds into the Colorado River, poses an even greater threat to the entire Colorado River Basin.”
Rusty crayfish were first discovered in Yampa River and Catamount Reservoir in 2009.They are a larger, more aggressive freshwater crayfish, native to the Ohio River Basin. The rusty patches on either side of their body can sometimes identify them. They are believed to have been illegally introduced to Colorado by anglers as bait.
The public is reminded by following these simple steps, they can prevent the introduction and spread of invasive species in Colorado.
Use only bait that is legal in Colorado! Never bring in live aquatic bait from another state.
Do not throw unused bait of any kind, back in the water alive.
Clean, Drain, and Dry your gear and water craft before heading to the next body of water.
Do not dispose of pets or unwanted aquarium plants or animals in natural systems.
“When you follow these simple steps, you’re not just protecting the lake or river you’re recreating in, you’re protecting every water body in Colorado,” said Walters.
Crayfish of any species are not native west of the continental divide. CPW reminds the public the live transportation of all crayfish from waters west of the Continental Divide is prohibited. All crayfish caught west of the Continental Divide must be immediately killed (by removing the head from the thorax) and taken into possession, or immediately returned to the water from which they were taken. To learn more about the rusty crayfish and what the public can do to prevent the spread, visit our website.
ANS Sampling and Monitoring team members separating and identifying crayfish from Lake Granby during trapping efforts the week of Sept. 11. Photo credit: Colorado Parks & Wildlife
Empty crayfish traps used in trapping efforts at multiple sites at Lake Granby, and additional bodies of water nearby. Photo credit: Colorado Parks & Wildlife
RiversEdge West, a Grand Junction-based nonprofit, received $22,035 from the Colorado River District’s Community Funding Partnership and $34,433 from the Colorado Water Conservation Board to restore two river sites owned by the city of Montrose.
According to RiversEdge West Restoration Coordinator Montana Cohn, the two sites together total around 70 acres, and the project will allow the group to remove about 8 acres worth of invasive tamarisk and Russian olive plants and replace them with native species…One site is off Mayfly Drive, and the other is near Home Depot off Ogden Road. Cohn said restoration efforts at these sites have yielded positive results before, and the new project will expand on previous work. He explained invasive thorns and plants like Russian olive and tamarisk crowd out native vegetation, degrade soil quality and, since some are thorny, block access to the river for wildlife, livestock and recreationists…
The project will go down in phases, starting with volunteer efforts this summer. Then in the fall, paid crews from the Americorps program Western Colorado Conservation Corps will come in with herbicides and chainsaws and remove as many of the invasive plants as possible. Efforts, including volunteer replanting efforts of native plants, will continue into 2024.
RiversEdge West (REW) is pleased to accept a $48,788 grant award from the Colorado River District’s Community Funding Partnership to continue important riverside (riparian) restoration work along the White River in Rio Blanco County.
REW leads the White River Partnership (WRP), a group committed to restoring and maintaining healthy riparian areas along the White River in northwest Colorado and northeast Utah through collaboration among public, private, and non-profit entities. REW works with WRP partners to prioritize and plan restoration sites, coordinate invasive plant removal with contractors and youth corps, and to monitor restoration sites after invasive plant removal.
Tamarisk
This project will remove invasive plant species, like tamarisk and Russian olive, from the White River corridor on public and private lands. Removing these invasive plants will enhance public access to river recreation areas and improve wildlife habitat and agricultural productivity on nearby privately-owned property. To complete this work, REW will partner with Western Colorado Conservation Corps, based in Grand Junction, which engages young adults on the Western Slope in conservation and restoration work by training them for careers in land management.
“The Community Funding Partnership is a solution-driven funding program to ensure our communities thrive in a hotter, drier future. Riparian restoration projects, such as the White River Project, are critical to West Slope rivers by protecting water quality, improving habitat, and moderating high flow events,” said Amy Moyer, Director of Strategic Partnerships with the Colorado River District.
In addition to the award from the River District, this project is also supported by the Colorado Water Conservation Board and the Bureau of Land Management.
Many members of Standley Lake’s boating community saw a huge aspect of their community taken away with the ban of trailered boats in 2019. [Gary] Gambino used to work a graveyard shift and after, went straight to the lake.
“I would come home, hook up my boat, go out onto Standley, take it out in the back bay anchor in and take my four hours of sleep,” he said…
With Westminster’s city council revisiting the item, Northglenn’s council sent a letter signed by all council members indicating they will not be revisiting the item.
“Northglenn’s water in Standley Lake is irreplaceable, valued at more than $209 million dollars. There is no level of risk that our community is willing to accept when it comes to protecting our drinking water supply,” the letter reads.
Clear Creek, Standley Lake watersheds including the Standley Lake Canal Zone via the Clear Creek Watershed Foundation.
Click the link to read “Standley Lake heads toward fifth summer with a firm no to powerboats” on The Denver Post website (John Aguilar). Here’s an excerpt:
But Westminster Councilman Dave DeMott said it’s “not realistic” to operate on a zero-risk basis “as there is no area where zero risk exists in this world.” He’s heard from boating enthusiasts that they are “frustrated” with the ban, which was made permanent in late 2019…
Northglenn — along with Westminster, Thornton and the Farmers Reservoir and Irrigation Company — own the 42,000 acre-feet of water in the lake, which serves as the sole supply of drinking water for both Westminster and Northglenn. Standley Lake, which is fed by three canals diverted off of Clear Creek, accounts for about a quarter of Thornton’s drinking water supply. It, too, is in favor of maintaining the trailered boat ban. Any change in boating policy would have to be agreed to by the three cities…
Northglenn’s decision was likely re-affirmed by the September discovery of a single zebra mussel in Highline Lake State Park, northwest of Grand Junction. In late October, Colorado Parks & Wildlife announced more zebra mussels had been found in Highline Lake, giving the lake an official infestation listing. CPW says Highline Lake is currently the only Colorado body of water infested with zebra mussels. No quagga mussels are known to exist in the state, though Lake Powell in Utah has them.
“We don’t see the value in risking our drinking water supply for the benefit of a small group of people,” said Tami Moon, Northglenn’s environmental manager. “That is the only place we have to store our water.”
In May of 2018, USGS Hydrologic Technician Dave Knauer found a batch of zebra mussels attached to the boat anchor in the St. Lawrence River in New York. (Credit: John Byrnes, USGS. Public domain.)
Colorado Parks and Wildlife officers have detected the presence of a nonnative invasive plant species in Boulder Reservoir.
The plant, Eurasian watermilfoil (EWM), was detected during a routine inspection at the reservoir in the summer of 2022 and confirmed during a follow-up survey in the fall. The plant is established primarily along the western coves of the reservoir and in areas along the southern and northern shorelines, according to a release from the City of Boulder. It is not harmful to public health and at its current growth levels, there are no impacts to recreation use at the reservoir or its use as a municipal and irrigation supply.
If the growth becomes very dense, the plant could impact swimming and boating and cause taste and odor issues with drinking water.
“While the survey confirmed the presence of EWM at the reservoir, we don’t know how it arrived. It can easily be transported by wind, connected waterways, humans fishing, dogs, watercraft, or wildlife, so we encourage anyone who recreates in the water to be vigilant about checking for aquatic nuisance species,” said Boulder Parks and Recreation Director Ali Rhodes. “The survey did find that there are no other aquatic nuisance or invasive plant species in the reservoir, which is good news.”
According to the city, recreation users will see a continuation of changes put in place in summer 2022. Upon initial detection of the plant, the city adjusted operations to include exit inspections on watercraft, increased education to users and added notification signage.
Russian olive is an invasive species that spreads aggressively and deprives native species of important resources like water, according to Julia Clover Clark, natural resources manager at the High Line Canal Conservancy.
“We don’t want the canal to become a vector for Russian olive to spread throughout open spaces,” she said.
With a recent $41,100 grant from Great Outdoors Colorado, the High Line Canal Conservancy will continue efforts to rid the canal of the invasive species. Working with the Mile High Youth Corps, they will spend four weeks eliminating Russian olive along the corridor in Greenwood Village and Cherry Hills Village.
“It’s just such an exciting opportunity because not only (does) it allow us to get out there and do this important work of mitigating Russian olive along the corridor, but it really aligns with our values to be able to have a partnership with (the youth corps),” Clark said.
The grant program is implemented in partnership with the Colorado Youth Corps Association, a coalition of eight accredited conservation service corps that employ and train people aged 14-25 in the natural resource sector…Last year, the High Line Canal Conservancy also received the grant, which it used to started Russian olive mitigation along 20 miles of the canal corridor. This pilot project covered parts of the corridor in Denver, unincorporated Arapahoe County, Centennial and Greenwood Village during the summer of 2022. At the end of that project, a 5.5 mile gap between the project areas remained. This year, their work will address the gap.
“After (the corps’) work is completed, there will be 27 continuous miles (with no Russian olive),” Clark said.
Old cottonwoods line the banks and trails of the historic Highline Canal, which is being converted into an ultra modern stormwater system even as its trail systems continue to serve metro area residents. July 21, 2020 Credit: Jerd Smith via Water Education Colorado
In May of 2018, USGS Hydrologic Technician Dave Knauer found a batch of zebra mussels attached to the boat anchor in the St. Lawrence River in New York. (Credit: John Byrnes, USGS. Public domain.)
CPW staff first discovered the presence of invasive zebra mussels at Highline Lake State Park on an artificial PVC substrate in the lake during routine invasive species sampling on Sept. 14. In October, during increased testing by CPW staff additional adult zebra mussels were found in Highline Lake. Zebra mussels are an invasive species in the United States…
This is the first time a body of water has been categorized as infested with zebra mussels in the state of Colorado. The discovery is an alert for water managers, fishermen, and recreationists to be on the lookout for a striped invader and to be careful not to be a human carrier.
Letter puts kibosh on Westminster’s efforts to bring boating back
Northglenn Mayor Meredith Leighty sent a letter, signed by the eight other council members, declining Westminster’s request to meet regarding bringing boating back to Standley Lake.
“Northglenn’s water in Standley Lake is irreplaceable, valued at more than $209 million dollars. There is no level of risk that our community is willing to accept when it comes to protecting our drinking water supply,” the letter reads.
That means unless Northglenn changes their minds, Westminster will have to wait until 2030 to renegotiate the Intergovernmental Agreement. According to Thornton Spokesperson Todd Barnes, the agreement needs all three cities to agree to amend it. The move comes after Westminster held a study session on Nov. 21 discussing the possibility of reallowing boating on the lake. At the meeting, Mayor Pro Tem David DeMott, City Councilor Rich Seymour and City Councilor Lindsey Emmons said they wanted to make sure all councilors — for Northglenn and Thornton — understand the entire issue. DeMott emphasized that the decision comes down to risk and the threshold each council is comfortable accepting. Seymour said it’s a complicated subject and takes a long time to understand. In response to the letter, DeMott said he was disappointed.
CPW staff has discovered the presence of additional invasive zebra mussels at Highline Lake located at Highline Lake State Park north of Loma, Colorado. The discovery comes following increased testing after CPW found a single adult zebra mussel on an artificial PVC substrate in the lake during routine invasive species sampling on Sept. 14.
The discovery of additional invasive mussels in the water is indicative of an established population in the reservoir and has prompted CPW to change the status of the body of water from “Suspect” to “Infested.” This is the first time a body of water has been categorized as infested with zebra mussels in the state of Colorado.
There is currently no boating on the lake because Highline Lake closes to all surface-water activities for the season annually on October 1.
“Thanks to Colorado’s robust early detection sampling and monitoring program, we were able to make this discovery,” said CPW Acting Director Heather Dugan. “As more and more people use our water resources for boating, we must continue to work tirelessly to prevent the spread of these harmful invasive species.”
The State of Colorado requires boats to be professionally inspected if:
a boat has been in any body of water that is positive, or suspect for ANS
a boat has been in any body of water outside of Colorado
a boat will be entering any water body where inspections are required
Boats exiting infested waters that are not cleaned, drained, and dry are subject to mandatory decontamination requirements.
The establishment of invasive species can lead to millions of dollars in damages to water-based infrastructure, impact water quality and limit recreational opportunity. CPW’s invasive species experts are evaluating next steps and will have more to communicate on the actions it is taking at Highline Lake at a later date.
Please help CPW stop the movement of harmful invasive species, such as zebra mussels, into new waters. Public awareness and participation is the best weapon in the prevention of invasive species.
Click the link to read “Mussels muscle into Highline: Infestation is first in Colorado” on the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel website (Dennis Webb). Here’s an excerpt:
Alan Martinez, manager of Highline Lake State Park, said that after previous sampling found no more of the mussels, 10 adults have now been found at different locations in the lake, thanks to additional discoveries on Friday and Sunday. The discovery of multiple adults means they’re assumed to be reproducing.
“We are unfortunately the first-ever body of water infested” in the state, he said. “It’s not a title that we want. Now we’ve got to figure out how to protect the rest of Colorado.”’
He said there will now be a lot of discussion within Colorado Parks and Wildlife about how to do that.
“We need to figure out where we move forward at this point and right now we don’t have an answer on that,” he said.
Now the new protocol will remain as long as the lake is infested, and Martinez said there’s no way of getting rid of the mussels short of draining the lake. He previously has said that doing that would mean losing a warm-water fishery there that took decades to build. Robert Walters, Parks and Wildlife’s invasive species program manager, has said that even draining a lake doesn’t guarantee eradication.
Click the link to read the article on the Associated Press website (Brittany Peterson). Here’s an excerpt:
Key Colorado River reservoirs Lake Powell and Lake Mead are both only about one-quarter full. The continued drop, due to overuse and an increasingly arid climate, is threatening the fish and the economies built around them…since late August, the water temperature at Lees Ferry — the site of a world-famous trout fishery — has risen above 70 degrees seven times. That might be idyllic for a summer dip under the blazing Arizona summer sun, Gunn said, but approaches peril for the beloved sport fish. A few degrees higher can be lethal. To make matters worse, when temperatures rise, the amount of oxygen dissolved in the water falls, making it tough for fish to even breathe.
The Colorado River from Navajo Bridge below Lee’s Ferry and Glen Canyon Dam. The proposed Marble Canyon Dam would have been just downstream from here. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
As the reservoir drops, it sends warmer water with less oxygen into the river below the dam. Should that water reach 73 degrees, [Terry] Gunn said his family’s guide service could start calling off afternoon trips…
Just a few miles north of Lees Ferry and its trout fishery there’s another threat — nonnative predatory smallmouth bass. They’re supposed to be contained in Lake Powell. But this summer they were found in the river below the dam. Smallmouth bass already wreaked havoc on native fish way upriver where the government spends millions of dollars each year to control the predators. They were held at bay in Lake Powell because Glen Canyon Dam has served as a barrier for them for years — until now. The reservoir’s recent sharp decline is enabling these introduced fish to shoot through the dam and edge closer to the Grand Canyon, where the biggest groups of humpback chub, an ancient, threatened, native fish, remain.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife staff found an adult zebra mussel at the popular Grand Valley boating destination on Wednesday during routine invasive-species sampling, and said Friday that two of its experts independently confirmed the identification of the mussel, including through genetic confirmation…This is the first-ever discovery of an adult zebra or quagga mussel in Colorado. Both are native to Europe and pose concern because they quickly reproduce and spread to new waters, clogging pipes and other infrastructure with their shells and posing ecological impacts as they filter out and eat plankton, threatening the aquatic food chain and fisheries.
In May of 2018, USGS Hydrologic Technician Dave Knauer found a batch of zebra mussels attached to the boat anchor in the St. Lawrence River in New York. (Credit: John Byrnes, USGS. Public domain.)
Colorado has had intensive protocols in place in an attempt to keep the two species out of the state. On occasion larval-stage mussel “veligers” have been found in some state reservoirs or lakes, but fortunately in all those cases, the mussels never established themselves in those water bodies, all of which are now considered negative for them. Under the precautionary protocols followed in Colorado whenever there is a single confirmed instance of either mussel being present at any age in a water body, however, boats leaving Highline will now be subject for three years to mandatory inspection, and if necessary decontamination, to prevent the mussel from spreading elsewhere. If three years pass without further detections, the measures can be dropped.
The Colorado River from Navajo Bridge below Lee’s Ferry and Glen Canyon Dam. The proposed Marble Canyon Dam would have been just downstream from here. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
Click the link to read the article on the Associated Press website (Brittany Petersen). Here’s an excerpt:
For National Park Service fisheries biologist Jeff Arnold, it was a moment he’d been dreading. Bare-legged in sandals, he was pulling in a net in a shallow backwater of the lower Colorado River last week, when he spotted three young fish that didn’t belong there. “Give me a call when you get this!” he messaged a colleague, snapping photos.
Minutes later, the park service confirmed their worst fear: smallmouth bass had in fact been found and were likely reproducing in the Colorado River below Glen Canyon Dam.
The confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado rivers in the Grand Canyon, shown here in a September 2020 aerial photo from Ecoflight, represents an area where the humpback chub has rebounded in the last decade. That progress is now threatened by declining water levels in Lake Powell, which could lead to non-native smallmouth bass becoming established in the canyon. CREDIT: JANE PARGITER/ECOFLIGHT
They may be a beloved sport fish, but smallmouth bass feast on humpback chub, an ancient, threatened fish that’s native to the river, and that biologists like Arnold have been working hard to recover. The predators wreaked havoc in the upper river, but were held at bay in Lake Powell where Glen Canyon Dam has served as a barrier for years — until now. The reservoir’s recent sharp decline is enabling these introduced fish to get past the dam and closer to where the biggest groups of chub remain, farther downstream in the Grand Canyon.
The confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado rivers in the Grand Canyon, shown here in a September 2020 aerial photo from Ecoflight, represents an area where the humpback chub has rebounded in the last decade. That progress is now threatened by declining water levels in Lake Powell, which could lead to non-native smallmouth bass becoming established in the canyon. CREDIT: JANE PARGITER/ECOFLIGHT
As climate change continues to shrink the nation’s second-largest reservoir, water managers are scrambling to prevent the release of an invasive fish into the Grand Canyon.
Smallmouth bass, a voracious predator and popular game fish, have been introduced into reservoirs throughout the Colorado River basin, including Lake Powell. The looming problem now is that as lake levels drop to historically low levels, the invasive fish are likely to escape beyond Glen Canyon Dam, threatening endangered fish in the canyon, whose populations have rebounded in recent years.
