Living Rivers’ Habitat Security Force was called into action again this month, challenging the Bureau of Reclamation's (BuRec's) misguided proposals for improving habitat conditions for native fish in Grand Canyon National Park and on the San Juan River below Navajo Dam. At meetings in Farmington, New Mexico and Flagstaff and Phoenix, Arizona, Living Rivers expressed concern that BuRec is continuing to demonstrate a lack of any serious interest in recovering endangered native fish in the Colorado River watershed.
As the only advocates for native fish amongst the 50 participants in the Farmington meeting, Living Rivers made it clear that nothing short of decommissioning Navajo Dam could yield any significant recovery. "This is nothing but make-believe," Living Rivers executive director Owen Lammers told the crowd. "The necessary distance in natural flowing river miles for native razorback suckers and Colorado pikeminnows no longer physically exists because of Navajo Dam upstream and Glen Canyon Dam downstream." The river current flushes any young native fish into Lake Powell, where they are consumed by non-native fish before having a chance to mature. Native fish either need the opportunity to spawn back in their native habitat above Navajo Dam, or Lake Powell must be drained for successful recovery to occur.
The majority of other remarks made at the hearing concerned impacts of any operational changes on the non-native recreational trout fishery below the dam. "The razorback sucker has lived here for thousands of years; it will figure out how to survive, but we need to protect the trout," one commercial fishing guide stated.
\BuRec's Glen Canyon Dam public meetings in Phoenix and Flagstaff the following two days were huge blemishes for citizen participation. With barely one week's notice, and no advance copies of its environmental assessment available for the public to review, less than a dozen people not directly involved with BuRec's activities attended the combined meetings. "These meetings represented the first opportunity in years for the public to learn about and comment on BuRec's plans for Glen Canyon Dam and Grand Canyon, and they succeeded in doing everything possible to keep the public out," adds Lammers.
At issue were new flow recommendations from Glen Canyon Dam to help conserve sediment and disrupt non-native fish reproduction, so as to benefit recovery of the sole remaining population of humpback chub in Grand Canyon. BuRec is also planning to remove up to 20,000 non-native trout near the humpback chub rearing areas to reduce predation. With humpback chub populations down to just 2,000 fish, Living Rivers pointed out that such efforts are too little too late, and more aggressive measures need to be reviewed.
Somewhat surprisingly Randy Peterson, director for BuRec’s Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Program, was publicly combative toward Living Rivers representatives, stating, "Your rhetoric is not helpful...your views irrelevant," and “you should check your [dam decommissioning] baggage at the door." BuRec is clearly becoming increasingly frustrated with the growing public concern for its lack of progress, and its resistance toward doing the bare minimum as required by the Fish and Wildlife Service (see reverse side).
There is still time for the public to weigh in with written comment on both these issues until November 1, 2002. Contact Living Rivers or visit our website for details.
