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successful spawning and recruitment of nonnative fish which are usually not adapted to <br />high flows or flooding conditions. <br />Unfortunately, past impacts to the Colorado River Basin do not eliminate the potential <br />for future impacts. There are more water development (McAda 1978) and resource <br />extraction projects that are either planned or proposed within the boundaries of the <br />basin. If implemented, these projects could exacerbate the plight of the native fishes <br />and possibly eliminate the chance for successful reintroduction of some native species. <br />Needless to say most of the endemic fish are now either endangered or threatened. <br />The Upper Colorado River Basin Coordinating Committee was formed to identify <br />"reasonable and prudent" solutions to the conservation/development conflict. The <br />Committee instituted the Recovery Implementation Program, in order to create <br />individual recovery plans for each of the endangered fishes (Wydowski and Hamill <br />1989). <br />Bonytail are the rarest of the endemic fishes and appear to be in the most immediate <br />danger of extinction. They were listed as an endangered species on 23 April 1980. <br />The USFWS has ranked the recovery priority of the bonytail as 5C (high priority) <br />because of its low numbers and undocumented recruitment in the wild along with <br />conflict of recovery with economic development (USFWS 1990). No recruitment into <br />the remaining wild populations has been documented in the Upper Colorado River <br />Basin. Recruitment has only been documented in Lake Mohave in the Lower Basin <br />(Jonez and Sumner 1954). However, since recruitment has occurred in a lentic habitat <br />and bonytail historically occupied and spawned in lotic habitats, the stability of this <br />population is uncertain. <br />Overall, very little is known about the bonytail. Bonytail have been confused with <br />humpback chubs and roundtail chubs. Thus the majority of early data (before and <br />during the decline of the bonytail) is ambivalent and unusable as it may refer to any one <br />of the three species. The taxonomic debate continues as to which species is a <br />4