Smallmouth bass are a warm-water-loving species, hanging out in the top part of the water column, which is warmed by the sun. Until recently, the intakes for turbines at Glen Canyon Dam had been lower in the water column, where colder temperatures kept the fish away. But as the lake level falls, the warmer water band containing the smallmouth bass is sinking closer to the intakes, making it more likely that they will pass through the dam to the river below.
Warmer water below the dam also means a more ideal environment for the bass, which thrive in temperatures above 61 degrees Fahrenheit (16 degrees Celsius).
“With the levels we are expecting to get to this coming year, water temperatures are going to be warmer than they’ve been in 52 years in the Grand Canyon,” said Charles Yackulic, a research statistician with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center.
The research center has been modeling the likelihood that smallmouth bass will become established below the dam under different scenarios and providing that information to decision-makers and water managers.
Jack Schmidt, a Colorado River researcher at Utah State University and former director of the research center, co-wrote — along with Yackulic and others — a March 2021 paper that sounded the alarm that future warming is likely to disproportionately benefit nonnative fish species to the detriment of native species. The problem from which all others stem, including the changing fish communities, and the reason Powell is so low in the first place is the climate-change-driven supply-demand imbalance, Schmidt said.
Annual CO2 emissions from fossil fuels, by world region
“If we are going to continue to load the atmosphere with carbon such that the atmosphere warms and the runoff in the Colorado River keeps getting lower and if we are going to keep consuming water, … then you can only play this game of staving off the inevitable for so long before it’s game over,” he said.
A series of hot, dry years in the Upper Colorado River Basin has led to increasing concern about the security of water supplies at region-wide and local scales for the following purposes and sectors:
• Maintaining compact compliance and preventing Lake Powell’s water level from dropping too low to generate power.
• Maintaining agricultural production and the vitality of rural communities.
• Maintaining municipal and industrial water security.
• Maintaining river ecosystems.
Without a strategic, collaborative approach to addressing these issues, there is a risk that individual entities will act independently to secure their water supplies against climate and legal uncertainties. This could lead to more permanent transfers from agriculture, with detrimental impacts on rural communities and unpredictable impacts on river ecosystems.
Over the past several years, there have been numerous explorations into new approaches to meeting community and environmental needs in the Upper Basin, including deliberate, temporary, and compensated reductions in water use in order to help balance supply and demand in the Colorado River system, share water supplies between agriculture and cities, and aid troubled streams.
This report distills insights from these explorations that can help illuminate how such deliberate, temporary reductions in water use could play a role in:
• Enhancing long-term water security for farms, municipalities, industries and rivers in the Upper Basin (upstream objectives).
• Compact compliance and protection of power generation capacity in Lake Powell (downstream objectives).
In this report, the term “strategic conservation” will be used to describe these deliberate reductions in water use to meet specific goals.
The insights covered in this report focus on the following topics:
• Water user interest
• Agronomic impacts of reducing water use
• Monitoring and verification of saved water
• Shepherding and conveyance of conserved water
• Pricing considerations
• Environmental considerations
• Additional considerations
For each topic, key insights and remaining uncertainties are highlighted and illustrative research, experiences and resources are described. Links to documentation are provided wherever possible.
Due to low levels of water, the federal government has declared a Tier 1 water shortage in the Colorado River for the first time ever. Now in effect, this shortage declaration impacts municipalities, agriculture, tribes, and many other stakeholders in the Colorado River Basin.
What does this mean for Colorado and surrounding states? What are The Nature Conservancy and its partners doing to address this issue?
Join us to learn how the Colorado River can be a model for resiliency and sustainability, and what you can do to help. Speakers include:
Taylor Hawes – Director, Colorado River Program, The Nature Conservancy
Aaron Derwingson – Water Projects Director, Colorado River Program, The Nature Conservancy
Carlos Fernández – State Director, Colorado Chapter, The Nature Conservancy
During a work session held by the Archuleta County Board of County Commissioners (BoCC) on Dec. 7, the board heard from Al Pfister with the Upper San Juan Watershed Enhancement Program (WEP) in regard to a matching fund request for the south Yamaguchi Park project.
The WEP is requesting $10,000 in matching funds. The funds would come from the county’s Conserva- tion Trust Fund (CTF), which can only be used for outdoor recreation purposes.
The total cost of the project is estimated at just over $664,000, with more than $500,000 coming from the grant.
The WEP needs a 25 percent cash match, or just over $166,000 to be awarded the grant.
Pfister explained the WEP is a stakeholder group that was formed to develop a stream management plan for the upper San Juan River basin…
He explained the WEP is working under the Colorado Water Plan and the Southwest Basin Roundtable Implementation Plan (SWBIP), “which sets the framework for how water issues are going to be addressed throughout the state.”
He mentioned that, currently, the SWBIP is being revised and should be coming out for public comment in January 2022.
As part of that plan, the WEP is applying for a matching grant from the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB), Pfister noted…
He explained that the project objectives are to enhance the recreational experience for both anglers and river enthusiasts, improve pub- lic access to recreational features, improve fish habitat quality and pro- mote sediment movement through this section of the San Juan River.
“Everybody in the county is going to see some benefit from it, even if they don’t get in the river,” Commissioner Alvin Schaaf said.
During a work session held by the BoCC on Dec. 14, County Attorney/ Interim Administrator Todd Weaver indicated that the county does have sufficient funds in its CTF to commit $10,000 to the WEP out of the 2021 budget.
He noted the BoCC will likely vote on the matter at its next regular meeting scheduled for 1:30 p.m. on Dec. 21at 398 Lewis St., in the commissioners’ room.
The emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis) is a deceptively attractive metallic-green adult beetle with a red abdomen. But few people ever actually see the insect itself – just the trail of destruction it leaves behind under the bark of ash trees.
Adult emerald ash borer beetles are about 0.5 inches long (photo not to scale). PA DEC, CC BY
I study invasive forest insects and work with the USDA to develop easier ways of raising emerald ash borers and other invasive insects in research laboratories. This work is critical for discovering and testing ways to better manage forest recovery and prevent future outbreaks. But while the emerald ash borer has spread uncontrollably in nature, producing a consistent laboratory supply of these insects is surprisingly challenging – and developing an effective biological control program requires a lot of target insects.
The value of ash trees
Researchers believe the emerald ash borer likely arrived in the U.S. on imported wood packaging material from Asia sometime in the 1990s. The insects lay eggs in the bark crevices of ash trees; when larva hatch, they tunnel through the bark and feed on the inner layer of the tree. Their impact becomes apparent when the bark is peeled back, revealing dramatic feeding tracks. These channels damage the trees’ vascular tissue – internal networks that transport water and nutrients – and ultimately kill the tree.
Before this invasive pest appeared on the scene, ash trees were particularly popular for residential developments, representing 20-40% of planted trees in some Midwestern communities. Emerald ash borers have killed tens of millions of U.S. trees with an estimated replacement cost of US$10-25 billion.
State and federal agencies have used quarantines to combat the spread of several invasive forest insects, including Asian longhorned beetles and Lymantria dispar, previously known as gypsy moth. This approach seeks to reduce the movement of eggs and young insects hidden in lumber, nursery plants and other wood products. In counties where an invasive species is detected, regulations typically require wood products to be heat-treated, stripped of bark, fumigated or chipped before they can be moved.
The federal emerald ash borer quarantine started with 13 counties in Michigan in 2003 and increased exponentially over time to cover than a quarter of the continental U.S. Quarantines can be effective when forest insect pests mainly spread through movement of their eggs, hitchhiking long distances when humans transport wood.
The emerald ash borer has been detected throughout much of the range of ash trees in the U.S. USDA
Next option: Wasps
Any biocontrol plan poses concerns about unintended consequences. One notorious example is the introduction of cane toads in Australia in the 1930s to reduce beetles on sugarcane farms. The toads didn’t eat the beetles, but they spread rapidly and ate lots of other species. And their toxins killed predators.
Introducing species for biocontrol is strictly regulated in the U.S. It can take two to 10 years to demonstrate the effectiveness of potential biocontrol agents, and obtaining a permit for field testing can take two more years. Scientists must demonstrate that the released species specializes on the target pest and has minimal impacts on other species.
Four wasp species from China and Russia that are natural enemies of the emerald ash borer have gone through the approval process for field release. These wasps are parasitoids: They deposit their eggs or larva into or on another insect, which becomes an unsuspecting food source for the growing parasite. Parasitoids are great candidates for biocontrol because they typically exploit a single host species.
The selected wasps are tiny and don’t sting, but their egg-laying organs can penetrate ash tree bark. And they have specialized sensory abilities to find emerald ash borer larva or eggs to serve as their hosts.
An emerald ash borer larva in wood (left); Tetrastichus planipennisi, a parasitic wasp that preys on ash borers; and wasp larva that have grown and eaten the ash borer. USDA, CC BY-ND
The USDA is working to rear massive numbers of parasitoid wasps in lab facilities by providing lab-grown emerald ash borers as hosts for their eggs. Despite COVID-19 disruptions, the agency produced over 550,000 parasitoids in 2020 and released them at over 240 sites.
The goal is to create self-sustaining field populations of parasitoids that reduce emerald ash borer populations in nature enough to allow replanted ash trees to grow and thrive. Several studies have shown encouraging early results, but securing a future for ash trees will require more time and research.
One hurdle is that emerald ash borers grown in the lab need fresh ash logs and leaves to complete their life cycle. I’m part of a team working to develop an alternative to the time- and cost-intensive process of collecting logs: an artificial diet that the beetle larva can eat in the lab.
Fresh cut ash logs await processing to collect newly emerging emerald ash borer adults, which will lay eggs for the laboratory colony. Anson Eaglin/USDA
The food must provide the right texture and nutrition. Other leaf-feeding insects readily eat artificial diets made from wheat germ, but species whose larva digest wood are pickier. In the wild, emerald ash borers only feed on species of ash tree.
In today’s global economy, with people and products moving rapidly around the world, it can be hard to find effective management options when invasive species become established over a large area. But lessons learned from the emerald ash borer will help researchers mobilize quickly when the next forest pest arrives.
Gila River. Photo credit: Dennis O’Keefe via American Rivers
FromYale 360 (Jim Robbins). Click through for Ted Wood’s photo gallery:
The Gila was once a vibrant desert river, providing a lifeline for the riparian habitat and wildlife that depended on it in the U.S. Southwest. But population growth, agricultural withdrawals, and, increasingly, climate change have badly diminished the river and threaten its future.
The confluence of the tiny San Pedro River and the much larger Gila was once one of the richest locales in one of the most productive river ecosystems in the American Southwest, an incomparable oasis of biodiversity.
The rivers frequently flooded their banks, a life-giving pulse that created sprawling riverside cienegas, or fertile wetlands; braided and beaver-dammed channels; meandering oxbows; and bosques — riparian habitats with towering cottonwoods, mesquite and willows. This lush, wet Arizona landscape, combined with the searing heat of the Sonoran Desert, gave rise to a vast array of insects, fish and wildlife, including apex predators such as Mexican wolves, grizzly bears, jaguars and cougars, which prowled the river corridors.
The confluence now is a very different place, its richness long diminished. A massive mountain of orange- and dun-colored smelter tailings, left from the days of copper and lead processing and riddled with arsenic, towers where the two rivers meet. Water rarely flows there, with an occasional summer downpour delivering an ephemeral trickle.
On a recent visit, only a few brown, stagnant pools remained. In one, hundreds of small fish gasped for oxygen. An egret that had been feeding on the fish flew off. The plop of a bull frog, an invasive species, echoed in the hot, still air.
Gila River watershed. Graphic credit: Wikimedia
The Gila River, which was listed by the advocacy group American Rivers in 2019 as the nation’s most endangered river, drains an enormous watershed of 60,000 square miles. Stretches have long been depleted, largely because of crop irrigation and the water demands of large cities. Now, a warmer and drier climate is bearing down on ecosystems that have been deprived of water, fragmented, and otherwise altered, their natural resilience undone by human activities.
Other desert rivers around the globe — from the Nile to the Tigris and Euphrates to the Amu Darya in Central Asia — face similar threats. Efforts are underway to restore some integrity to these natural systems, but it is an uphill battle, in part because desert rivers are more fragile than rivers in cooler, wetter places.
Last year was the second-hottest and second-driest on record in Arizona, where heat records are frequently broken. The last two years have seen fewer desert downpours, known locally as monsoons, an important source of summer river flow.
“We’re dealing with a rapidly changing climate that is becoming, overall, more dry and varied and warmer,” said Scott Wilbor, an ecologist in Tucson who studies desert river ecosystems, including the San Pedro. “We are in uncharted territory.”
Born of snowmelt and springs in the mountains of southern New Mexico, the Gila is the southernmost snow-fed river in the United States. It was once perennial, running 649 miles until it emptied into the Colorado River. As the climate warms, scientists predict that by 2050 snow will no longer fall in the Black and Mogollon ranges that form the Gila’s headwaters, depriving the river of its major source of water.
“We’re seeing a combination of long-term climate change and really bad drought,” said David Gutzler, a professor emeritus of climatology at the University of New Mexico. If the drought is prolonged, he said, “that’s when we’ll see the river dry up.”
The Gila River as it nears the Florence Diversion Dam in Arizona was almost dry by May this year. Photo credit: TED WOOD via Yale 360.
The same scenario is playing out on the once-mighty Colorado, the Rio Grande, and many smaller Southwest rivers, all facing what is often called a megadrought. Some research indicates that a southwestern U.S. megadrought may last decades, while other scientists fear the region is threatened by a permanent aridification because of rising temperatures.
Worldwide, said Ian Harrison, a freshwater expert with Conservation International, “pretty much where there are rivers in arid areas, they are suffering through a combination of climate change and development.”
Like the Gila, many of these rivers have high degrees of endemism. “Life is often highly specialized to those particular conditions and only lives on that one river, so the impacts of loss are catastrophic,” he said.
Rivers everywhere are important for biodiversity, but especially so in the desert, where 90 percent of life is found within a mile of the river. Nearly half of North America’s 900 or so bird species use the Gila and its tributaries, including some that live nowhere else in the U.S., such as the common blackhawk and northern beardless tyrannulet. Two endangered birds, the southwestern willow flycatcher and yellow-billed cuckoo, live along the Gila and its tributaries, including the San Pedro and the Salt.
Desert rivers, of course, make life in the desert possible for people, too. Growing crops in the perpetual heat of the desert can be highly lucrative, especially if the water is free or nearly so thanks to subsidies from the federal government. Agriculture is where most of the water in the Gila goes.
A vermillion flycatcher perched near the Gila River in Safford, Arizona. Photo credit: TED WOOD via Yale 360
This spring, photographer Ted Wood and I made a journey along the length of the Gila, from the headwaters in New Mexico to west of Phoenix. In most of Arizona, the Gila is dry. Where it still flows, I was impressed by how such a relatively small river, under the right conditions, can be so life-giving. The trip brought home what desert rivers are up against as the climate changes, and also how much restoration, and what types, can be expected to protect the biodiversity that remains.
Our journey began at the river’s source, where Cliff Dweller Creek spills out of a shady canyon lined with Gambel oak in Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument. The creek is barely a trickle here. Above the creek, ancestral Puebloans, known as Mogollon, once lived in dwellings wedged into caves, making pottery and tending vegetable gardens. The Mogollon abandoned these canyons in the 15th century, perhaps done in by an extended drought.
From inside a Mogollon cave, I looked out at rolling hills, covered with ponderosa pine, pinyon and juniper trees. The green-hued water gains volume where three forks come together near here. Historically, the mountain snow melts slowly each spring, providing high steady flows through April and May. Flows slow to a trickle in June. In July and August, monsoons pass through and, along with frontal systems, cause flash flooding and a rise in water levels.
Flooding is a “disturbance regime,” not unlike a forest fire, that rejuvenates aging, static ecosystems. A healthy river in the mountains of the West is one that behaves like a fire hose, whipping back and forth in a broad channel over time, flash flooding and then receding, moving gravel, rocks, logs and other debris throughout the system. A flooding river constantly demolishes some sections of a river and builds others, creating new habitat — cleaning silt from gravel so fish can spawn, for instance, or flushing sediment from wetlands. A river that flows over its banks, recharges aquifers and moistens the soil so that the seedlings of cottonwoods, mesquite trees and other vegetation can reproduce. Along healthy stretches of the Gila, birds are everywhere; I spotted numerous bluebirds in the branches of emerald green cottonwoods.
Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument New Mexico, an ancestral Puebloan ruin at the headwaters of the Gila River. Photo credit: TED WOOD via Yale 360
The riparian ecosystem that lines the 80 or so miles of the New Mexico portion is largely intact because of the protections afforded by federal wilderness areas, the lack of a dam, and the river’s flow not being completely siphoned off for farming. This is an anomaly in a state that has lost many of its riparian ecosystems. “This is the last free-flowing river in New Mexico,” said Allyson Siwik, executive director of the Gila Conservation Coalition.
The future of the New Mexico stretch of the river is uncertain because of the possibility of more water withdrawals and the loss of snowpack. “We’ve seen flows in the last 10 years lower than we’ve ever seen,” Siwik said. This year, she said, set an all-time low on the river, with flow less than 20 percent of normal.
Undammed, the Gila River through New Mexico still floods, refreshing the Cliff-Gila valley, which contains the largest intact bosque habitat in the Lower Colorado River Basin. The valley is home to the largest concentration of non-colonial breeding birds in North America. The river is also a stronghold for threatened and endangered species, such as nesting yellow-billed cuckoos, the Gila chub, Chiricahua leopard frogs and Mexican garter snakes all live there.
At odds with efforts to keep the Gila wild are plans by a group of roughly 200 long-time irrigators in southwestern New Mexico. Each summer they divert water from the Gila to flood-irrigate pastures, which de-waters stretches of the river. The irrigators have been trying to raise money to build impoundments to take even more of their share of water, but so far have been unsuccessful, in part because of opposition from conservation groups.
Severe drought this spring combined with water overuse resulted in the drying of the Gila River in eastern Arizona and the death of the fish population. Photo credit: TED WOOD via Yale 360
Cattle are another threat to the river’s biological integrity here — both unfenced domestic cattle and feral cows. Cattle break down riverbanks, widen the stream and raise water temperatures. They eat and trample riparian vegetation, causing mud and silt to choke the flow, and destroy habitat for endangered species. The Center for Biological Diversity recently sued the U.S. Forest Service to force the agency to take action.
“We’re in a cow apocalypse,” said Todd Schulke, a founder of the Center for Biological Diversity. “They are even in the recovered Gila River habitat. It’s just heartbreaking.”
