WildEarth Guardians

Saturday, April 8, 2006
Drought has Officials Concerned about Survival of Silvery Minnows

Most Rio Grande water now goes to irrigate alfalfa crops - The river needs its own in-stream water rights
Contact: Santa Fe New Mexican

Albuquerque. NM - Federal officials are worried that the endangered Rio Grande silvery minnows rescued last year could die this year when the river begins drying out in the summer.

Last year was considered one of the most successful ever in rescuing the minnows, but officials expect this year to be a lot tougher.

Dry conditions around New Mexico and limited runoff from snowmelt in the Rio Grande basin have combined to produce some of the worst water flows on record, federal officials said.

"We could find ourselves in rescue operations soon," said April Sanders, the Army Corps of Engineers' project manager for the Upper Rio Grande Water Operation Program.

The group is planning to move the fish to parts of the river that have perennial flow, said Brett Thompson, the Corps' fisheries biologist in Albuquerque.

The silvery minnow survives only in a 170-mile stretch of the Rio Grande. Decades of dam building and infrastructure additions along the river have decreased the connectivity of the slow-moving warm waters that the fish need for reproduction, officials said. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service added the silvery minnow to the list of endangered species in 1994.

Sanders said a draft of a long-term management plan that will focus on ways to recover the species is in its final stages.

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Copyright 2006 New Mexican - Reprinted with permission