It could be a landmark year for the Platte River Recovery Implementation Program's ongoing efforts to help protect threatened and endangered wildlife species, said Mark Czaplewski, biologist for the Central Platte Natural Resources District. Czaplewski is a member of the recovery program's governance committee. With the program entering it third year, Czaplewski said it will begin the process of acquiring land along the Platte River. In May, President Bush signed legislation to implement the federal share of the recovery implementation plan. The plan is part of the Consolidated Natural Resources Act of 2008, which was sponsored by U.S. Sens. Ben Nelson and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska...
The bill authorizes the secretary of the interior to proceed with the program and includes $157 million to carry it out. The cost will be shared 50/50 by the states and federal government. Through the program, the states will provide benefits for the endangered and threatened species as well as land, water and scientific monitoring and research to evaluate benefits of the program. Nebraska's share is about 40 percent, which has either already been contributed or will be an in-kind contribution once the project gets rolling.
Two of the big goals of the recovery plan are to increase flows in the Platte River and create new habitat to benefit the four endangered and threatened species the program is designed to protect. The species are the endangered interior least tern, whooping crane and pallid sturgeon and the threatened piping plover. The plan proposes to acquire 10,000 acres of new habitat between Lexington and Chapman...
Czaplewski said 3,000 of the 10,000 acres have already been acquired, including 2,600 acres of land midway between Elm Creek and Overton and 400 acres that are owned by the state of Wyoming and located near Kearney...
"We have already evaluated 50 tracks of land," he said. "Some of the land will go by the wayside, but on others, we are actively negotiating with landowners to see if we can work out a deal." The governance committee has also developed a "land interest holding entity," which Czaplewski said is a foundation started to hold titles of properties acquired by the program...
Czaplewski said the program's water advisory committee and program consultants have completed a "phase one study" of the various water projects that have been listed. "There are a lot of possible projects that the program is looking at with increasing detail," he said. "The program is focusing on the best of these water projects." One of those projects impacting the Central Platte NRD is the recovery implementation program partnering with the NRD on the proposed Elm Creek Reservoir, which is a flood control project northwest of Elm Creek...
Another area, Czaplewski said, is the recovery implementation program working with the Central Platte NRD and the state of Nebraska in ridding the Platte River of noxious weeds that use a lot of water, such as phragmites. Legislation will be introduced in the Legislature next year to continue the state's weed-fighting efforts on the Republican and Platte rivers.
Another area will be the ongoing management by the program of the environmental account at Lake McConaughy...
Also, Czaplewski said the program will continue to study and develop tools to better understand all the natural and manmade occurrences impacting water flows in the Platte River. "Nobody involved in this thing has all the answers by any stretch," he said. "The program is off and running here now, but there are still lots and lots of studies to do because we don't understand everything that is going on."