As the river enters Arizona, the riparian ecology remains largely intact, especially in the 23 miles of the Gila Box National Riparian Area. Here, 23,000 acres of bosque habitat is in full expression, with thick stands of cottonwoods, velvet mesquite trees and sandy beaches. It is one of only two national riparian areas in the country set aside for its outstanding biodiversity; the other is on the San Pedro River.
As the river leaves the riparian area, it undergoes a striking change: massive cotton farms near the towns of Safford, Pima, and Thatcher, first planted in the 1930s, cover the landscape. The dried, brown stalks of harvested cotton plants stand in a field, bits of fluff on top. Growing cotton in the desert — which uses six times as much water as lettuce — has long been seen as folly by critics, made possible only by hefty federal subsidies.
Farmers in Safford, Arizona, pump groundwater near the Gila River to irrigate their fields. Photo credit: TED WOOD via Yale 360
Much of the flood pulse ecology is lost here, as the river is diverted or subject to groundwater pumping. Instead of flooding, the river cuts deeper into its channel, lowering the water table, which many plants can no longer reach. The cottonwood stands and other riparian habitats have disappeared. “You want the groundwater within five feet of the ground, but it’s mostly 8 to 12 feet,” said Melanie Tluczek, executive director of the Gila Watershed Partnership, which has been doing restoration here since 2014.
It is a harsh place for new planting. The river is dry in long stretches. Tamarisk, a pernicious invasive tree also known as salt cedar, needs to be cut down and its stumps poisoned to prevent regrowth. Small willows and Fremont cottonwoods have been planted on barren desert ground. Wire cages over infant trees keep elk, beaver and rabbits from gobbling them up.
Meanwhile, tamarisk grows prolifically, slurping up water, changing soil chemistry and the nature of flooding, robustly outcompeting natives, and increasing the risk of wildfire.
“If you can do restoration here, you can do it anywhere,” Tluczek said. She said the Gila Watershed Partnership has removed 216 acres of tamarisk along the river and planted 90 acres with new native trees. But the Gila here will never look like it did. “We can’t restore the past,” Tluczek said. “We’re going to see a floodplain that has more dryland species and fewer floodplain species.”
The Coolidge Dam in Arizona forms the San Carlos Reservoir, which is now at historic lows. Photo credit: TED WOOD via Yale 360
Downstream, the Coolidge Dam forms a giant concrete plug on the Gila. Built in the 1920s by the federal government, it was the result of irrational exuberance about the amount of water on the Gila and meant to supply farmers with water. Today, however, the reservoir is usually dry. Built to hold 19,500 acres of water, this year the water in the lake covered just 50 acres.
From here to Phoenix and on to the Colorado, water only occasionally flows in the Gila. Yet even the small amount of water that remains is vital to wildlife. “Where there has been water near the surface, animals smell it and will dig down in the sand in the riverbed to free it up,” Wilbor said. “You set up a camera and it’s like an African watering hole, with species after species taking turns to come use the water.”
Will the Gila River through most of Arizona to the Colorado ever be restored to a semblance of the biological jewel it once was? The chances are slim. But two pioneering efforts have brought back elements of the desiccated river.
In 2010, Phoenix completed a $100 million, eight-mile restoration of the long-dewatered Salt River where it joins the Gila and Agua Fria rivers at Tres Rios. Fed by water from the city’s sewage treatment plant across the road, this constructed complex includes 128 acres of wetlands, 38 acres of riparian corridor, and 134 acres of open water. It is thick with cattails and other vegetation, an island of green around a lake amid the sere surrounding desert.
Ramona and Terry Button run Ramona Farms on the Gila River Indian Community, where some water allocated to the tribe is being released into the Gila. Photo credit: TED WOOD via Yale 360
On the nearby Gila River Indian Community, meanwhile, home to the Pima — or the name they prefer, Akimel O’othham, the river people — is something called a managed area recharge. The Akimel O’othham, who share their community with the Maricopa, are believed to be the descendants of the Hohokam, an ancient agricultural civilization with a vast network of irrigation canals that was largely abandoned centuries ago. The Akimel O’othham continued to farm along the Gila in historic times until their water was stolen from them in the late 19th century by settlers who dug a canal in front of the reservation and drained it away.
After a century of the Akimel O’othham fighting for their water rights, in 2004 the Arizona Water Settlement Act provided the tribe with the largest share of Colorado River water from the Central Arizona Project, a share larger than the city of Phoenix’s allotment. The tribe is now water-rich, using much of that water to restore its tribal agricultural past, though with modern crops and methods.
Last year, some of the Colorado River water was released into the Gila to be stored in an underground aquifer and used to create a wetland.
Both of these projects, at Tres Rios and at the reservation, have created oases in a harsh desert landscape, bringing back an array of birds and wildlife, and — in the case of the Akimel O’othham — helping revitalize the cultural traditions of these river people.
“We’re not going to have rivers with native species in the Southwest unless we can protect and restore these systems,” especially with a changing climate, Siwik said. “Protecting the best, restoring the rest — or else we lose these systems that we need for our survival.”
From RiversEdge West via The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel:
Tamarisk trees, those green bushy plants seen along waterways, have been turning brown across the county thanks to a special beetle used to control the invasive species.
Ben Bloodworth, Tamarisk Beetle Program coordinator with RiversEdge West, sent out a note Monday responding to social media posts from local people wondering why they were seeing so many browning tamarisk plants.
“These are tamarisk trees, or salt cedars, and the phenomenon is currently so pervasive here in the valley that folks are starting to wonder about it on social media,” Bloodworth said. “So, before you blame anyone for over-spraying, or the hot, dry air of June, let’s chat about the millions of little beetles that live in the valley with us.”
According to Bloodworth, tamarisk, which is native to Asia and the Mediterranean, became such an environmental and economic problem in the western United States that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) decided to research and release a biological control agent to address the issue.
“Biocontrols are natural ‘predators’ that feed on plants in their native ranges but are not found in the U.S.,” Bloodworth said. “In 1987 the USDA began a program to find natural enemies of tamarisk and see if they could live and feed on tamarisk in North America without feeding on anything else.”
Out of hundreds of candidate species, the tamarisk beetle was found to be the most successful. It was found to only feed on tamarisk and not any other species of plants. So the USDA began releasing it, including in Moab, Utah, in 2001. From there the beetle spread up the Colorado River to Mesa County.
“Since tamarisk beetles survive on tamarisk as their only food source, they were never intended to eliminate the invasive plant,” Bloodworth said. “Rather, they were released to help control the spread of the plant and reduce the amount that land managers must remove by other, more costly means.”
The small green beetles, when there is a large enough population, can defoliate a large amount of tamarisk in just a few weeks. Left behind are the orangish brown remains of the formerly green tamarisk.
“The populations ebb and flow with available tamarisk and some years we have almost no tamarisk beetles anywhere,” Bloodworth said. “As you may have noticed by all the brown tamarisk, this is not one of those years!”
Counterintuitively the brown, dead tamarisk is actually less of a fire danger than the green plant, Bloodworth said. It may initially, for a few weeks, be more susceptible to catching fire, but once it has dropped its leaves it is actually less of a fire risk, according to Bloodworth.
“The brown trees may not be pretty, but they do provide for opportunities to restore native vegetation alongside our rivers,” Bloodworth said.
2014 Tamarisk leaf beetle distribution map via the Tamarisk Coalition
Quagga mussels: Glen Canyon photo by Jeremy Monroe, Freshwaters Illustrated/USGS
Here’s the release from Oregon State University (Steve Lundeberg and David A. Lytle):
Researchers from Oregon State University say ecological data gathered during a recent low-flow experiment in the Grand Canyon is a key step toward understanding Colorado River ecosystems as the amount of water in the river continues to decline.
Dave Lytle, professor of integrative biology, and Ph.D. students Angelika Kurthen and Jared Freedman teamed with scientists from the United States Geological Survey during the March 2021 project to examine the quantity and diversity of invertebrates in the river. Monitoring aquatic invertebrates is an important tool for keeping track of stream health.
“The Colorado River and its dams are important to cities throughout the Southwest, and as a result of that management the river experiences some pretty unusual flows,” Lytle said. “During the day in the Grand Canyon, river levels can rise several feet, then they can drop down several feet, stranding your boat if you’re not careful. That’s because there’s high electricity demand during the day and lower demand at night.”
The high flow during times of heavy demand for power is known as hydropeaking.
“Hydropeaking can cause trouble for ecosystems downstream, and with our collaborators we’re experimenting with ways to change river flows to make them more compatible with productive ecosystems,” Lytle said. “Invertebrates are food for fish, birds and bats, and we want to enhance that food base by testing out different flow regimes that mesh with management ideas.”
During the low-flow event, releases from Lake Powell through the Glen Canyon Dam were restricted so that the Colorado ran at 4,000 cubic feet per second compared to its usual flow of 8,000 to 15,000 CFS. Lytle’s team took samples to measure the quantity of invertebrates stranded by the low flows and environmental DNA samples to analyze the diversity of invertebrates in the water.
“During this spring’s low flow, gravel bars and parts of channels that had been submerged were exposed for the first time in decades,” Lytle said. “We saw really large areas of vegetation and invasive species like New Zealand mud snails and quagga mussels, which are there in high numbers at the expense of native invertebrates such as black flies, mayflies and midges that are better food sources for native fish.”
The Colorado River follows a 1,450-mile route generally southwest from north central Colorado to just east of Las Vegas. From there it turns south to form Arizona’s western border with Nevada and California, and then the border between Mexican states Sonora and Baja California before emptying into the Gulf of California.
Between the U.S. and Mexico, 40 million people depend on water from the Colorado. The snowmelt-fed river has seen its flows drop by 20% over the last 100 years as runoff efficiency – the percentage of precipitation that ends up in the river – has declined as summers have become hotter and drier, cooking the soil.
This year, for example, snowpack is 80% of average but sending just 30% of the average amount of water into the Colorado. Lake Mead, the reservoir behind Hoover Dam, is at an all-time low, and between them Lake Mead and Lake Powell, behind Glen Canyon Dam, are projected to be just 29% full within two years.
Completed in 1966, Glen Canyon Dam is 710 feet high and 1,560 feet long and named for the series of deep sandstone gorges flooded by Lake Powell. The lake draws its name from John Wesley Powell, the leader of the first boat expedition to traverse the Grand Canyon.
“Typically the Colorado River is coming out of Lake Powell fast and cold, which is a hostile environment for desert adapted organisms,” Lytle said.
For the recent experiment, low flow was maintained from March 15 through March 20, and immediately after that there was a big release of water, known as a high-pulse flow event, intended to scour out areas and possibly create new habitat for native fish and their food sources.
“During the first part of the low flow, we were in the far upper reaches of the canyon, and as soon as we finished sampling, we packed up the truck and raced across the desert 200 river miles away to Diamond Creek, where you can access the Grand Canyon from a road, just in time to capture the low-flow event moving its way down a long, sinuous canyon,” Lytle said. “And a USGS team was taking samples by boat throughout the entire canyon, complementary to what our group was doing. It was a real team effort, with people measuring riparian vegetation, taking drift samples of invertebrates in water, checking respiration of aquatic plants, and also noting the effect on fish and fisheries.”
As the climate continues to warm and the amount of water available for humans continues to drop, low flows such as the one during this year’s experiment may become the new normal, he added.
“That presents challenges but also opportunities for research,” Lytle said. “Prior to there being any dams on the river, low-flow events were part of the normal annual cycle of flows. In the spring, the river could flood quite spectacularly in some years, and by late summer or early fall into winter, flows could get to 4,000 CFS or even lower than that.”
Lytle says that kind of variation amounts to “exercise” for the river, which needs it for health just like a person needs both activity and rest.
“One question we’re asking is whether there could be ecological benefits, at least at certain important times of year, to low flows,” he said. “Low flows allow the water temperature to increase and let more light to reach the benthic zone, where the productivity of algae and invertebrates occurs. It also might favor greater production of those important native black flies, mayflies and midges.”
Below-average snowpack and ongoing drought will hurt flows and fish habitat below McPhee Dam going into spring and summer, reports Colorado Parks and Wildlife.
Water releases from the dam are expected to be under 15 cubic feet per second and could possibly drop as low as 3 cfs, said Jim White, a CPW aquatic biologist, in a April 14 news release.
During normal snowpack years, McPhee Reservoir fills, and the allocated fish pool allows for a sustained dam release of 60 cfs in summer.
Fish flows increase if snowpack runoff exceeds reservoir capacity, which prompts a recreational boating release. But a recreational water release will not happen this year because of below average snowpack and low reservoir carryover from last water season.
As of April 13, Snotels in the Dolores Basin reported 39% of average snowpack for snow water equivalent.
Trout and native fish will be adversely impacted by the water shortage below the dam, White said.
The 12-mile section of river that flows through the Lone Dome State Wildlife Area from below the dam to Bradfield Bridge is a popular tail-water fishery. Most trout fishing is done within the first 6 miles.
White said the lower flows will shrink the river habitat, and many brown and rainbow trout likely will die. The water coming out of the dam is about 42 degrees Fahrenheit, which is an ideal temperature for trout. But with such a low flow the water will warm quickly as it moves downstream…
Roundtail chub
The low flows will also affect native fish that live in the lower reaches of the Dolores River ─ the flannelmouth sucker, the bluehead sucker and the roundtail chub. The fish, listed by CPW as species of concern, have adapted to warm water, but they still need pools and flowing water to survive.
White is concerned about lower sections of the river drying up or being connected by only tiny rivulets of water.
Making the problem worse is the smallmouth bass, an invasive non-native fish that thrives in the lower Dolores River but preys on young native fish. Anglers are encouraged to fish for smallmouth bass; they are abundant, fairly easy to catch, tasty and have no bag or possession limit.
As drought continues to grip the West, more and more rivers will face the same scenario — this year and beyond.
“All of this is a result of three things: low snowpack, dry soil that will absorb runoff and no carryover water in the reservoir from last year,” White said.
A citizen’s report of an invasive zebra mussel found in an aquarium moss package found in a pet store prompted a U.S. Geological Survey expert on invasive aquatic species to trigger nationwide alerts that have led to the discovery of the destructive shellfish in pet stores in at least 21 states from Alaska to Florida.
A moss ball sold in pet stores containing an invasive zebra mussel. USGS photo.
Amid concerns that the ornamental aquarium moss balls containing zebra mussels may have accidentally spread the pest to areas where it has not been seen before, federal agencies, states, and the pet store industry are working together to remove the moss balls from pet store shelves nationwide. They have also drawn up instructions for people who bought the moss balls or have them in aquariums to carefully decontaminate them, destroying any zebra mussels and larvae they contain using one of these methods: freezing them for at least 24 hours, placing them in boiling water for at least one minute, placing them in diluted chlorine bleach, or submerging them in undiluted white vinegar for at least 20 minutes. The decontamination instructions were developed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the USGS and representatives of the pet industry.
Zebra mussels are an invasive, fingernail-sized mollusk native to freshwaters in Eurasia. They clog water intakes for power and water plants, block water control structures, and damage fishing and boating equipment, at great cost. The federal government, state agencies, fishing and boating groups and others have worked extensively to control their spread.
In 1990, in response to the first wave of zebra mussel invasions, the USGS set up its Nonindigenous Aquatic Species Database, which tracks sightings of about 1,270 non-native aquatic plants and animals nationwide, including zebra mussels. State and local wildlife managers use the database to find and eliminate or control potentially harmful species.
The coordinator of the Nonindigenous Aquatic Species Database, USGS fisheries biologist Wesley Daniel, learned about the presence of zebra mussels in moss balls on March 2 and alerted others nationwide about the issue. Moss balls are ornamental plants imported from Ukraine that are often added to aquariums.
“The issue is that somebody who purchased the moss ball and then disposed of them could end up introducing zebra mussels into an environment where they weren’t present before,” Daniel said. “We’ve been working with many agencies on boat inspections and gear inspections, but this was not a pathway we’d been aware of until now.”
On February 25, an employee of a pet store in Seattle, Washington, filed a report to the database that the employee had recently recognized a zebra mussel in a moss ball. Daniel requested confirming information and a photograph and received it a few days later.
Daniel immediately notified the aquatic invasive species coordinator for Washington State and contacted invasive species managers at the USGS and USFWS. He visited a pet store in Gainesville, Florida, and found a zebra mussel in a moss ball there. At that point federal non-indigenous species experts realized the issue was extensive.
The USFWS is coordinating the response along with the USGS. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, several state wildlife agencies and an industry group, the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council, are also taking steps to mitigate the problem. National alerts have gone out from the USFWS, the federal Aquatic Nuisance Task and regional aquatic invasive species management groups. Reports of zebra mussels in moss balls have come from Alaska, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, Wisconsin, Washington and Wyoming.
“I think this was a great test of the rapid-response network that we have been building,” Daniel said. “In two days, we had a coordinated state, federal and industry response.”
The USGS is also studying potential methods to help control zebra mussels that are already established in the environment, such as low-dose copper applications, carbon dioxide and microparticle delivery of toxicants.
In May of 2018, USGS Hydrologic Technician Dave Knauer found a batch of zebra mussels attached to the boat anchor in the St. Lawrence River in New York. (Credit: John Byrnes, USGS. Public domain.)
Here’s the release from Colorado Parks & Wildlife (Bridget Kochel):
Colorado has mandatory boating inspection regulations in place to help monitor that mussels do not cross state lines.
After three consecutive years of negative testing, Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) has removed Green Mountain Reservoir in Summit County from the positive waters list for quagga mussels, a prohibited aquatic nuisance species (ANS). As Green Mountain Reservoir was the only body of water in Colorado suspected of having a population of quagga mussels, this de-listing makes Colorado a completely negative state for both zebra and quagga mussels.
In August 2017, Green Mountain Reservoir, which is owned and operated by the Bureau of Reclamation and whose developed public recreation sites are managed by the White River National Forest, tested positive for the presence of quagga mussel larvae (veligers). No adult mussels were ever found in Green Mountain Reservoir nor have they ever been found in a Colorado water body. Regional standards require three years of subsequent negative testing in order to re-classify the water from Suspect to Negative.
“After three years of negative testing, we are confident that Green Mountain Reservoir is free of invasive mussels and does not pose a risk to other aquatic resources,” said CPW’s Invasive Species Program Manager Robert Walters. “Colorado is the only state to de-list all mussel positive waters. This is a testament to the fact that our mandatory watercraft inspection and decontamination procedures do work to protect Colorado’s waters from invasive species.”
While Colorado is once again completely free of invasive mussels, the threat of zebra or quagga mussels entering Colorado from another infested state is still quite real. Boaters using infested waters must take extra care not to transport mussels across state lines and to comply with Colorado’s mandatory inspection regulations.
