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represent high value fishery resources. The selection criteria are "docu.,. mented occurrence of state and federally chartered endangered or threatened species" or "habitat maintaining populations of species of high interest as defined by the state" (usually blue ribbon sport fisheries).l Streams included in or under study for the US wild and Scenic River System represent h{gh value recreational or aesthet{c resources. Tables III and IV list energy projects in the Upper Colorado and Upper Missouri River Basins.2 For good reason one might regard such compilations skeptically. The reference for this study, Bureau of Mines Circular IC 8772 (Charles Rich, 1978), includes coal and uranium projects that are in the exploration stage or looking for a buyer, synthetic fuel projects that are in economic limbo, and electric plants blocked by enforcement of environmental regulations. For the present purpose, however, this inclusiveness is attrac- tive. It indicates the location of energy activities well beyond the next decade; alternatively, it suggests the potential scale of development at an earlier period if federal policies promote the production of western energy resources. Figures 1-8 illustrate the collocation of high quality instream sources and energy projects. Perhaps the greatest potential conflicts between the two stem from the protection of rare and endangered species, especially endemic fishes inhabiting large, warm, turbid waters (the reaches most vulnerable to deve lopment). For example, streamflow regimes for the Virgin River (Fig. 1) recommended by the Fish and Wildlife Service to protect the woundfin minnow provoked howls of protest from backers of a storage project near St. George, Utah (see US Senate, 1978). The large river channels of the Upper Colorado Basin--the Green, the Yampa, the White, the Mainstem, and perhaps the San Juan Rivers (Figs. 2, 3 and 4)--support extremely sparse populations of two endan- gered and three threatened fishes. On the Platte River, the possibility of adverse modification to critical whooping crane habitat ultimately forced the Missouri Basin Power Project to pay $7 million to a mitigati.ontrust fund.3 A particular problem with protection of these and other rare species is that their biological requirements are not well known. 'This uncertainty, coupled with the relatively strong language of the Endangered Species Act, encourages a conservati.ve policy towards new water uses and development projects, however remote from critical reaches or however small in proportion to streamflows. Most of the blue ribbon sport fisheries in the West are in mountainous terrain near the headwaters where the principal impacts are probably non-point source discharges from surface mines (see especially Figs. 2, 3, and 4). Sport fisheries in the cold tailwaters of storage projects are vulnerable to \ IStream evaluation maps, the US Fish and wild life Jeff Johnson, US Fish and prepared by 11 Western States ~n Service, show four value classes Wildlife Service, Denver). cooperat ion wi th (Proj ect Manager, 2Excludes railroad spurs, geothermal projects, non-coal-fired electric generating plants, and facilities projected to come on line in 1977 or 1978. 3In return for the payment and several evaporative cooling towers at its 1500 MW River in Wyoming (Harrington, forthcoming). other concessions, MBPP electric plant near the may use Laramie 2