2021 Upper Colorado Area Report

Authors: David Speas

Year: 2021

Abstract

Despite another year of extremely dry conditions and continuation of the COVID-19 pandemic, a number of exciting native fish conservation stories surfaced in the Upper Colorado River Basin during 2021, including: Palisade High School (Palisade, CO) students stocked 200 razorback sucker, Xyrauchen texanus, into the Colorado River, fish that they had reared themselves at their own hatchery; razorback sucker continued to spawn in Roubideau Creek, CO for the seventh year in a row, as did thousands of non-listed native suckers; after five years of planning, coordination, and construction, the San Juan Watershed Group and partners completed a fish passage at the Ranchmans-Terrell Irrigation Diversion on the Animas River (Flora Vista, NM); a new paper from San Juan River researchers showed that flow conditioning before stocking doubles razorback sucker survival; the Nature Conservancy and partners made progress toward securing base flows in the Price River, UT, for native fish conservation; the National Park Service conducted fish community surveys in four Capitol Reef NP streams; research by Utah State University continued on native fish use of complex habitat in the San Rafael River and the role of beaver in maintaining stream habitat complexity; construction began on a water control structure at the Stirrup floodplain wetland (middle Green River, UT) for use in rearing wild-spawned razorback sucker larvae and potentially production of bonytail, Gila elegans, in a wild setting; a first-of-its kind flow spike release was conducted at Flaming Gorge Dam (Green River, UT/CO) to disadvantage non-native smallmouth bass; research continued on native fish movement in the Blacks Fork River (Wyoming) and other tributaries to the Green River; downlisting of humpback chub, Gila cypha, from endangered to threatened status neared completion, and the Fish and Wildlife Service proposed downlisting for endangered razorback sucker; and more! Don’t miss it.