“Our staff want to express our gratitude to the boaters who help keep Colorado’s waters safe from harmful invasive species. By participating in Cleaning, Draining, and Drying your watercraft and gear between each and every use, we can continue to prevent the spread of invasive species,” said Walters.
State of Colorado Aquatic Nuisance Species Management Plan Approved
The management plan was originally conceptualized in 2006 and has been collaboratively developed by CPW staff, the Colorado ANS Task Force and by ANS experts and stakeholders across the state.
“The approval of this plan is a significant milestone in ANS program history because it sets a clear path forward on how we can prevent and manage aquatic nuisance species in Colorado,” said Reid DeWalt, CPW’s assistant director for aquatic, terrestrial and natural resources. “Invasive species have the potential to cause significant irreversible environmental impacts. The ANS management plan includes a coordinated prevention plan to keep Colorado’s waters free of ANS and a rapid response strategy that is designed to quickly contain new populations that may establish. This aims to minimize negative impacts on human safety, our wildlife populations and our native ecosystems.”
In an effort to balance outdoor recreation with mindful conservation, Colorado Parks and Wildlife requires boaters to purchase an ANS Stamp when registering a boat in Colorado to help protect state waters. The stamp provides approximately half of the funding needed to run the ANS Program operations annually, which includes watercraft inspection and decontamination services, monitoring of state waters and management of existing populations.
Audubon works to protect wildlife like birds and their habitats.
As part of an agreement between Nebraska, Colorado, and Kansas, this water transfer would help meet the state’s delivery obligations within the Republican River Compact.
But over the years, water from the Platte River has heavily been used by municipalities and agriculture.
This has led to the compact being short on water deliveries for quite some time.
The state also has an agreement with other neighboring states to balance this overused water supply through the Endangered Species Act, which began about 30 years after the river compact, and through the Platte River Recovery Implementation Program that aims to add water back to the river…
A diversion of the already short water supply to the Republican could create a ripple effect.
“Overall, taking water from one basin that is already water short and transferring it to another basin that’s water short.. that doesn’t really give us a long term solution. It doesn’t provide certainty for water users and it potentially has ecological impacts for both river basins,” said Mosier.
Taddicken said almost 70% of the water from the Platte River is gone before it even makes it to Nebraska and an interbasin transfer would heavily impact the its supply.
“This water removed from the Platte actually leaves the basin which is a real problem. Moving water around irrigation canals and things like that, eventually a lot of that water seeps back into the groundwater and back to the Platte River. This kind of a transfer takes it out completely,” said Taddicken.
He said farmers in the Platte River Valley should be really concerned if the transfer goes through…
Streamflow also helps to create multiple channels and varying depths which attract many wildlife species, especially birds.
Sandhill Cranes in flight via Colorado Parks and Wildlife
“Sandhill cranes, whooping cranes, piping plovers and other birds.. they use those sand bars for protection. That’s where they like to nest and roost, so that’s really important. Stream flow makes that happen,” stated Mosier, “there’s also an important connection between streams on the Platte River and wetlands. Those wetlands are where a lot of birds and other wildlife find their protein sources.”
Taddicken said we’ve made a lot of compromises for wildlife already as the width of the Platte River has slowly declined and vegetation has taken over where the waters don’t extend.
The impact then extends its reach to the economy, with less sandhill cranes coming to the area that could impact tourists traveling to Central Nebraska.
Invasive species making their way into Kansas is also a concern.
Back in 2018, former Kansas Governor Jeff Colyer wrote a letter objecting to the transfer due to the risk of invasive species.
The Platte River is formed in western Nebraska east of the city of North Platte, Nebraska by the confluence of the North Platte and the South Platte Rivers, which both arise from snowmelt in the eastern Rockies east of the Continental Divide. Map via Wikimedia.
this 16 inch long Mountain whitefish (Prosopium williamsoni) was caught and released in the McKenzie River near the town of Blue River, Oregon on September 1, 2007. By Woostermike at English Wikipedia – Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by OhanaUnited., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5099696
As a Yampa River Botanic Park team member, [Jeff] Morehead removes the diversion dam on Fish Creek under U.S. Highway 40 every year. The water flows through two arches under the road, and the dam keeps the water level high enough in one of them so water diverts to the Yampa River Botanic Park.
Each fall after Halloween, the park closes and Morehead removes the dam. This year, as requested by Steamboat Springs Water Resources Manager Kelly Romero-Heaney and Public Works City Engineer Ben Beall, Morehead removed the structure a bit earlier. Additionally, he created a wing dam of rock and fabric to divert the water through one arch instead of two, deepening the flow of water.
“I was just happy to help,” said Morehead. “You could tell the fish were going right past me while I was doing it. I was like, ‘Holy crap, this is absolutely working.’”
Without the diversion, waterflow through both arches isn’t deep enough to allow the fish to swim and jump through the box culvert steps. The middle arch has one large step of about 18 inches, according to Morehead, which would be nearly impossible for the fish to leap over.
“It’s staircased in a way that the drops are like 18 inches and there’s a long flat that approaches the staircase, so the whitefish can’t really swim and get a jump over that 18 inches.”
There used to be a third arch, but as of summer 2019, a sidewalk underpass filled the far right arch. That left the far left arch as the only viable option for fish to get upstream.
With more water flowing through the arch, it allowed whitefish to swim upstream and spawn in the waters of Fish Creek. Development and low water levels have made it harder to access their main spawning tributary for the fish living in the headwaters of the Yampa. The whitefish spawn, or lay their eggs, in early to mid-October. The eggs will hatch in the spring before the waters reach their peak flow.
As seen in a video taken and edited by Morehead, the whitefish seem to have utilized the access point to Fish Creek.
Whitefish populations in the Yampa River Basin have been dwindling for years, so, as part of the Yampa River Health Assessment and Streamflow Management Plan adopted in 2018, the city of Steamboat Springs vowed to “promote native fish populations from further decline and promote range expansion where possible.” The Fish Creek diversion is just one way the city is working to accomplish that task.
The mountain whitefish isn’t endangered, but its numbers are falling in the Yampa River Basin, where it’s one of two native salmonids in the area, the other being cutthroat trout. The species is also found in Colorado in the White River Basin. They live in the Northwest in cool waters of high elevation streams, rivers and lakes, particularly in Montana, Idaho, Oregon and Washington.
While they are thriving in other areas of the country, including the White River Basin, they are struggling in the Yampa River Basin as noted in samples taken from the river every few years, most recently conducted by Billy Atkinson, an aquatic biologist for Colorado Parks and Wildlife.
A huge reason for their decline is the non-native northern pike. Pike are predacious fish and feed on the whitefish. There have been efforts to control the pike population in the area, which is another goal of the Yampa River Health Assessment and Streamflow Management Plan.
Mountain whitefish are doing well in the White River, where there are no northern pike to prey on the native fish. There are other ecological factors that can be attributed to the whitefish’s success in the White River basin, but no pike is the biggest difference between that system and that of the Yampa River.
Predation is just one issue plaguing the whitefish.
The whitefish, which can grow up to 2 feet, loves cold water in high elevations. A 20-year drought in Colorado has brought on some particularly rough water years, though, lowering the flow in rivers across the state.
The Yampa River was extremely low this year, closing to usage Sept. 2 when the streamflow dropped below 85 cubic feet per second. Shallower water is warmed by the sun far easier than deeper water, causing stress to fish that prefer cooler temperatures.
Thankfully, there are already efforts in place to improve this on two fronts. The Upper Yampa Water Conservancy District releases water from Stagecoach Reservoir to improve river flow and prevent the loss of fish habitat when the water line lowers.
Additionally, the Yampa Valley Sustainability Council and Retree have been planting young trees on the banks of the Yampa in designated spots. When they grow, the trees will provide shade to the river, helping maintain lower temperatures.
This year, with water levels so low, the end of summer river closure extended into the fall to put less stress on the entire Yampa River ecological system. With low flow, fish, such as the mountain whitefish, concentrate in small pools due to limited resources.
Here’s the release from the City of Boulder (Phillip Yates):
Recent city wildlife monitoring in South Boulder Creek has discovered New Zealand mudsnails – an invasive aquatic species that can disrupt aquatic ecosystems, harm fish populations and displace native insects.
With the discovery of mudsnails in a creek area near the East Boulder Community Center, the City of Boulder requests community assistance in preventing their spread to additional stretches of the creek and other water bodies. It also advises open space visitors the best way to prevent the spread of this invasive snail is to stay out of the creek.
Adult mudsnails are about the size of a grain of rice and can rapidly reproduce through cloning – a single mudsnail can produce a colony of 40 million snails in just one year. Because they are so small, they can hitch a ride from one water body to another on everything from a dog’s paw to fishing equipment, including boots and waders. Mudsnails can also easily adapt to a wide range of aquatic ecosystems and once established in a creek, there are no practical means of removing them all.
The city reminds residents – particularly anglers and dog guardians – to practice these responsible recreation practices:
Visitors should not access streams or creek areas where mudsnails have been found. If individuals fish in an affected area, they should use a wire brush to remove mud and vegetation from their boots and gear immediately after stepping back onto dry ground.
If dogs enter South Boulder Creek, guardians should carefully brush their paws and bellies on dry land.
Visitors, and especially anglers, should take precautionary steps detailed by Colorado Parks and Wildlife when they are back home or before they go to another body of water. Those measures include freezing boots and gear overnight, soaking equipment in hot water, submerging waders and other equipment in solution specified by CPW, or drying boots and gear – preferably in direct sunlight – for at least 48 hours.
Community members should not flush water used to clean boots or rinse equipment down storm drains.
OSMP has temporarily closed South Boulder Creek access south of South Boulder Road to Marshall Road to help stem further human-caused spread of mudsnails along the creek. OSMP also will install educational advisory signs along the creek encouraging visitors to stay out of the creek in areas that aren’t included in the temporary closure.
During this temporary closure and community-outreach period, OSMP will assess its current management of South Boulder Creek – one of the city’s most diverse creek areas and home to federally protected wildlife and plant species – and may implement additional measures and creek access restrictions. The city currently has year-round New Zealand mudsnail closures in portions of Dry Creek and Boulder Creek.
The discovery of New Zealand mudsnails in South Boulder Creek also has led OSMP to postpone implementation of its Gebhard Integrated Site Project – a habitat protection and recreational access project planned for an area near where OSMP discovered mudsnails. The department anticipates sharing updates about this project with community members in early 2021.
Jaime McCullah points out past samples taken from boats of invasive mussel species at the boat inspection check point at Ruedi Reservoir on Wednesday, July 22, 2020. (Kelsey Brunner/Aspen Times via Aspen Journalism)
Inspectors in Colorado this season intercepted a record number of watercraft showing signs of invasive mussel infestations as reservoirs across the state saw surging numbers of boaters.
Ruedi Reservoir, near Basalt, recorded the state’s highest number of intercepted boats carrying mussels. Officials said that is probably due to the reservoir’s relative proximity to Utah’s Lake Powell, which has been dealing with a mussel infestation for years.
As public health experts have urged people to maintain their distance and avoid enclosed spaces during the COVID-19 pandemic, one logical response for many Coloradans has been to take to the water. Boating, kayaking and paddleboarding have exploded in popularity this year, according to reservoir managers across the state. Riding the wave of that trend are invasive mussels, attaching themselves to watercraft.
“With more opportunities … for a boat to be transporting something into our waters, there is, of course, a little bit more risk,” said Robert Walters, an invasive-species specialist with Colorado Parks and Wildlife.
By mid-September in Colorado, where the boating season officially will close in November, the state had already recorded more than 600,000 boat inspections. In an average year, it conducts about 475,000. At least 94 boats were intercepted with confirmed adult mussels, the highest number recorded in the state since it began boat inspections in 2008.
Native to Eastern Europe, zebra and quagga mussels have infested waters around the world. The creatures, each wrapped in a hard, sharp shell, cling to surfaces in fresh water and quickly breed. Mussels can devastate aquatic ecosystems and damage infrastructure such as pipes and hydroelectric equipment. The larvae of these aquatic nuisance species — as they are designated by the state — have been detected in several Colorado reservoirs over the years, but adult mussels have never emerged.
Mussels pose a particularly high threat in Colorado because of the state’s position upstream of other watersheds. Scientists suspect that zebra and quagga mussels would have difficulty establishing in a high-elevation river, but it’s still possible that they could be distributed downstream.
“We are at the top of the watershed,” Walters said. “So if something were to happen in one of our headwaters or really anywhere in the state of Colorado, it would have significant potential to impact those downstream of us.”
Park ranger Geraint Mansfield examines the registration of a boat headed into Chatfield Reservoir, near Denver, on Oct. 18. Since 2008, the state has had an inspection program designed to keep invasive zebra and quagga mussels — which can damage infrastructure and disrupt the aquatic food chain — out of Colorado waterways. Photo credit: Lindsay Fendt/Aspen Journalism
Keeping up with the crowds
CPW regularly tests the state’s reservoirs for mussel larvae, and so far there are no signs that the increased boating activity has spurred an infestation, which is a testament to the state’s thorough inspection program. Still, keeping pace with the increased boat inspections has been a challenge for many agencies, especially those dealing with pandemic-induced budget constraints.
“I think we’re pretty fortunate that we were even allowed to hire our normal staffing,” said Mark Caughlan, district manager at Horsetooth Reservoir, just west of Fort Collins. “But don’t get me wrong, it still wasn’t enough staffing to handle that massive influx of visitation that we saw.”
According to Caughlan, Horsetooth Reservoir normally gets around 1.2 million visitors a year. This year, the reservoir saw a 30% to 40% increase in visitation, much of which was boaters. The volume of visitors, the limited staff and the need to carefully inspect boats meant that some people waited hours to get on the water. Most reservoirs, including Horsetooth, put inspection stations at every boat ramp, making it improbable that any boat will touch the water before it’s checked out.
Adult mussels can stick to the outside of a boat or be sucked into the ballast tanks of wakeboard boats and ski boats. If mussels are found, inspectors spray the boat with a high-powered water jet to clear them off. The ballasts have to be emptied and washed to ensure that no larvae are inside. The full decontamination process can take up to 30 minutes depending on the extent of the infestation.
Even before boating exploded in popularity during the pandemic, the threat of mussels slipping through the cracks was increasing. In 2017, CPW intercepted 26 infested boats, which was a record at the time. That number increased to 51 in 2018 and to 86 in 2019.
Reservoir managers attribute the increase to surrounding states’ growing number of bodies of waters with mussel infestations, in particular Lake Powell, which became fully colonized by mussels in 2016. Boats leaving Lake Powell are required to undergo inspection by the National Park Service, but many boats slip through. Nearly 70% of the mussel-infested boats intercepted in Colorado come from Lake Powell.
An inspector from Rocky Mountain Recreation begins the boat-inspection process at Ruedi Reservoir in July. Seventeen boats at Ruedi were found to have invasive zebra and quagga mussels this season, which is the highest number anywhere in the state in what was a record year for boats intercepted with the invasive species. The mussels disrupt the aquatic food chain and clog intake pipes for water-related facilities and boat engines. Photo credit: Christin Kay/Aspen Journalism
Ruedi on the frontlines
The impact of Lake Powell’s mussel colonies on Colorado is most striking at reservoirs closest to the Utah border. Ruedi Reservoir, in the Fryingpan River Valley above Basalt, has seen more boats containing invasive mussels than any other body of water in Colorado, with 17 interceptions this year. Ruedi is particularly vulnerable to mussels. The turbines and pipes inside its hydroelectric dam are difficult to clean and could be destroyed if they are colonized. Mussels are also a filtering species, meaning they feed off the microinvertebrates, such as plankton, in their ecosystem. These microinvertebrates make up the base of the food chain, which helps sustain the renowned fishery downstream of the reservoir on the Fryingpan River.
“Given our proximity, I think we share a lot of the same boaters with Lake Powell,” said April Long, executive director at Ruedi Water and Power Authority. “Their mussel population is increasing, and I don’t believe that their ability to inspect is also increasing.”
Due to the pandemic, Ruedi delayed opening to boaters until June 1, but Long said the number of boats inspected there has still nearly doubled in 2020. Inspectors worked overtime hours through June and July to keep up.
A boater floats in the waters at Chatfield Reservoir, near Denver, on Oct. 18. Reservoirs across the state reported surging or record use this year as the COVID-19 pandemic drove more people outdoors. Those higher numbers corresponded with increased inspections and interceptions of invasive mussels, which state authorities are trying to keep out of Colorado reservoirs. Photo credit: Lindsay Fendt/Aspen Journalism
Most boaters are cooperative — and officials want to keep it that way
Despite the long waits, inspectors across the state say most boaters are cooperative. Long worries that this could change if long lines become the norm, and she said the RWPA is discussing expanding its inspection staff next year.
“If they get frustrated with the amount of time that it takes to do these inspections or decontaminations, we may see some compliance shift to noncompliance,” she said. “We don’t want that to happen.”
While long lines could aggravate some boaters, Walters said boaters, generally, are invested in keeping the waters where they spend time healthy. The mussel colonies at Lake Powell have served as a firm warning for many Colorado boaters.
“If there is anything positive that I can say of the infestation out there at Lake Powell,” he said, “it’s that Colorado boaters love to go out there and seeing something like that happen to one of their favorite waters has really hammered home what this could potentially look like if it happened here in Colorado. From what I’ve seen, I think that’s made the boaters much more supportive of the program and that they don’t want to see that happen at their home waters.”
This story ran in the Oct. 24 edition of The Aspen Times and the Oct. 26 edition of the Glenwood Springs Post Independent.
Connor Bevel, an Aquatic technician with Colorado Parks and Wildlife, holds one the 450 adult Colorado River Cutthroat trout released into the Hermosa Creek drainage October 9, 2020. Photo credit: Joe Lewandowski/Colorado Parks & Wildlife via The Durango Herald
A decades-long effort to restore the Colorado River cutthroat trout to the upper reaches of Hermosa Creek has been completed, resulting in the largest continuous stretch of waterway for the native fish species in the state…
Jim White, aquatic biologist for Colorado Parks and Wildlife in Durango, releases Colorado River cutthroat trout fingerlings into the East Fork of Hermosa Creek on Oct. 9. CPW released 4,000 fingerlings. Courtesy of Joe Lewandowski/Colorado Parks and Wildlife via The Durango Herald
The upper reaches of Hermosa Creek were instantly recognized as an ideal place for a restoration project, both for its outstanding water quality as well as easy access through a Forest Service road that runs behind Purgatory Resort.
Over the years, barriers have been installed to isolate certain stretches of water and an organic poison known as rotenone has been used to clear out invasive species, like brown, brookie and rainbow trout.
