Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Cooperative conservation and environmental partnerships KTVZ.com: "The Secretaries of Interior, Commerce and Agriculture, the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality have announced the dates and locations of several listening sessions on cooperative conservation and environmental partnerships...Some two dozen sessions are being held around the country, including...Colorado Springs, Colorado, 9 a.m., September 15, 2006, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, the Gymnasium. United States Department of Agriculture Under Secretary, Natural Resources and Environment, Mark Rey will attend." Here's the link to the Cooperative Conservation website. Category: Colorado Water 10:54:35 AM     Fountain Creek management Pueblo Chieftain: "The state has provided funds for a study of high levels of E. coli bacteria on Fountain Creek to determine if the cause is human or animal. A supplemental environmental project, part of the settlement in an earlier, unrelated clean-air violation by Rocky Mountain Steel Mills, will make $100,000 in seed money available to study DNA in E. coli on Fountain Creek, said Steve Gunderson, state water quality control director for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. The money could kick off a $450,000 project proposed by the U.S. Geological Survey in cooperation with Colorado Springs-area governments." Category: Colorado Water 10:47:38 AM     Habitat the number one priority? Grand Junction Daily Sentinel: "A handful of anglers from western Colorado last week went in front of the Colorado Wildlife Commission to skewer the state's involvement in a controversial program aimed at reviving endangered fish populations in the Colorado and Yampa rivers. As part of the Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has since 2003 been removing non-native fish from sections of the Colorado and Yampa rivers. Lynn Ensley, executive director of the Grand Junction-based Colorado Sportsmen Wildlife Fund, told the commissioners that the program's current emphasis on removing non-native fish, particularly northern pike, channel catfish and smallmouth bass, not only has failed to revive endangered fish populations but is the wrong approach to recovery. 'Habitat should the No. 1 priority and everything else should be secondary,' Ensley told the commission. 'The more we can restore the original character of the river, the better our chances of recovery will be.' Ensley said the Fish and Wildlife Service should be removing tamarisk from riverbanks to help restore natural river flows and channels... "Pat Nelson, the recovery program's non-native fish management coordinator, said habitat is one of five key elements in the recovery program. 'This includes restoring floodplain habitat to benefit endangered fish,' Nelson said. Other elements include fish ladders providing access to historic habitat, screening diversion canals to keep fish in the river, monitoring and managing water flows, and raising threatened and endangered fish in hatcheries. Ensley and others criticized the ongoing fish-removal aspect, which over the past three summers has taken more than 700 smallmouth bass from the Colorado River. Not only has that fishing opportunity been lost, Ensley said, but the Colorado Division of Wildlife is using its money and personnel to undermine rather than create sportfishing opportunities... "The anglers found at least one ally in commissioner Rick Enstrom of Lakewood, who long has been a outspoken critic of the sportfish removal aspects of the recovery program. Last week he termed the 18-year program a 'boondoggle' in light of admissions from DOW personnel that the multi-million dollar program has no end in sight. 'I suggest that if we spent the millions and millions (that is going to sportfish removal) on (tamarisk) eradication, we[base ']d be further down the road to recovery,' Enstrom wrote in an e-mail earlier this week. 'Colorado leads the nation in T & E recovery success stories, and most have been accomplished through habitat manipulation or stocking, not the elimination of top tier predators.' Ensley agreed, saying sportsmen fear 'paying for eternity' on a fish-removal program. Nelson said the Colorado River program costs around $100,000 per year while the Yampa recovery efforts cost around $750,000 per year." Category: Colorado Water 10:44:42 AM     Ritter or Beauprez for governor? Durango Herald: "The two major candidates for governor have sharply different views on solving Colorado's water problems. Democrat Bill Ritter does not want to talk about big, new projects that shift water from west to east, while Republican Bob Beauprez said the state needs honest answers that work for 'all of Colorado,' which include both conservation and new water projects. 'We cannot conserve our way entirely out of this problem,' Beauprez said in a debate Tuesday in Lakewood. Beauprez supported 2003's Referendum A, a $2 billion bond for water projects that was widely opposed on the Western Slope... "Ritter opposed Ref. A, instead favoring conservation, reuse, sharing water with farmers and building new storage for water that already is on the Front Range. 'The whole debate about Referendum A was water storage,' Ritter said. 'What we didn't talk about, and what we're talking about now because A failed, is conservation - conservation as an ethic.'" Category: Denver November 2006 Election 10:33:48 AM

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