7810

• UCREFRP Catalog Number: 7810
• Author: Stempel, M. and R. S. Wydoski.
• Title: Draft Environmental Assessment, Guidelines For Disposition Of Captive-Reared Endangered Fish.
• USFW Year: 1995.
• USFW - Doc Type: \
• Copyright Material: NO

Water is one of the most precious resources, particularly in the arid and
semi-arid west. Water development allowed this region of the United
States to be inhabited. The American public will place even more demand
for the multiple-use of natural resources including rivers in the future.
The Recovery Implementation Program for recovering the four endangered
large river fishes is one of the largest and most comprehensive projects
of its kind in the United States. The challenge is to ensure that water
can be managed and allocated to meet existing and new municipal,
industrial, and agricultural uses, while at the same time, providing
streamflows, habitat, and ecological conditions necessary to restore the
endangered Colorado River fishes (Wydoski and Hamill 1991).
4. Stocking. The history of fish culture and stocking in the United States
has been concisely and appropriately stated by Radonski and Martin
(1986): "The arc of the fish culture pendulum has come full swing: from
early consideration as a universal fisheries management panacea, through
a transitional period of questioning and disrepute, to a final
recognition as a indispensable tool when appropriately integrated with
other equally essential fisheries management protocol." A series of
questions that should be thoroughly considered in preparing a proposed
stocking plan (Heidinger 1993) are: Why stock? What presumptive stock
should be used? What size? What quality? What number? Where and when?
Goals, objectives and criteria must be clearly stated and thoroughly
considered when using stocking as a management tool (Noble 1986).
Experimental stocking will be an important component in recovery of the
endangered Colorado River fishes by providing fish for priority research.
Augmentation stockinq provides a "jump-start" mechanism to supplement
fish in habitats where wild stocks are very depressed and where
successful natural recruitment will be needed to establish self-
sustaining wild populations. The rationale for augmentation stocking is
to provide a critical number of fish for successful spawning in the wild.
Such stocking may be required for recovery of the razorback sucker in the
upper basin. Restoration stocking will be required for reintroduction of
the bonytail since this species is nearly extirpated in the upper basin.
Restoration stocking may also be required to recolonize river reaches
with Colorado squawfish and razorback sucker where unoccupied but
suitable habitat occurs within their historic range. All stocking of
hatchery-reared endangered fish will be done through Program-approved
stocking plans with measurable objectives, risk assessments, and an
identified timeframe for thorough evaluation.
The need for augmentation or restoration stocking will be based on
information from monitoring endangered fish stocks to determine status
and trends, research studies to determine ecological requirements, and
evaluations of habitat improvement projects. Obviously, stocking will be
used where suitable habitat is available to meet the ecological
requirements of the endangered fishes.
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