All this to clear the path for cutthroat reintroduction.
Last weekend, CPW stocked an estimated 4,000 cutthroat fingerlings and an additional 475 mature cutthroats in the final stretch of the Hermosa Creek project, giving the waterway back to the native fish for the first time in 100 years.
And now, the project to restore 23 miles of cutthroat habitat is finally complete…
Hermosa Park
For the stretches of upper Hermosa Creek that have been restocked with cutthroats, populations are showing encouraging signs. White said there’s about 400 to 600 fish per mile, which he called a “nice, healthy population.”
Because the area is a popular draw for anglers, there is a strict catch-and-release policy. Local fish-guiding companies have said in the past that anglers come from all over the country to fish native cutthroats.
The Hermosa Creek project was a collaboration between CPW, the U.S. Forest Service and Trout Unlimited.
FromThe Grand Junction Daily Sentinel (Dennis Webb):
RiversEdge West, a nonprofit based in Grand Junction, has been awarded $164,566 from the Colorado Water Conservation Board, a state agency, to support the creation of what the group is calling a Western Colorado Sustainable Stewardship model to protect and sustain restoration work. A $40,000 grant from the Bacon Family Foundation also will help with that initiative and let RiversEdge West continue to provide leadership and support for the Desert Rivers Collaborative in Mesa and Delta counties. This includes planning and mapping work, and technical, coordination and fundraising assistance.
RiversEdge West formed the Desert Rivers Collaborative in 2012. The collaborative has completed more than 1,565 acres of riparian restoration on the Colorado and Gunnison rivers. Among the partners are private landowners, other nonprofits, state and federal agencies including Colorado Parks and Wildlife and the Bureau of Land Management, volunteers, Mesa County, and municipalities including Palisade, Grand Junction and Fruita.
In addition, RiversEdge West co-leads, along with the Southwest Conservation Corps, the Dolores River Restoration Partnership. That collaborative effort has treated nearly 6,000 acres along 200 miles of the Dolores River in six counties and two states.
The partnerships have focused particularly on two invasive species — tamarisk and Russian olive. Shannon Wadas, associate director of RiversEdge West, said those species outcompete native plants, are less conducive to providing wildlife habitat, pose a higher wildfire risk, affect instream habitat relied upon by native fish, and can interfere with river and bank access for recreation…
That’s where the sustainability component of restoration work comes in. RiversEdge West is working to incorporate long-term monitoring of restored areas and training of partners in that monitoring. Wadas said monitoring protocols are in place already on the Dolores River and RiversEdge West plans to implement those on the Colorado/Gunnison restored areas as well.
It also plans to create, and provide partners with, a framework and guide to help with decisions regarding when and where restoration work should be completed. The CWCB money also will fund two-person “strike teams” with the Southwest Conservation Corps and Western Colorado Conservation Corps to do ongoing maintenance work such as treating tamarisk and Russian olive resprouts and secondary weeds, and doing revegetation.
Wadas said the sustainability efforts are intended to protect the investments already made in riverside restoration, and the hope is that the new sustainability model will be used not just by watershed groups across western Colorado.
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)
Here’s an in-depth look at the methods and motivation to restore Rio Grande Cutthroat trout in Sand Creek in the Sangre de Cristo from Kevin Simpson writing for The Colorado Sun. Click through and read the whole article, here’s an excerpt:
The multi-agency project to restore the native species has been years in the making. But the optics still can be shocking.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife, according to signs posted in the area, had used a chemical called rotenone to kill all the fish in the [Sand Creek] lakes and Sand Creek, which meanders south down the mountain before veering west to eventually disappear, after 13 miles, into the depths of the Great Sand Dunes.
The project is part of a long-planned strategy to restore the native Rio Grande cutthroat trout to waters where its numbers have dwindled toward the edge of extinction.
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)
Increasingly scarce in a dwindling native range and hybridized with other species like non-native cutthroats, which had been stocked alongside it many years ago, the Rio Grande cutthroat eventually will be reintroduced to the mountain lakes and streams where it once thrived…
The Sand Creek drainage was officially listed in a 2013 strategy document.
In 2019, meetings on both the Westcliffe and Alamosa sides of the mountain yielded no opposition — other than concern over the temporary loss of fishing — and little public comment. The project moved ahead, though a year later than originally scheduled due to a late fish spawn…
Joe Lewandowski, spokesman for CPW’s Southwest Region, which includes the Sand Creek drainage, notes that the state agency has done similar projects before and will do more of them throughout Colorado.
“We don’t get a great deal of pleasure having to poison a stream, but it is necessary to restore native species,” he said in an email to The Colorado Sun. “This has been done in waters to restore the Rio Grande, greenback and the Colorado River cutthroat; and these projects will continue…
After the 2003 conservation agreement, federal and state authorities started doing reconnaissance in 2004 to determine if the drainage could be restored. Geography that essentially isolated water flow, and therefore fish migration, proved fortuitous.
Sand Creek flows from its headwaters high in the Sangre de Cristo mountains to the Great Sand Dunes, where it disappears underground. (Provided by Colorado Fish and Wildlife)
Bunch points to several reasons why reintroduction of the Rio Grande cutthroat looms important. First, there’s federal policy that favors native species in national parks and preserves. Another has to do with the essential characteristics of a wilderness area. A third is for preservation of the species.
“This is an ideal opportunity to restore 13 miles of habitat for the Rio Grande cutthroat trout,” he said.
The stakeholders who signed the conservation agreement meet annually to discuss the status of its efforts. The key thing, Bunch said, is to prevent the listing of the Rio Grande cutthroat as an endangered species and ensure it has robust habitat…
Although the battle over listing the fish persists, all sides celebrate the ideas that in the case of the Sand Creek drainage, the area could become a refugium for the species, where the fish could naturally multiply and be used as a source for future stocking or restoration if some other habitat experiences problems — say, from wildfire.
The view from Music Pass in the Sand Creek drainage, where a multi-agency effort is unfolding to restore the Rio Grande cutthroat trout. (Provided by Colorado Parks and Wildlife)
Photo shows the sediment laden Muddy Creek at its confluence with Anthracite Creek located 16 miles northeast of Paonia, Colorado. The two creeks form the North Fork of the Gunnison River. Understanding and estimating sedimentation in rivers and reservoirs is one of the applied science tools that Reclamation will fund with this announcement. Photo credit: USBR
Here’s the release from the Bureau of Reclamation (Peter Soeth):
The Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Brenda Burman announced that Reclamation will invest $3.3 million in 21 projects for WaterSMART Internal Applied Science Tools that build technical capacity within Reclamation.
“Information gained from these applied science tools will allow Reclamation and our partners to use best-available science for optimal water management under variable hydrologic conditions,” Commissioner Burman said. “The projects announced today will help inform specific water management decisions throughout the West.”
[…]
A project will assist New Mexico and reservoirs throughout the West. It will receive $199,764 to implement a known model to simulate regional climate and physical processes to estimate daily, monthly and annual evaporation across Elephant Butte Reservoir. These estimates will be compared to alternative estimates. The results will be used by the Albuquerque Area Office to support operations, to facilitate method comparison and identify future planning, operational and research needs on the topic. It will help with the development of alternative evaporation estimation techniques, production of daily evaporation time series at a reservoir and a broadening of weather prediction modeling capabilities.
Another project in Arizona will receive $200,000 to enhance precipitation and soil monitoring information in the Aravaipa watershed northeast of Tucson. Currently, there are only two weather stations within the watershed. The project includes the installation of two stations to monitor precipitation and soil moisture, which will better inform the Natural Resources Conservation Service forecasting models and United States Geological Survey surface water models. The work proposed in this project will help Reclamation and local partners predict flood risk, drought, erosion, and water quality concerns and better plan mitigation of these water management issues.
A third project will receive $120,000 to do predictive modeling to generate maps of invasive quagga and zebra mussel risk. The results will allow Reclamation to dedicate limited resources to high-risk locations and prepare facilities for potential control costs.
Applied Science Tools are part of the WaterSMART Program. Through WaterSMART, Reclamation works cooperatively with states, tribes and local entities as they plan for and implement actions to increase water supply reliability through investments to modernize existing infrastructure and attention to local water conflicts. Visit http://www.usbr.gov/watersmart to learn more.
The sound of revving chain saws and crackling tree limbs filled Palisade’s Riverbend Park on Monday morning as Western Colorado Conservation Corps crews sawed through invasive Russian olive trees and ripped up tamarisk…
The work to restore the native habitat along the Colorado River in the park is thanks to a partnership between the Town of Palisade and RiversEdge West, which is working to remove the invasive species.
RiversEdge West is using a grant to fund the Conservation Corps work, which will continue for four days this week, moving east of the boat ramp. Costigan explained how the non-native plants harm the river ecosystem.
“They out-compete with the native plants, and they don’t let the native willows and cottonwoods grow how they’re supposed to,” Costigan said. “They also grow in so thick, it blocks wildlife from accessing the water. So there are a lot of reasons that we want to remove these invasive plants.”
Troy Ward, Palisade director of Parks, Recreation and Events, said the collaboration with RiversEdge began last year and is expected to continue for some time to fully restore the riverbank in Riverbend Park…
As part of its grant, Rivers- Edge West will also help Palisade plant native vegetation in the area.
It has already planted several cottonwood trees in the bank it had previously cleared. In addition to cottonwoods, Ward said it will plant willows and native grasses…
The town also has a new wood chipper it was able to purchase with grant funds, which will allow it to reuse the wood chips elsewhere in its parks. This will keep the town from having to dispose of the plant material in a less useful way, Ward said.
“Instead of us having to send this to the landfill or burn it, we can now chip it and then we can create mulch that we can use to augment some of our soils on the badlands, if you will, out in the disc golf area,” Ward said. “If citizens want some of this mulch, we can make it available to them as well.”
This map shows the 15-mile reach of the Colorado River near Grand Junction, home to four species of endangered fish. Water from Ruedi Reservoir flows down the Fryingpan River and into the Roaring Fork, which flows into the Colorado River in Glenwood Springs. Map credit: CWCB
FromThe Grand Junction Daily Sentinel (Dennis Webb):
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has begun asking for water releases from high-country reservoirs to boost water flows in the Colorado River upstream of the Gunnison River confluence and aid endangered fish, while being careful not to exhaust available water that may be needed for the species later in the year.
The agency is seeing what U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service hydrologist Don Anderson on Wednesday said are “quickly deteriorating flow conditions” on what’s called the 15-Mile Reach of the river between the Gunnison confluence and where Grand Valley irrigation diversions occur upstream.
Speaking in a conference call with upstream reservoir operators, local irrigation officials and others who work to cooperatively manage Colorado River flow levels, he said flows in the stretch Wednesday were around 450 cubic feet per second. The longterm median flow at Palisade below where Grand Valley diversions occur is 1,780 cfs for July 23, according to U.S. Geological Survey streamflow data.
Anderson told call participants that according to a report from Fish and Wildlife Service colleague Dale Ryden, fish conditions in the 15-mile stretch “are getting pretty grim.”
[…]
There, when water is low the fish are more prone to predation, exposure to more sun especially in clearer-water conditions, and even impacts from recreational river use, Anderson said. The latter is on the upswing on that river stretch as people are restless due to the pandemic and looking to get outdoors.
The Fish and Wildlife Service and partners make use of water leases and contracts, coordinated releases from upstream reservoirs and other means to enhance flows in the river stretch.
Anderson has asked for releases totaling 150 cubic feet per second from three upstream reservoirs to boost flow levels in the stretch. While he indicated a desire to further increase flows, he’s balancing that against a desire to not too quickly go through what he referred to as firm sources of water to hit an ideal flow target, in case some of that water is needed later in the year…
Anderson said some endangered fish, such as young Colorado pikeminnow, are reportedly responding to the current conditions by moving to the lower Gunnison River, which currently has more favorable flows and turbid conditions that benefit them…
One bright spot is the moister weather that is arriving in Colorado and could boost river flows. Treste Huse, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service, said during Wednesday’s call that a more active seasonal monsoon pattern is setting up that will bring a steady increase in moisture to the region over the next several days. While the most rain is expected in southwest and south-central Colorado, she said a total of maybe 1.5 to 3 inches of rain is possible in north-central Colorado. She said the 30-day outlook now calls for an equal chance of above- or below-average precipitation…
Another development that will boost the river’s flows is the expected restoration of operations at Xcel Energy’s Shoshone hydroelectric power plant in Glenwood Canyon by the end of this week. That plant has a senior 1,250-cfs water right but was damaged by river ice this spring. Flows just above the plant have fallen below that point but will be boosted once the plant exercises its right to call for more water.
Endangered fish potentially could benefit later this year from what’s called a historic users pool of water in Green Mountain Reservoir in Summit County. While the pool was created for irrigators, municipal and other water users, some years surplus water from that pool can be used to boost fish flows.
he fish also stand to gain this year from the efforts of the nonprofit Colorado Water Trust. Last year it reached a five-year agreement with the Grand Valley Waters Users Association and the Orchard Mesa Irrigation District, which operate the Grand Valley Power Plant hydroelectric facility near Palisade. The deal calls for the Colorado Water Trust to secure water from upstream sources to deliver to the plant at critical times of year, boosting the plant’s operational capacity when water supply is otherwise limited while also putting more water in the 15-mile river stretch.
The penstocks and main building at the Shoshone hydropower plant, which uses water diverted from the Colorado River to produce electricity. The Shoshone Outage Protocol keeps water flowing down the Colorado River when the hydro plant is inoperable. Photo credit: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism
FromThe Grand Junction Daily Sentinel (Dennis Webb):
The toothy, predacious fish hasn’t broken any laws on its own, but someone is thought to have done so by introducing the nonnative species into Kenney Reservoir on the White River.
It’s a fish that’s fun to catch and great to eat, said Colorado Parks and Wildlife spokesman Randy Hampton. But it also wreaks havoc on populations of rainbow trout and other species that make up the fishery at Kenney. Worse yet, northern pike pose a threat to endangered fish that are part of an intensive recovery program in the Upper Colorado River and its tributaries in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.
That’s the back story behind why CPW and the Rio Blanco Water Conservancy District are working with partners to offer anglers a $20 reward through Nov. 30 for every northern pike caught and removed from Kenney Reservoir, the White River and other waters from approximately Stedman Mesa to the Utah border…
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: Brent Gardner-Smity/Aspen Journalism
Another concern is the threat pike pose to Colorado pikeminnow, one of four endangered fish that are the focus of the Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program. The largest adult population of the Colorado pikeminnow is on the lower White River, which is designated critical habitat for the fish upstream and downstream of Kenney Reservoir. The lower 18 miles of the White River in Utah is designated critical habitat for the endangered razorback sucker.
The reward for northern pike was first offered last year, and just 19 fish were turned in. Hampton said northern pike can be harder to catch, favoring deep, cool waters farther from shore. Organizers hope for more participation this year, to get anglers more involved in the efforts to eradicate the northern pike around Rangely.
Participants should bring their freshly caught northern pike to CPW’s office in Rangely from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Mondays through Thursdays and 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Fridays. CPW staff will dispense reward money that comes from the Colorado Water Conservation Board, and is sourced from the state Species Conservation Trust Fund generated by severance tax dollars.
Partners in the effort also are planning a weekend fishing derby and expo June 5-7. It includes a $250 prize for whoever brings in the most smallmouth bass, another nonnative predator. With COVID-19 social-distancing measures being heeded, there will be interactive learning opportunities, a display of an electrofishing boat and an aquarium display including endangered fish.
Here’s the release from the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies:
In the Grand Canyon reach of the Colorado River, two species play an outsized role in the fate of mercury in the aquatic ecosystem, and their numbers are altered by flood events. So reports new research, published in Science Advances, that is among the first to meld ecotoxicology and ecosystem ecology to trace how mercury flows through aquatic food webs and then spreads to land.
Mercury is an environmental contaminant that occurs in ecosystems globally. In its organic form, it is a potent neurotoxin that can harm people and wildlife. Mercury accumulation in animals and how it magnifies along food chains is well studied. Less well understood are the pathways mercury takes through food webs to reach top predators, such as fish and birds, and how those pathways might change after large ecosystem disturbances, such as floods.
Emma Rosi is an aquatic ecologist at Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies and co-lead author on the paper. She explains, “By combining data on mercury concentrations in aquatic life with well-studied food webs, we were able to reveal how mercury moves through an ecosystem. We found that flooding and an invasive species both influenced the flow of this contaminant of global concern.”
Blackflies are an important food source for rainbow trout, a popular species among recreational anglers in the Colorado River. Credit: US Geological Survey/Freshwaters Illustrated-Dave Herasimtschuk via Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies.
The traits of organisms living in an ecosystem – their physiology, what they eat, and what eats them – determine contaminant movement and exposure. These factors have rarely been included in models of contaminant flux and fate. “Pairing contaminant concentrations and highly detailed food webs has the potential to improve the management of contaminants in ecosystems,” Rosi notes.
To study these pathways, the research team developed mercury-based food webs for six sites spanning 225 miles of the Colorado River, extending downstream from the Glen Canyon Dam in Grand Canyon National Park. Food web sampling took place seasonally over two years. At each site, they measured algae, invertebrates, and fish to determine who was eating what – and what that meant for mercury exposure at each level of the food web.
Insects (blackflies and midges) and invasive New Zealand mudsnails were the dominant invertebrates in the river. These animals play a vital role in moving energy and contaminants from the bottom of the food web to fish predators at the top. Fish included native Bluehead Sucker, Flannelmouth Sucker, Speckled Dace, and Humpback Chub, as well as non-native species such as Common Carp, Fathead Minnow, and Rainbow Trout.
The stomach contents of invertebrates and fish were assessed to identify what they ate and in what amounts. Algae, detritus, and animals were analyzed for mercury concentrations and, combined with the diet data, the team estimated the amount of mercury that animals were consuming throughout the year.
Food web complexity varied across the study sites. Just below the Glen Canyon Dam, food webs were simple with few species and food web connections. Further downstream, food webs had higher species diversity and more connections. Across the study sites, regardless of food web complexity, relatively few species were key players in the movement of mercury.
Algae and tiny particles of detritus were the source of 80% of mercury flowing to invertebrates.
In sites closest to the dam, invasive mudsnails dominated the food webs. Trout were the only fish in this part of the river, and they are unable to digest mudsnails. Mercury accumulated by the snails did not move up the food chain. Because the snails are fully aquatic, mercury cycled back into the river’s detrital food web when they died.
