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BACKGROUND <br />Final Environmental Impact Statement for the Platte River Recovery Implementation Program <br />What is the proposed Federal action that the FEIS analyaes? <br />The proposed Federal Action is to help fund and implement a Platte River basin-wide, <br />cooperative recovery implementation program (Program) for the four target species (the <br />endangered whooping crane, interior least tern, and pallid sturgeon, and the threatened <br />piping plover) which use riverine and nearby habitat along the Central and Lower Platte <br />River in Nebraska. <br />Why is a Program required? <br />Federal water projects, and State and private water activities which require Federal <br />permits or funding, must ensure that they do not increase the risk of extinction of <br />threatened or endangered species, or adversely affect designated critical habitat for those <br />species. Over the past 20 years, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has determined that <br />many water projects in the Platte River Basin have jeopardized the existence of these four <br />species by altering river and nearby habitat along the Central and Lower Platte in <br />Nebraska. <br />Before the 1880s the Platte River in Nebraska was a broad and braided river subject to <br />high spring floods, great loads of sediment, and occasional summer droughts. These <br />conditions caused continuous movement of the braided river channels and sandbars <br />resulting in a channel that was very broad, shallow, sandy, and generally without <br />vegetation. These are the conditions which supported the four target species. However, <br />over the last 150 years as much as 90 percent of the habitat used by the three bird species <br />along the Central Platte River has been lost, primarily due to the effects of the many <br />water storage and diversion projects throughout the basin and land development along the <br />river in the habitat area. <br />Leaders from the States of Wyoming, Colorado, and Nebraska, and the Department of the <br />Interior, along with water managers and environmental group representatives, believe that <br />the best way to address these impacts is through a basin-wide, cooperative effort to <br />improve river flows and land habitat for the target species. This was the basis for the <br />Cooperative Agreement signed by the States and Interior signed in 1997. <br />Managing Water in the West