A bipartisan bill led by Colorado Sen. John Hickenlooper would extend a two-decades-long conservation effort on the Colorado and San Juan rivers.
Hickenlooper, D-Colo., and Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, introduced the Upper Colorado and San Juan River Basins Recovery Act in the Senate on Thursday to bolster the Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery and San Juan River Basin Recovery Implementation programs. The legislation would extend the two programs by one year and give communities more time to develop long-term management plans for the fish species they protect.
“We must protect native fish in the Upper Colorado and San Juan River. This bill shows how states, tribes, federal entities and water users can come together to get things done,” Hickenlooper said in a news release.
The Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery and San Juan River Basin Recovery Implementation programs aim to recover and protect four threatened and endangered fish species: humpback chub, bonytail, Colorado pikeminnow and razorback sucker.
The four fish species are endemic to the Southwest, meaning they are found nowhere else, but they have faced threats from invasive species, water development and drought, among others.
“These are long-standing populations, many of them unique to our rivers, and it really does demonstrate the importance of our river ecosystems for maintaining these healthy populations,” said Aaron Kimple, San Juan headwaters program coordinator for Mountain Studies Institute.
The Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery and San Juan River Basin Recovery Implementation programs were established in the late 1980s and early 1990s with cooperative agreements between public land agencies, states, tribes and other stakeholders. Their goal was to balance fish conservation with continued water development.
Both programs study, monitor and stock the fish. Federal, state and tribal agencies have modified water releases from reservoirs to maintain the habitat needs of the fish while other projects have constructed fish passages for spawning migrations and removed predatory fish.
At the same time, about 2,500 water projects have been developed with the Endangered Species Act compliance the programs have provided, according to a 2018-19 report.
The decadeslong conservation efforts have largely been successful with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recommending the downlisting of the razorback sucker and humpback chub from endangered to threatened in 2018.
But the added threat of climate change could affect these fish populations, with the razorback sucker, Colorado pikeminnow and bonytail still reliant on active management from the agencies and their partners.
“As we get into a changing climate, we’re looking at potentially changing water temperatures (and) changes in streamflow and timing of streamflow,” Kimple said. “... Really, the climate change component will be an additional challenge for those populations.”
Rep. Joe Neguse, who leads the U.S. Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands and introduced companion legislation in the House of Representatives in August 2021, cited climate change in his call for legislation to extend the programs.
“In the West, unprecedented drought and climate-induced wildfires have drawn great urgency to the way we steward and protect our water resources,” Neguse, who represents Colorado’s 2nd Congressional District, which includes Boulder and Fort Collins, said in a news release. “That’s why we introduced the Upper Colorado and San Juan River Basins Recovery Act to ensure that critical water infrastructure projects in Colorado can continue operating while we protect and safeguard endangered species in these river basins.”
Hickenlooper and Romney’s legislation would authorize the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to continue funding and implementing the programs through 2024, allow for the transfer of funds from the San Juan Basin to the Upper Colorado River program and extend the U.S. Department of Interior’s reporting deadline for metrics like recovery goals and expenditures.
The House Natural Resource Committee passed the bill in November.
ahannon@durangoherald.com