Blackfly larvae were the source of 56-80% of the mercury flowing to fish. Blackflies are preferred prey for fish, such as Rainbow Trout, and blackflies had higher mercury contaminations compared to other invertebrates. Blackflies that escape predation and emerge from the river as flying adults move mercury from the river to land. This can expose terrestrial predators, such as birds and bats, to mercury that started out in the river.
Blackflies have the highest mercury concentration among Grand Canyon invertebrates. As larvae (top), they are important fish prey. When blackflies emerge as adults, they transfer mercury to birds, bats, lizards, and spiders on land. New Zealand mudsnails (bottom) contain mercury but are indigestible to trout; when fish eat them, they pass through unscathed. When the snails die and decompose, the mercury they contain is released back into the river. Credit: US Geological Survey/Freshwaters Illustrated-Dave Herasimtschuk via the Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies.
The amount of mercury that blackflies moved to land was dependent on the number of hungry fish in any part of the river. At some sites, fish ate nearly 100% of the blackfly larvae, leaving few left to emerge. At other sites, there were a lot more blackflies than the fish could eat. When these blackflies emerged as adults, the mercury inside them hitched a ride to terrestrial food webs along the river.
One year into sampling, the study sites were flooded as part of a planned dam release. The team was able to explore the effects of the flood on mercury movement in the food webs. At sites near the dam, the flood washed away large numbers of New Zealand mudsnails and led to a boom in blackfly populations. With the rise in blackflies, more mercury flowed to trout. Because trout gobbled up nearly all the blackflies in their larval form, very little of the mercury accumulated in these abundant insects was transported to land by the flying adults.
Rosi explains, “Changes to the animal populations in an ecosystem will impact how mercury moves through a food web. This was especially apparent at sites where flooding changed the proportion of blackflies relative to fish. Flooding dramatically altered mercury pathways in the simple tailwater food web near the dam, but not in the more complex food webs downstream.”
“Invasive species and dams are common in rivers globally, and both factors were at play in the Grand Canyon reach of the Colorado River.” Rosi says. “We found that flooding changed the species present at our study sites, and mercury flow changed with those shifts.”
“Understanding the factors that control the movement of mercury through food webs can help resource managers protect ecosystems that are susceptible to mercury pollution,” says David Walters, USGS scientist and co-lead author of the study.
Rosi concludes, “This study is exciting because it sheds light on the depth of understanding we can achieve when we merge ecological and ecotoxicological thinking. Species traits, animal populations, predator-prey interactions, and disturbance can all influence the movement of contaminants in the environment. Understanding the complex interplay of these factors can improve risk management of animal exposures in the environment.”
As waters open to boating in Colorado, aquatic nuisance species (ANS) boat inspections are underway. Keeping Colorado mussel-free depends on boaters following posted rules, purchasing an ANS stamp and undergoing mandatory inspections prior to launch. Photo credit: Colorado Parks & Wildlife
Here’s the release from Colorado Parks & Wildlife:
As the final winter frosts begin to thaw, reservoirs are opening to boating and Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) officials are busy ramping up inspection stations for the upcoming season. Boat inspections for aquatic nuisance species (ANS) are mandatory in Colorado and required for motorized or trailered watercraft entering the state and prior to launching on most public waters within the state.
ANS boat inspections and COVID-19
Because of the COVID-19 outbreak, many local and federal waters are postponing opening to boating and ANS inspections at this time. Waters operated by CPW are continuing to open and provide recreation opportunities as weather permits. Boaters are reminded not to travel long distances to go boating or fishing while the COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect Colorado. Recreate at local reservoirs in compliance with the Stay-At-Home order from Gov. Jared Polis.
Boaters are reminded to stay at least six feet away from inspection station staff at all times.
Do not congregate in groups larger than 10 individuals and practice good social distancing in accordance with recommendations from the Centers for Disease and Prevention and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE). Local health orders may further limit group size; please be aware of local requirements.
Boaters should wait until the inspector calls them up to the station.
Boaters should stay in their vehicles, set the parking brake, turn their vehicles off, and remain in the vehicles unless instructed by an inspector to get out and assist with the inspection.
If you have a green seal receipt, please keep your window closed and show it to the inspector through the window glass. CPW reminds everyone to get a green seal and receipt after boating to speed up the next inspection.
CPW is diligently working to keep state parks’s waters open for boating so the public can enjoy the health benefits associated with being outside. However, visitors must enjoy parks responsibly during the COVID-19 outbreak. It’s important for everyone to follow the recommendations from CDPHE for easy, everyday actions to protect yourself and those around you.
Up-to-date information about how CPW is responding to the COVID-19 pandemic is available on our website.
Reminder: Get your ANS stamp
An ANS stamp is required prior to boating in Colorado. The stamp helps CPW fund ANS inspections, monitoring, education, and other activities across the state.
Colorado boat owners who operate motorboats and sailboats on lakes and reservoirs must purchase a $25 ANS stamp annually. The cost of the stamp for out-of-state motorboats and sailboats is $50. Boaters from out of state can purchase online at http://www.cpwshop.com.
Colorado is one of just a few states in the country that doesn’t have an infestation of adult mussels in any of its waters,” said Elizabeth Brown, invasive species program manager for CPW. “That’s directly attributable to our mandatory inspection and decontamination program that’s been in place for over a decade now.”
There have been 281 watercraft infested with zebra or quagga mussels intercepted in the state since the program’s inception. Last year, inspectors intercepted 86 infested watercraft, a huge increase from 51 in 2018 and 26 in 2017.
“CPW is very confident in the statewide inspection and decontamination system to protect our waters. However, this program relies on the compliance of the boating community,” said Reid DeWalt, Assistant Director for Aquatic, Terrestrial and Natural Resources for CPW. “Boaters need to know the rules and follow them if we are going to be effective at keeping zebra and quagga mussels out of the nation’s headwaters.”
Aquatic nuisance species, such as zebra and quagga mussels, pose a serious threat to natural resources, recreation and the water infrastructure of the state. Mussel infestations cause a variety of major problems. Because mussels consume plankton, they disrupt the food web and out-compete sport fish and native fish. Mussels clog infrastructure, including reservoir dams, outlet structures and distribution systems that carry water for irrigation, municipal and industrial uses. Mussels also infest boats and damage engines.
Mussels have caused billions of dollars in damage, especially in the upper Midwest. Nearby states where mussel infestations exist include Utah, Arizona, Kansas, Texas, Nebraska and Oklahoma. Invasive mussels could have devastating ecological, economic, and recreational impacts if infestations were to establish here.
“Keeping Colorado’s waters free of invasive species is critical to maintaining efficient water delivery and infrastructure systems, and providing high-quality fishing and boating opportunities for our residents and visitors,” Brown said. “The success of the ANS Program is due to the dedicated inspection and decontamination staff across the state. We are grateful to those individuals that are working on the front lines to provide recreation and protect our waters.”
A complete list of Colorado inspection sites and hours of operation, along with information about the ANS stamp, can be found on CPW’s boating page. Always check with your destination reservoir before going to verify hours of operation.
For more information on preventing harmful aquatic nuisance species in Colorado, visit http://www.cpw.state.co.us.
Map of the Sacramento River drainage basin. The historically connected Goose Lake drainage basin is shown in orange. Made using USGS National Map and NASA SRTM data. By Shannon1 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=79326436
Here’s some of the history of the Sacramento-San Joaquin deltas from Matt Weiser writing in The High Country News, [February 27, 20214]:
When Padre Juan Crespi first sighted the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in 1772, he thought he would be able to walk around it.
The Spanish missionary and his party of 15 soldiers had been dispatched to find a land route from Monterey to Point Reyes, where Spain hoped to build a port. But 10 days into their journey, in the heart of Alta California, Crespi and his men encountered a maze of water, mud and swamp, instead of solid ground. It was the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, the largest estuary on the West Coast of the Americas.
Crespi expected the estuary to function like others he had seen, fragmenting into dozens of small braided channels fanning out toward the sea. Upstream, he figured, they would find a single channel to cross.
But this estuary did the opposite. As Crespi traveled upstream, the water spread out, and his hopes thinned. On foot and horseback for three days in March, he and his companions searched fruitlessly for a way through the tangle of channels.
“Crossing these rivers by boat or canoe would be apt,” a chastened Crespi wrote in his diary. “Because if you do not, it’s (necessary) to climb the mountains to the southeast and seek the path of the large river. To climb such a high pass certainly requires a greater number of soldiers and more provisions, which is why I withdrew.”
Crespi was the first European to glimpse this odd California landscape, and the first of many to be confounded by it.
Sixteen rivers and hundreds of creeks converge from all over California on the Delta’s vast central plain – all mud, tules and marsh – finally forming one mighty river that drains the state’s whole churning belly. It’s called an “inverted” estuary because its waterways unite before reaching the sea. The only place comparable is the Okavango Delta in Botswana.
When Crespi encountered the estuary, its floodplain extended 100 miles north and south, filling the Central Valley with a wealth of snowmelt, all of it destined to squeeze through the land gap later called Golden Gate. Within a century of Crespi’s expedition, European settlers were trying to engineer their own logic into the place, trenching new channels and building levees to create some of the world’s richest farmland. Today, the Delta is crossed by three state highways and hundreds of miles of railroad tracks and county roads. There are 1,100 miles of navigable channels, and 72 islands ringed by levees. Modern charts detail where to anchor, where to catch the best striped bass, where to find the most convenient bridges and ferries.
But the levees may be vulnerable to earthquakes. If they fail, the water supply would be compromised by a flood of salty water from San Francisco Bay. And rising sea levels could taint the water supply permanently.
The Delta, which still covers an area the size of Rhode Island, provides half of all the freshwater consumed by a thirsty state, serving 3 million acres of farmland and 25 million Californians from Silicon Valley to San Diego. Gov. Jerry Brown hopes to better serve them by spending $15 billion on a new water-diversion system. If approved this year, it would shunt a portion of the Sacramento River out of the estuary into two giant tunnels, 30 miles long and 150 feet underground. The intent is to divert freshwater in a way less harmful to imperiled native fish species, while protecting those diversions from floods, earthquakes and a rising sea. The tunnels would serve existing state and federal canal systems that begin in the south Delta, near Tracy, and divert water to cities and farms, mostly in Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley. Another $10 billion would go to wildlife habitat improvements, in part to breach levees and restore tidal action to some islands. The state believes the proposed tunnel intakes would be far enough upstream to protect the water supply from disaster, at least under present climate-change scenarios. The intakes would also include modern fish screens, potentially preventing the extinction of the native Delta smelt, spring-run chinook salmon and other species that are being killed by the current water export system.
But after seven years of study, state officials acknowledge that removing so much freshwater upstream may cause “unquantifiable” water-quality changes. Meanwhile, critics say taking so much freshwater from the estuary could harm Delta farms and perhaps concentrate pollutants in a way that hurts the same fish that state officials hope to restore. The Delta continues to confound.
Forty-five years after Crespi turned back, Padre Narciso Durán came through with two small boats on an expedition led by Lt. Don Luis Arguello. They left the Spanish presidio, or fort, at San Franciso, which was established three years after Crespi’s visit. Their trip through the watery maze began on May 13, 1817, and lasted two weeks. Durán, who kept a journal, came along to baptize Indians.
His party had a hard time from the start: They set out in a storm, and the boats became separated at the confluence. The storm blew Arguello onto the shore of the San Joaquin River, near its mouth. Durán and a second padre, in the other boat, took refuge for the night on a soggy mound of tules in the middle of the Sacramento.
When the storm finally quit and the boats were reunited, another challenge arose. It was snowmelt season, and the downstream current in the Sacramento River was so strong that it nearly halted their progress. Without wind, days of brutal rowing followed, with little upstream progress to show for it.
On top of that, the men experienced a condition that plagues Delta visitors to this day: They became disoriented.
Seeking to remain on the Sacramento River, the party soon encountered a variety of branching side-channels. They could not be sure which one was the river itself. Because the Delta was in flood, the true riverbanks and many of the natural islands were submerged. A gap in the trees that looked like a river channel might turn out to be a flooded island where a boat would quickly run aground. “The thick leafiness makes the whole river like a tree-lined promenade,” Durán remarked.
The next day, May 16, they traveled only four leagues upriver. They also took a wrong turn and left the Sacramento on a side channel – a serious mistake, as any detour meant more labor for the rowers. Eventually, though, they got lucky and recovered their course.
Familiarity with this labyrinth benefitted the locals, who fled on rafts as soon as they spotted the expedition boats. The Europeans found two villages vacated, either because of the spring flood or because word had spread that the Indians might be conscripted as laborers in the Spanish missions.
Occupants of a third village “fled at the noise of the launches, leaving only two old women, more than 60 years old.”
Durán felt obliged to baptize both women, “because it seemed to us that they could die before Divine Providence could arrange another convenient time when we could baptize them in one or another of the missions.”
Durán, who was no naturalist, made no effort to identify important land features or tree species, and does not mention sighting any animals. But the Delta was teeming with wildlife in a way that is difficult to imagine today: Vast herds of elk and pronghorn antelope roamed here, hunted by wolf and grizzly bear. Giant tidal marshes, packed with tules and cattails, hosted millions of waterfowl. The maze of curving sloughs was a nursery for one of the world’s most productive fisheries.
The Delta remains the most important salmon fishery on the West Coast, producing most of the wild-caught king salmon in the Lower 48 states. Yet it may not survive. There are 57 endangered species here, including steelhead trout and two runs of salmon.
Modern-day Californians are as oblivious to the region’s natural wealth as Durán seemed to be. A January 2012 survey found that 78 percent of California residents don’t know where the Delta is, or even what it is.
The day after baptizing the two women, Durán and his party reached their turnaround point. They hoped to find a place to erect a cross, “and there to end our quest and retreat downriver.” After rowing upriver three more leagues, they pulled ashore to rest, where, by chance, they spotted some rafts in the tules and a village of Natives, “who came out at them armed with their customary fierce clamor.”
Arguello mustered his soldiers to confront the Indians, who “calmed down, to everyone’s relief, and said they had armed themselves believing we were hostile people.” The travelers were invited to visit a larger village one league upriver, where they were promised fish.
But Durán and his cohorts, possibly disoriented, never found the second Indian village, and never got the promised fish. Exhausted and frustrated, they were ready to turn back. Amid the flood, they could find no solid ground to erect a cross. So they carved one on an oak tree.
The exact location of that cross is unknown today. But according to Durán’s diary, they carved it about 80 miles upstream from the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, or approximately near today’s state capital, Sacramento, where Gov. Brown weighs the fate of the Delta today.
Matt Weiser covers environmental issues for The Sacramento Bee and has written about the Delta and California water for 15 years.
The contemporary translation of Crespi and Durán’s journals is by Alexa Mergen.
An endowment fund to protect the Yampa River opened applications for its first grant cycle Tuesday, Feb. 11.
The Yampa River Fund, launched in September 2019, plans to award approximately $100,000 to $200,000 in grants during this cycle, according to its manager Andy Bauer. Applications will be accepted through March 24.
A partnership of 21 public, private and nonprofit entities representing the entire Yampa River Basin collaborated to create the board that governs the Yampa River Fund. Its mission, according to Bauer, is to fund projects to improve river health, protect the water supply and boost river flow in dry years.
This comes amid concerns over the health of the Yampa River, the supply of which is vital to local agriculture and a key component to recreation from rafting in the summer to snowmaking in the winter.
Kelly Romero-Heaney, Steamboat Springs water resource manager and chair of the Yampa River Fund board, cited three primary issues the fund aims to address: warming waters, the proliferation of northern pike and the deterioration of riparian forests.
Recent measurements have shown river temperatures are reaching dangerous levels. Romero-Heaney cited the 2018 Yampa River Health Assessment and Streamflow Management Plan, which found that summer water temperatures were surpassing healthy levels by about 5 degrees. Such temperatures kill off cold-water fish species, namely trout.
Non-native northern pike, which are aggressive predators, have decimated native species. Wildlife agencies like Colorado Parks and Wildlife encourage the fishing of pike through contests and the implementation of pike removal projects to limit their numbers.
Asked about the deterioration of riparian forests along the Yampa River, Romero-Heaney pointed to the last century of land management as a major factor. The number of cottonwoods has seen a particular decline, which decreases the amount of shade over the water and contributes to further warming.
Despite these issues, the Yampa River is healthier than many waterways in the country. The river remains largely free-flowing, unlike many rivers controlled with extensive dams. It is the largest, unregulated tributary remaining in the Colorado River system, according to the National Park Service. It also has been protected from extensive development along its banks, Romero-Heaney said…
As manager of the fund, Bauer listed three types of projects that will be prioritized during the grant cycle. Those include projects to sustain healthy flows, restore riparian habitats and improve infrastructure along the river, such as diversion structure and irrigation systems.
Eligible applicants include state and local government entities, public districts and irrigation entities, mutual ditch companies, homeowners associations and nonprofits, according to a news release from the Yampa River Fund. Bauer encourages private landowners to partner with these entities to secure funding.
Thanks to CPW’s inspection program, Colorado remains free of invasive aquatic mussels. But the number of boats that require decontamination is increasing. Photo credit: Colorado Parks & Wildlife
Here’s the release from Colorado Parks & Wildlife (Joe Lewandowski):
More boats requiring decontamination because of infestations of destructive mussels entered Colorado last year than in 2018, but the statewide inspection program coordinated by Colorado Parks and Wildlife again succeeded in keeping invasive mussels out of the state’s lakes and reservoirs.
While Colorado remains mussel free, CPW officials are concerned that the number of boats entering Colorado that need decontamination continues to increase. CPW will not let down its guard to keep invasive aquatic species out of the state.
“The Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s Aquatic Nuisance Species Program continues to meet the challenge of protecting the state’s water resources and infrastructure from the establishment of Aquatic Nuisance Species,” said Elizabeth Brown, the agency’s invasive species program manager. “Colorado remains free of adult zebra and quagga mussel reproducing populations, while some nearby western states without mandatory inspection programs continue to detect infestations. Colorado has prevented the introduction of this invasive species due to the diligent efforts of watercraft inspection and decontamination, early detection monitoring, education and enforcement efforts.”
Other western states that have mussel infestations include: Arizona, Utah, Kansas, South Dakota, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas and California. Where there are infestations, mussels can clog up pipes and important infrastructure, cover docks, shorelines, rocks, any hard surface and can ruin powerboat engines.
Throughout the state last year, 481,543 boat inspections were conducted, 7,000 more than in 2018. A total of 22,947 boats, 281 with attached mussels, were decontaminated, compared with 19,111 in 2018. Unfortunately, the number of intercepted boats fully infested with mussels increased by 40 percent, from 51 in 2018 to 86 in 2019. In 2017, only 16 mussel-infested boats were intercepted.
