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Sunday, June 14, 2009
Coalition of Agencies Widens Pecos River To Help Restore the Threatened Bluntnose Shiner Species
Journal Southern Bureau
ROSWELL — The Pecos River took a detour to its past this week.
A coalition of public and private sector agencies believe the move will provide better prospects for a tiny threatened species — the Pecos bluntnose shiner.
As officials from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Reclamation, the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission and the World Wildlife Fund stood Tuesday on the banks of the Pecos, an excavator scooped up the last of the sandy soil that has separated the river from a dry oxbow for more than 60 years.
The idea behind the plan, more than a decade in the making, is that the resurrected oxbow, a mile and a half long, semicircular curve within the Bitter Lake National Wildlife Refuge, will produce a slower moving, broader river that provides better habitat for bluntnose shiner eggs, larvae and juveniles.
A few hours after the oxbow was reopened, three bulldozers shoved tons of earth into the more recent path of the Pecos, blocking a fast-flowing section of the channel the Bureau of Reclamation created in the 1940s to reduce the threat of flooding.
Paul Tashjian, a hydrologist with the Fish and Wildlife Service, said the earth-moving projects were the first step in creating better habitat for the bluntnose shiner. The species' historic range once included the Rio Grande, Rio Chama and the Pecos from the Santa Rosa area into south Texas, but it has shrunk to a roughly 186-mile stretch of the Pecos, with some of the best habitat around the Bitter Lake National Wildlife Refuge because springs help maintain a year-round flow.
The oxbow recently underwent extensive excavation to lower its banks and to remove invasive plant species, like salt cedar, and it now is a narrow channel with steep sandy banks.
In the months and years ahead, the river itself, occasionally swollen by monsoon rains or upstream releases of water from the Fort Sumner reservoir, will wear down and smooth out the banks of the oxbow, creating an environment more conducive to the fish, Tashjian said.
The oxbow project is part of a two-stage effort aimed at restoring the river's natural habitat.
A few miles upstream, federal contractors have been clearing salt cedar, or tamarisk, from about 200 acres. The goal is to eventually clear salt cedar from about six linear miles of the river.
The clearing project is being led by a partnership of Fish and Wildlife, World Wildlife Fund and the Interstate Stream Commission, using a $518,000 grant from New Mexico's 2007 River Ecosystem Restoration Initiative.
By removing non-native salt cedar, which armors the banks of the Pecos, organizers hope to help the river expand its floodplain, slow peak flows and create backwashes where young bluntnose shiners can flourish.
Taking out salt cedar will also help native grasses and trees like coyote willow make a comeback, Tashjian said.
This stretch of the Pecos was channelized in the mid-1940s and early 1950s by the Bureau of Reclamation after a devastating flood in Roswell in 1941. Several large oxbows were cut off in an effort to get the water in the swollen river out of the populated area as quickly as possible.
The Bureau of Reclamation committed to the oxbow restoration project, which cost $300,000, in 2006. As part of the effort to protect critical habitat for the bluntnose shiner, the bureau has also committed to maintaining a continuous flow of water in the Pecos, at the rate of 35 cubic feet per second, measured at a spot about 10 miles south of Fort Sumner.
Before the oxbow was reopened, project organizers on Monday used nets to remove all the fish they could find.
The FWS removed about 200 Pecos bluntnose shiners on Monday, and planned to collect another 800 to be taken for safe-keeping at the Dexter National Fish Hatchery and Technology Center. The Dexter hatchery will hold the shiners as a sort of "insurance policy" just in case the river runs dry before additional water can be pumped into it, said FWS fish biologist Steve Davenport.
"The river can dry up quickly," Davenport noted.
The captive bluntnose shiners are expected to be returned to their home in the Pecos in the fall, Davenport said.
Water rights conflict settled
State and local officials last week filed an agreement settling a longstanding water rights conflict on the Pecos River in southwest New Mexico.
The parties to the deal, including the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission and the Carlsbad Irrigation District, agreed the state has taken sufficient steps to reduce water use on the Pecos by taking land out of agricultural production.
Since 2002, the state has bought enough land and water rights to take 13,000 acres of irrigated land out of production, action that leaves more water in the river to meet the state's legal obligations to deliver water to Texas.
That falls short of the amount mandated by a 2002 state law, but by agreeing to the deal now, irrigators gain access to additional water in a credit account that has resulted from excess water deliveries to Texas, said Estevan López, the head of the Interstate Stream Commission.
— John Fleck
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