Brown said she’s very concerned about the substantial increase in infested boats entering the state.
“This growth trend is directly related to the growing threat invasive mussels pose to Colorado’s water infrastructure, natural resources and outdoor recreation. Along with work by our partners, CPW’s Invasive Species Program is critical to maintaining opportunities for recreation, preserving natural heritage and protecting water supply and delivery infrastructure for municipal, industrial and agricultural use,” Brown said.
A fully formed adult zebra or quagga mussel has never been detected in Colorado waters. However, the larval stage of the mussels, known as veligers, were detected as recently as 2017 in Green Mountain Reservoir in Summit County and the reservoir is still considered suspect for quagga mussels. For detection, biologists perform three types of sampling to target the three life stages of mussels. CPW confirms all visual detections with DNA analysis to confirm the genus and species of the mussel. If no additional detections are verified in 2020, Green Mountain Reservoir will be delisted.
In 2019, crews sampled 179 standing, and four flowing waters statewide for veligers. In addition to the sampling efforts performed by CPW, the National Park Service contributed 38 plankton samples. There were no detections of zebra or quagga mussels in Colorado.
CPW works in partnership with dozens of other agencies, counties and municipalities throughout the state. Help from the partners is critical in maintaining a mussel-free Colorado, Brown said.
In 2019, CPW authorized 72 locations to perform watercraft inspections and decontaminations.
Following is a list of the Colorado waters where the most inspections are conducted:
In the city of Lakewood, the Bear Creek Greenbelt is the place to be for residents who love the outdoors. Each year, the park, located at 2800 S. Estes St., attracts thousands of cyclists, hikers and others who get the opportunity to enjoy a scenic route to Denver, Bear Creek Lake Park or other places.
With a grant secured from the Great Outdoors Colorado (GOCO) Board, the Colorado Youth Corps Association, a statewide coalition of eight corps that train children, young adults and veterans to work on conservation projects, will work with Lakewood to make the Bear Creek Greenbelt an even better place.
At the beginning of last month, the GOCO Board awarded the city of Lakewood a $34,000 grant to help remove Russian olive trees. The removal will be done through a partnership with Lakewood and Mile High Youth Corps, one of the corps that is part of the Colorado Youth Corps Association.
Russian Olive
Russian olive trees usually reach 12 to 45 feet tall, according to Utah State University Extension. They’re typically found along floodplains, riverbanks, stream courses, marshes and irrigation ditches in the western area of the country and can displace native riparian vegetation, according to the university. The tree can also choke irrigation ditches and damage tires.
“Really, the big benefit is to protect and restore wildlife habitat. It’s part of a larger restoration effort that is going to have an impact on people and the landscape,” said Madison Brannigan, program officer at GOCO. The organization uses proceeds from the Colorado Lottery to preserve, protect and enhance the state’s wildlife, parks, rivers, trails and open spaces.
The other part of the restoration effort at the Bear Creek Greenbelt will involve planting native trees and shrubs, removing weeds, seeding native grass, installing fencing, planting wetland vegetation and improving water quality, according to a release…
Outside of training, members of the Colorado Youth Corps Association earn a payment and education award to use toward college or payment for student loans…
In total, the GOCO Board awarded $61,000 worth of grants in Jefferson County to fund Colorado Youth Corps Association projects. Outside of Lakewood, the Foothills Park and Recreation District received a $27,000 grant to remove invasive species and to support habitat restoration.
The other big story of the decade was the environment. As the drought steadily worsened in the early teens, President Ben Shelly found himself between a rock and a hard place. A proposed settlement of the water rights on the Little Colorado River, which would have included the Nation sacrificing a portion of its water rights in exchange for infrastructure, proved so wildly unpopular that he was forced to back down, leaving the Nation to take its chances in court.
A plan to round up Dinétah’s feral horses, which ranchers accused of drinking up and fouling the ever-scarcer watering holes, stirred an international uproar from humane organizations and even actor Robert Redford. It was eventually abandoned and the animals remain a problem, now numbering in the tens of thousands with few natural predators.
Water issues continued in 2015 as an estimated several hundred Navajos — including President Jonathan Nez and Vice President Myron Lizer — joined the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in protesting the construction of an oil pipeline beneath the tribe’s main water source, braving sub-zero temperatures, tear gas and rubber bullets.
The orange plume flows through the Animas across the Colorado/New Mexico state line the afternoon of Aug. 7, 2015. (Photo by Melissa May, San Juan Soil and Conservation District)
In the summer of that year, the Diné had their own water issue to contend with, watching in amazement as the Animas River ran orange with dissolved metal compounds from an abandoned gold mine near Silverton, Colorado — the result of a botched containment effort by the US. Environmental Protection Agency.
The Navajo Nation joined the states of New Mexico and Utah in suing the agency and its contractor. As of this writing the litigation is still pending.
Then there was Bears Ears National Monument, created by President Barack Obama on Dec. 28, 2016, and reduced by 85 percent by President Donald Trump less than a year later. That’s also slogging through the courts.
But by far the biggest environmental story was the rapid dethronement of King Coal, which for decades had propped up state, local, and tribal economies in the Four Corners.
As prices for natural gas and renewable energy declined, power plant owners beat a hasty retreat from the dirty fossil fuel that had sustained generations of Navajo miners and a good chunk of the Navajo and Hopi tribes’ budgets.
In 2013, the Navajo Nation managed to stave off the closure of BHP Billiton’s Navajo Mine by creating a company to buy it, but there was no stopping the demise of the Navajo Generating Station and the two mines on Black Mesa that fed it.
Environmentalists had for years been pressuring the tribal government to create a plan to replace the revenue that would be lost when the plant closed, preferably by converting it to a sustainable energy producer, but as the last coal shovelful of coal was turned this past November, the only plan was to dig into the Permanent Trust Fund former President Peterson Zah had created in 1985 for just this eventuality.
Meanwhile the Navajo Transitional Energy Company, the tribal enterprise created to buy the Navajo Mine and then lead the Nation into a more sustainable energy future, purchased three more coal mines in Wyoming and Montana — a move that shocked not only environmentalists but the president and Council.
Navajo Generating Station and the cloud of smog with which it blankets the region. Photo credit: Jonathan Thompson via The High Country News
The San Juan Generating Station in Waterflow, New Mexico, is next on the chopping block, slated to close in 2022 unless the state’s Public Regulation Commission approves a plan to convert it to a carbon capture facility.
We’re reporters of the news, not prognosticators. But it’s not too risky to predict that all these environmental issues will extend into 2020 and most likely beyond, joined by ones no one has even thought of yet as irreversible climate change takes hold.
Hoover Dam from the Arizona Powerhouse deck December 13, 2019. As John Fleck said in a Tweet, “Friends who have the keys showed us around this afternoon.” Thanks USBR.
Here’s a report from Andrew Davey writing for Nevada Today. Click through and read the whole article, here’s an excerpt:
Around this time last year, Commissioner Brenda Burman delivered this ultimatum to CRWUA attendees: “Close isn’t done, and we are not done. Only done will protect this basin.” This year, as in just yesterday, Burman said, “It was truly remarkable to have the divergent interests of the basin forge a compromise and make the difficult agreements to complete the DCP.”
And unlike last year, when Burman urged officials from across the Colorado River Basin to finish the DCP already, this year she urged patience on matters like renegotiating the 2007 agreement that turned Lake Mead into a sort of regional water bank. On that, Burman declared, “It’s not yet time to take up that task.”
Yet despite Burman’s more relaxed approach, some at CRWUA want to see more “fierce urgency of now”. While the DCP successfully fended off the threat of federal water rations, and while Upper Colorado River Basin snowpack is currently running 15% above average, ongoing legal concerns and the ever escalating threat of climate change may yet upend the delicate peace that the DCP has ushered in for now…
While Burman voiced confidence in the states’, municipal water agencies’, and Native American tribal authorities’ ability to cooperate, some of these very local officials were voicing notes of warning and caution. Shortly after Burman’s presentation on the main stage, Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) Director of Water Resources Colby Pellegrino noted their use of data from the U.S. Geological Survey and UNLV’s Center for Business and Economic Research (CBER) showing less Colorado River water for everyone to work with in the next 50 years.
As Pellegrino described this challenge, “It’s a pretty severe stress test for our water resource portfolio.” Pellegrino then noted how SNWA and the larger community have already been rising to this challenge with conservation programs like outdoor watering schedules and turf removal. As Pellegrino put it, “There’s significant water savings to be achieved by changing the mindset of how we use it.”
Later in the day, I caught up with Pellegrino to talk some more about her presentation and the challenges that lie ahead for her agency and the entire region. When asked how SNWA plans to handle those future challenges, she replied, “Conservation is still right here, under our noses, the quickest and most cost effective way.”
[Friday], it was Interior Secretary David Bernhardt’s turn to make news here in Nevada. And make news he did, as Bernhardt announced the federal government will launch an early start of its review of the 2007 Interim Guidelines (as in, the 2007 agreement that launched the ICS program to manage the Lower Basin’s water supply).
Soon after his main floor presentation, Bernhardt spoke with reporters about this and other pressing water issues. On his announcement to jump-start review of the Interim Guidelines, Bernhardt said, “We have an opportunity right now. We have the people in place. We might as well build on the success we have here.”
So what can we expect in this review? And for that matter, what kinds of future changes might we expect in federal oversight of the Colorado River? When I asked Bernhardt whether he’d take into account climate science and the changing needs and consumption patterns of the increasingly urban American Southwest, he replied, “I’ve never taken a position of what we need to tell a city or county what they need to do.”
Yet as Bernhardt’s discussion with reporters continued, the conversation occasionally veered into other environmental matters. And when a couple reporters asked about the proposed oil and gas leases on public lands that have run into local opposition, including right here in Nevada, in the Ruby Mountains outside Elko and in parts of Lincoln County that supply drinking water for Mesquite, Bernhardt declared, “The president was clear when he ran for office what his policy is on energy. He supports an ‘all of the above’ approach.” Bernhardt also suggested these leases are required by federal statute, even though the Obama administration took a more cautious and targeted approach toward such fossil fuel extraction on public lands…
Funny enough, one of my takeaways from my conversation with SNWA’s Colby Pellegrino on Thursday was that regardless of what becomes of the long-fought pipeline plan, SNWA has enough water available to keep the Las Vegas region going for the next 50 years. Also, I noticed that regardless of the Trump administration’s curious comments on climate change and “all of the above” approaches to water infrastructure and fossil fuels, SNWA officials recognize the clear and present danger of climate change, and they’re already acting on it.
And it may not just be SNWA doing this. Even as Trump appointees are skirting around acknowledgement of climate science, fossil fuel pollution, ongoing regional tensions, or the reality of urban and suburban growth in the Colorado River Basin, federal civil servants continue to collect data, analyze trends, and manage the water we all share. We’ll talk more about that next week.
Still, there’s a rather large gap between the rhetoric and overarching policies of the Trump administration and the promises of strong climate action that U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), former Vice President Joe Biden, and the other 2020 Democratic presidential candidates are providing. And yet, we don’t hear as much about the Colorado River and our fragile water supply as you’d expect considering their environmental and geopolitical importance. Yet no matter how much we ignore it, all we have to do is glimpse at Lake Mead to remember how important it truly is to our very livelihood.
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Brenda Burman told federal, state and local water managers that abiding by the promises they made will be crucial to ensuring that more painful cuts aren’t required…
“We need to be proud of what we’ve done,” Burman told hundreds at the annual Colorado River Water Users Association conference at a Las Vegas Strip resort, while also warning of “tougher challenges in the future.”
Arizona, Nevada and Mexico will start taking less water from the river Jan. 1 under a drought contingency agreement signed in May. It followed lengthy negotiations and multiple warnings from Burman that if the seven states didn’t reach a deal, the federal government, which controls the levers on the river, could impose severe water restrictions.
California would voluntarily cut water deliveries if reservoir levels keep falling at the river’s largest reservoir, Lake Mead…
Cuts will most affect farmers in Arizona. The Central Arizona Project will stop storage and replenishment operations and cut water for agricultural use by about 15%. The agency gets more than half of Arizona’s entitlement of water from the Colorado River…
The drought contingency plan is a voluntary agreement to use less water than users are allowed, and its success is measured at the surface level of Lake Mead, behind Hoover Dam east of Las Vegas.
The agreements are designed to prevent a more drastic drought-shortage declaration under a 2007 pact that would cut 11.4 percent of Arizona’s usual river water allocation and reduce Nevada’s share by 4.3 percent. That amount of water, combined, would serve more than 625,000 homes.
California would reduce its Colorado River use by about 6 percent.
Due to a relatively wet winter, Lake Mead is now 40% full and Lake Powell, an upstream reservoir, is at 53% capacity, Bureau of Reclamation spokeswoman Patricia Aaron said. A year ago, Lake Powell was 43% full, and Lake Mead was at 38%…
Water managers have called the last 20 dry years a drought, but climate researchers warn the river will continue to carry less water in coming years.
“Respected climate scientists have conservatively estimated declines in river flows of 20% by the middle of the 21st century and 35% by the end of the century,” researchers Anne Castle of the University of Colorado Law School and John Fleck of the University of New Mexico wrote in a study released in November.
The report refers to a “structural deficit” under which states and Mexico are promised more water than the river usually carries and encourages the seven states to clarify rules for handling future shortages.
Brad Udall: “…latest version of my 4-Panel plot thru Water Year (Oct-Sep) of 2019 of the #coriver big reservoirs, natural flows, precipitation, and temperature. Data goes back or 1906 (or 1935 for reservoirs.) This updates previous work with @GreatLakesPeck
Bill Strengthens Preventative Efforts to Protect Water Infrastructure and Ecosystems from Invasive Mussels
Today, U.S. Senators Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), Steve Daines (R-Mont.), and Jon Tester (D-Mont.) introduced the Stop the Spread of Invasive Mussels Act of 2019, new legislation to slow the movement of aquatic invasive species, like zebra and quagga mussels, into Colorado, Montana, and other Western States.
“Because of our strong watercraft inspection efforts, Colorado is one of the few headwater states still free of zebra and quagga mussels, but there’s an ever-present risk of infestation from neighboring states,” said Bennet. “There is a lot on the line for water users and local economies. Our bill provides states and municipalities the resources they need to keep watercraft inspection and decontamination stations up and running, and prevent the spread of invasive mussels into Colorado.”
“Water is the most essential need of Montana communities, and a powerhouse for our recreation economy,” said Daines. “Our bipartisan bill helps continue the fight to prevent aquatic invasive species, like quagga and zebra mussels, from damaging pristine Montana ecosystems. Empowering our local communities with the resources they need to ensure our waterways, rivers, and lakes remain free from these invasive species is critical to our Montana way of life.”
“Invasive aquatic mussels present a serious threat to Montana’s water infrastructure and outdoor economy, and we’ve got to do more to stop them at the source. This bill is simple—it helps do that by building and staffing new inspection stations so we can better contain their spread and avoid hundreds of millions of dollars in mitigation down the line,” said Tester.
Aquatic invasive species pose a significant threat to Western rivers and reservoirs. Once established, these intruders are nearly impossible to eradicate and wreak havoc on crucial water infrastructure, limit recreation opportunities, and harm ecosystems and local economies. As invasive mussels spread across the West, preventative measures – like watercraft inspection and decontamination stations – are key to limiting their spread.
The Stop the Spread of Invasive Mussels Act would:
Strengthen prevention efforts by providing the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) explicit authority to partner with states and municipalities to fund watercraft inspection and decontamination stations;
Provide all federal agencies who participate in the Aquatic Nuisance Species Task Force the same authorities to limit the movement of invasive species into and out of U.S. waters, eliminating problematic differences between the various agencies;
Ensure that all at-risk basins are eligible and prioritized for watercraft inspection and decontamination funding.
In the 2018 Water Resources Development Act (WRDA), Bennet secured a provision to protect Colorado’s watersheds from invasive species. That bill directed the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to establish, operate, or fund watercraft inspection stations in a number of Colorado river basins. Bennet first introduced this provision as an amendment to the 2016 WRDA, but it was not included in the final bill.
Following the August 2017 detection of quagga mussel larvae in the Green Mountain Reservoir, Bennet led the Colorado delegation in sending a letter to then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke urging a rapid response. In 2010, Bennet introduced the Invasive Species Emergency Response Fund Act to establish a loan fund for Western states to combat invasive species.
“Containing the spread of invasive quagga and zebra mussels is a high priority for western states and we appreciate Senator Bennet’s, Senator Daines’s, and Senator Tester’s bipartisan leadership in enabling state and federal agencies to more effectively combat the spread of invasive mussels. Every year, these invaders cause substantial damage to water delivery systems, hydroelectric facilities, agriculture, recreational boating and fishing, and native wildlife,” said Jim Ogsbury, Executive Director of the Western Governors’ Association.
“This legislation is will be an incredible help to prevent the spread of zebra and quagga mussels, and other aquatic invasive species, which are a serious threat to Colorado waters,” said Colorado Department of Natural Resources Executive Director Dan Gibbs. “We are fortunate that in Colorado our multi-jurisdictional mandatory watercraft inspection and decontamination program has so far prevented the spread of these invasive aquatic species. We appreciate the leadership of Senator Bennet and his colleagues for introducing this legislation which will increase state and federal collaboration across jurisdictional boundaries to protect western watersheds from these harmful and costly invaders.”
“This legislation will provide the authorization needed, as well as a funding opportunity, to improve the joint implementation of mandatory watercraft inspection and decontamination stations that may significantly benefit Colorado and the Western U.S.,” said Colorado Parks and Wildlife Director Dan Prenzlow. “This partnership is critical to protecting our natural resources, outdoor recreation, and water supply systems used for drinking water, hydropower, agriculture and industrial uses for future generations.”
“The spread of quagga and zebra mussels throughout our nation’s water storage and delivery infrastructure is alarming,” said Andy Mueller, General Manager of the Colorado River District in Western Colorado. “This legislation will help to protect West Slope water users and bolster state-led efforts to inspect and prevent mussel infestations in our waterways. I want to thank Senator Bennet for his leadership on this important issue.”
The bill text is available HERE and a section-by-section is available HERE.
Here’s the release from Governor Gordon’s office (Michael Pearlman):
Reflecting his goal of making Wyoming a national leader on combating invasive species, Governor Mark Gordon announced today he has launched an initiative to address terrestrial invasive plants in the state.
The initiative will be comprised of two teams– a Policy Team and a Technical Team, each comprised of local, state and federal government representatives, private citizens representing industry and agricultural groups, as well as scientists and practitioners.
The two teams will work cooperatively to develop recommendations for the Governor in the context of a large-scale strategy for invasive species management. Terrestrial invasive species represent a significant threat to Wyoming’s forests, rangelands and agricultural lands with varying levels of impact.
“Wyoming is faced with threats from multiple invasives species, both on land and in our waters,” Governor Gordon said. “I have specifically asked these groups to address terrestrial plants and provide recommendations on how to take the first step towards tackling some of the toughest questions. Our best efforts should begin close to home.”
The first meeting of the two teams will take be held at 9:30 am on October 10 at the NRCS Building, located at 100 East B. Street, room 3002 in Casper.
Policy Team members are Steve Meadows (chair), Wyatt Agar, Brian Boner, Jacque Buchanan, Josh Coursey, Jessica Crowder, John Elliot, Jack Engstrom, Colleen Faber, Jamie Flitner, Slade Franklin, Rob Hendry, Mark Hogan, Matt Hoobler, Astrid Martinez and Tom Walters.
The Technical Team includes Justin Derner (chair), Bob Budd, Ben Bump, Todd Caltrider, Justin Caudill, Scott Gamo, Lindy Garner, Ken Henke, Brian Jensen, Julie Kraft, Rod Litzel, Brian Mealor, Dwayne Rice, Pete Stahl, Amanda Thimmayya and Mahonri Williams.
A CPW staffer measures a fish last month at the Ridgway State Park Bass Tournament. Anglers caught more than 1,400 fish during the month-long tournament. Photo credit: Colorado Parks and Wildlife
Here’s the release from Colorado Parks and Wildlife (Joe Lewandnowski):
Anglers who participated in the 2019 smallmouth bass tournament at Ridgway State Park, again, helped Colorado Parks and Wildlife on its mission to preserve native fish species.
For the fifth year in a row, licensed anglers caught hundreds of smallmouth bass that are a threat to Colorado’s native fish that live downstream in the Gunnison and Colorado rivers. A total of 79 registered anglers removed 1,498 smallmouth bass in the month-long tournament that ended July 27. Smallmouth bass are non-native and were introduced illegally to Ridgway Reservoir about 10 years ago. They are predators and could wipe out populations of native fish downstream.
“In the five years of the tournament we have reduced the population of smallmouth bass in the reservoir by 79 percent,” said Eric Gardunio, aquatic biologist for CPW in Montrose and the organizer of the tournament. “It is truly amazing what these anglers can do. They are participating directly in wildlife management in Colorado.”
Before the first tournament in 2015, Gardunio estimated there were 3,632 adult smallmouth bass in the reservoir. Adult fish measure six inches in length or more. Now it is estimated that only 763 adult fish live in the reservoir.
“We are making substantial headway in suppressing the population of smallmouth that were introduced illegally to Ridgway Reservoir,” Gardunio said.
The Ridgway tournament targets smallmouth bass because they could escape from the reservoir and migrate downstream to a section of the Gunnison River that is considered “critical habitat” for native fish.
“The work by CPW staff along with the help of anglers shows that through targeted management techniques we can enhance survival of rare aquatic species,” said John Alves, senior aquatic biologist for the Southwest Region for Colorado Parks and Wildlife.
With assistance from the Colorado Water Conservation Board, CPW was able to offer $12,000 in prize money to tournament participants.
Chase Nicholson of Ouray was the big winner this year, catching 571 smallmouth and the top prize of $5,000 for most fish caught. He also won $500 for smallest fish caught – 3.3 inches. Nicholson tied with Tyler Deuschle of Delta for biggest fish caught, 17.2 inches they split the $500 prize. Second place for most fish caught went to Lawrence Cieslewicz of Montrose, who caught 283. He also won the grand-prize raffle for an additional $2,500. Chris Cady from Delta turned in 128 fish and placed third for most fish caught.
The heat of a warming planet, like an artist’s palette knife on a canvas, etches its way across Western forests, slowly altering ecosystems that have flourished for centuries.
A firefighting helicopter flies in the foreground while the Spring Creek Fire (August 2018) rages behind it. Photo credit: El Paso County
Stevens-Rumann, a 33-year-old assistant forestry professor at Colorado State University, was [on site to observe the aftermath of the Spring Fire to measure and mark what comes next. In all likelihood, the ponderosa pine forest that had been there would not return.
Aspen and scrub oak have already sprouted, but all the pine trees and their cones were destroyed. No pine saplings poke through the charred soil.
Across the Rockies and even into the Sierra Nevada and the Pacific Northwest’s Cascades, forests are changing or simply vanishing. Wildfire has played a big role. Insect infestations have also had a hand, as has drought.
Behind it all is one driving force — climate change. Scientists charting the fate of forests see it, whether they are entomologists or botanists or wildfire ecologists like Stevens-Rumann. The heat of a warming planet, like an artist’s palette knife on a canvas, etches its way across Western forests, slowly altering ecosystems that have flourished for centuries.
“We are really moving out of a climate that is suitable for forests,” Stevens-Rumann said. “Old trees can persist, but when change comes in a disturbance like a wildfire and the ecosystem resets, the forests don’t come back.”
The transformation isn’t quite that simple. Lower elevation forests, like those along the Front Range, are most at risk, but as the forest rises into the mountains, the nature of the woods may change with spruce, fir and pine competing for survival even as new pests push into those higher, and now warmer and drier, mountain reaches.
“As ecosystems change, there are going to be winners and losers,” said Thomas Veblen, a biogeographer and distinguished professor at the University of Colorado. “The regulator function of the forest could diminish … leading to more runoff and flash floods. With a reduction of the forest canopy, we are going to see the potential for greater erosion. The question is how much of the forest will fail to regenerate.”
Fire changes the forest’s composition
Colorado’s Front Range has had five ecotones — shifts in plant and animal communities — from grasslands at 5,500 feet above sea level to alpine tundra at 11,300 feet.
“When we go to higher elevations under warming temperatures, we do expect the species from lower elevations to do better after a fire or other disturbance,” Veblen said.
After six years as a forest firefighter in an elite hotshot crew, Stevens-Rumann, curious about what happens after the fire is out, became a wildfire ecologist.
In a study of 1,485 sites that burned in 52 wildfires in forests from Colorado to northern Idaho, a team led by Stevens-Rumann found tree regeneration was significantly reduced at the sites that burned after 2000.
Fewer than half the spots had signs of growing back with a density of trees similar to the pre-fire forest, and nearly one-third of the sites had no trees at all.
These forests ranged from lower elevation dry conifer forests, containing ponderosa pine and Douglas fir, to moister conifer forests of Engelmann spruce and lodgepole pine. The highest elevation forests in the study were around 9,000 feet.
The researchers measured the site temperatures and moisture, and classified the areas by the severity of the burn.
It appeared that the hotter and drier the site, the less chance of a forest coming back. “There is an ecotone shift already underway,” Stevens-Rumann said. “We may see aspen and scrub oak replace pine and at higher elevations, maybe pine replace fir.”
This is happening across the Front Range. An analysis of five Front Range forest fires between 1996 and 2003 — Bobcat Gulch, Overland, High Meadow, Buffalo Creek and Hayman — found that 23% of the forest cover has been lost.
“Below 8,200 feet, we saw little generation; above 8,200 feet, where it tends to be cooler and moister, we saw more,” said Marin Chambers, a researcher at the Colorado Forest Restoration Institute and the study’s lead author.
Savage wildfires disrupt the trees’ lifecycle
At the site of the 2002 Hayman Fire — the largest in the state’s history, consuming 135,114 acres northwest of Colorado Springs — the most intensely burned areas have come back as grasslands.
The problem, Chambers explained, is that while fire releases the seeds of pine cones, they do not travel very far. And the hotter, drier and more open sites where they land are less hospitable.
Fire has been an essential component of the pine forest ecosystem. The pine and fir trees are “serontinous” — depending on fire to release their seeds and simultaneously clear an ashy, nutrient-rich bed for new seedlings.
Two things, however, have altered the natural cycle. First, a century of fire suppression — think Smokey the Bear — has prevented regeneration, creating forests of mostly large, old trees. Additionally, it has built up dead wood on the forest floor that aids fires to burn more intensely when they do happen.
Black Forest Fire June 2013 via CBS Denver
And now those fires are coming more quickly and more savagely. Since 2000, there has been vastly more acreage burned in Colorado than in the three previous decades, with peaks of more than 300,000 acres scorched in 2003 and about 160,000 acres destroyed in 2013.
Across the West, about 20 million acres burned between 1979 and 2015. The average fire season grew by 26 days, a 41% increase, and high-fire-potential days increased by 17, according to a study by John Abatzoglou, a University of Idaho geographer.
Abatzoglou measured drought conditions and water availability, as well as temperature, and estimated that climate change contributed to about half the forest fire acreage as heat parched the forests, creating more dry fuel.
The analysis also found that significant declines in spring rains in the southwestern U.S. during the period from 1979-2015 and in summer precipitation in the Northwest add to the fire problem.
Another Abatzoglou study projects the shortening of the snowpack season except for in the high Rockies and parts of the Uinta and Bighorn ranges in Utah and Wyoming, as well as more precipitation falling as rain rather than snow.
How much hotter has it been? The average observed summer temperature in Colorado between 2005 and 2009 was nearly 67 degrees Fahrenheit — the hottest it has been in a century, up almost 2.5 degrees since 1989, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The temperature itself poses an ecological Rubicon. A study of 177 burn sites from 21 forest fires in the northern Rockies documented the same phenomenon Stevens-Rumann saw: fewer trees growing in the lower elevation patches and no trees at about one-third of the sites, with grasses, sedges and a wild, purple evening primrose called fireweed taking root.
The study also calculated that at summer average temperatures above 63 degrees, fir tree regeneration would be “minimal.” Ponderosa pine is slightly more heat tolerant at temperatures up to 66 degrees, the study said…
So much is at stake. And it’s not about the view.
There is much more at stake in the fate of the high-country forests than just a majestic view. The snowpack that falls in the woods, and is essential to nourishing the forest, and it is also the main source of drinking water for the state.
“Every person in Colorado gets a touch of the forest ecosystem every day when they open up the tap,” West said. But thinner forests would lead the dwindling snowpack to run off more quickly.
Even without the spruce beetle, the high-elevation forests are under threat. In a study of Colorado Front Range forests between 9,500 feet and 11,150 feet, researchers found a decrease in new spruce and fir as a result of declining snowpack and rising summer temperatures.
Above-average snowpack was found to be a key in the establishment of new Engelmann spruce and subalpine fir, according to one of Veblen’s studies. Conversely, declining snowpack along with cooler, wetter summers was related to a decrease in the number of fir and spruce establishment events from 1975.
A study of high-elevation areas in Rocky Mountain National Park warned that these ecosystems were “at higher risk of species redistribution as they are more insular and experience more rapid changes than environments at lower elevations.”
In some places, climate change is pushing forests higher or farther. In Alaska’s Noatak National Preserve, boreal forests have moved as much as 300 feet north onto what was formerly treeless tundra.
In Yosemite National Park researchers have found whitebark and lodgepole pines pushing into montane meadows as high at 10,000 feet.
Air pollution from straw burning near a residential area. The traditional practice of open burning of rice straw produces large amounts of smoke creating a thick cloud over fields. Photo: Ali Mohammadi, distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu
Researchers suggest new approach needed to address Anthropocene risk
A team of international researchers led by Colorado State University is calling for a new approach to understanding environmental risks in the Anthropocene, the current geological age in which humans are a dominant force of change on the planet.
Patrick Keys, a research scientist in the School of Global Environmental Sustainability at CSU, is the lead author of “Anthropocene risk,” a perspective paper published July 22 in Nature Sustainability that suggests adopting a holistic approach to understanding environmental risks. Keys said the team hopes that the article is “productively provocative.”
“The Anthropocene is a time of rapid global change – socially, environmentally, and geophysically,” he said. “Typical notions of neatly and cleanly delineating complex environmental risks are changing in unexpected ways. It’s becoming clear that a more holistic perspective, including social history, power relations, and environmental ethics may be important components of Anthropocene risks.”
As an example, Keys said it’s a common belief that the civil war in Syria has been driven by drought and climate change. While those two factors more than likely played a role in what led to the civil war, it also ignores other aspects such as incentives by Syrian government officials that kept farmers on agriculturally precarious land for decades. Keys said those incentives made it possible for drought and climate change to have such an impact.
“If we ignore the social and political economic factors that deliver us to this present, we will attribute an event to being caused by the environment when, in fact, that was just one cause or the icing on top of the cake. If we look at things only in the present, we will come up with solutions to a problem defined in the present, but we may not be defining the problem correctly.”
This point of view stems from Guidance for Resilience in the Anthropocene: Investments for Development (GRAID), a program based at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, where five of the paper’s co-authors currently work.
In the paper, the research team explores four different cases outside of Europe and North America to highlight this way of looking at environmental risks and underline why people studying such risks must take a broader approach.
“As the Anthropocene unfolds, navigating new and emerging risks will require considering changes that happen over years, decades, centuries, or even millennia.” Keys said. “In this increasingly interconnected and accelerating world, it’s on us to really educate ourselves about how to interact intelligently and meaningfully to work toward a more sustainable world.”
Tamarisk leaf beetles at work
FromThe Associated Press (Felicia Fonseca) via Tucson.com:
That the tiny beetles brought to the U.S. from Asia in an experiment to devour invasive, water-sucking tamarisks showed up at the Verde River in central Arizona is no surprise. But it’s further evidence they’re spreading faster than once anticipated and eventually could pervade the Southwest U.S, raising wildfire risks and allowing less time to uproot the tamarisks, also called salt cedars, and replace them with native trees.
Without those efforts, an already highly flammable tree will burn more intensely, and an endangered songbird that nests in tamarisk might not have a home.
The federal program to use the beetles to chew up tamarisk trees began as an experiment in rural Nevada in 2001 and was approved for more widespread use in 2005, as long as they were at least 200 milesfrom Southwestern willow flycatcher territory. It ended in 2010 as the beetles intruded on the birds’ habitat. An unintentional release in southern Utah also helped the insects spread into Arizona.
Johnson believes the quarter-inch beetles hitchhiked to the Verde River on clothing, a backpack or a boat. Normally, they are wind travelers but would have had to catch quite a gust to get to the river from the closest drainage where they’ve been recorded, he said.
Johnson has sent samples to a geneticist in Colorado to determine if the beetles can be traced to a population north of Arizona or a subtropical one from Texas that multiplies quicker.
Arizona once was projected to be too hot for the beetles to survive, but they’ve evolved as they’ve expanded their reach.
Dan Bean with the Colorado Department of Agriculture found even more this summer in far southwestern Arizona along the California border, where temperatures regularly top 100 degrees.
The concern now is the beetles establishing themselves in the Gila, Salt and San Pedro watersheds, which have higher concentrations of flycatcher habitat.
The beetles aren’t known to feast on anything other than tamarisks, though one beetle can’t eat much on its own. In the thousands, they can consume entire trees, Bean said.
Southwestern Willow flycatcher
The tamarisk leaves can grow back within the season, but repeated attacks can be fatal for the trees — a welcome result in places flycatchers don’t live.
Dead tamarisks can litter the ground with leaves and increase wildfire risks.
The trees already are notorious for burning hot and black, and beetle predation would provide more fuel.
Ben Bloodworth works with Rivers Edge West, formerly the Tamarisk Coalition, which has been tracking the beetles’ movement for years.
The group has mapped the beetles along the Green River in Utah, the Rio Grande and Pecos River in New Mexico and Texas, the Arkansas River in Colorado, the Colorado River — a major source of water for 40 million people in seven Western states — and other waterways.
“Eventually the beetles will be throughout the entire Southwest, and really what we need to do is, in areas where it’s appropriate, get in ahead of the beetle (and) plant willows and cottonwoods and other native species that can provide habitat for the willow flycatcher,” Bloodworth said.
The beetles and the songbird have been the subject of legal fights. The Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture and its Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service in 2013.
The lawsuit alleged the damage caused by the insects through the beetle release program violated the Endangered Species Act, and argued the federal government should be held liable.
As part of a settlement, the USDA released a draft conservation plan in June for the flycatcher, which is found in parts of Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas and Utah. Under the plan, the agency would aid existing conservation programs, contribute money and monitor beetle impacts. The public has until Aug. 8 to weigh in.
The beetles would not be in the United States if not for the tamarisk that thrives along riverbeds.
2014 Tamarisk leaf beetle distribution map via the Tamarisk Coalition
As confirmed cases of invasive mussel contamination on out-of-state boats reach record numbers in areas close to Boulder County, local authorities say the problematic species’ profile remains low, as it traditionally has, within county borders.
Reservoirs popular with recreational users in Boulder County have policies governing what boaters have to do before putting in, efforts to decontaminate all crafts entering local waters and biology to thank for the good news…
At Longmont’s Union Reservoir, inspectors in the past 10 years have come across only two vessels contaminated with invasive mussels, and so far, none have been found this year, according to John Brim, a city parks and open space ranger.
Because only wakeless boating is allowed at Union Reservoir, it doesn’t attract boats used most often at out-of-state bodies of water known to harbor the invasive species; Lake Powell is especially notorious…
At Boulder Reservoir, cases of contaminated boats are slightly more common, with one confirmed contamination this year, and about five suspected mussel contaminations, with several of those confirmed, since 2008, according to Boulder Reservoir Manager Stacy Cole…
Between 15 and 20 decontaminations have taken place this year in Boulder, including one Monday, for boats that haven’t received a permit tag from the city or those that have and since were used on an out-of-state waterway.
“Parks and Recreation staff use a mobile decontamination unit which flushes the system including ballast tanks with high-temperature water — 140 degrees Fahrenheit — necessary to kill mussels,” Boulder spokesperson Denise White said. “The city also adds potassium hydroxide to the decontamination water to kill any possible mussels before the wastewater enters the city’s sanitary sewer system.”
Boulder boosted its precautions for this year, requiring not only an initial decontamination process for untagged boats and those coming in after a stint outside Colorado, but also an ensuing seven-day quarantine period on dry land at Boulder Reservoir and a second decontamination before the vessel is allowed back in the water. Cole said there was no particular incident that prompted the city’s move. Rather, the growing number of mussel-infested waterways in surrounding states has prompted such prevention initiatives across the state, she said…
Boaters can receive their first decontamination for free from state officials in Denver, and then pay Boulder for their second decontamination at rates that vary from $35 to $175 depending on the size of the watercraft…
Broomfield protects itself from the pesky organism by disallowing boating on all its waterways.
