7281 ‎(2)‎

• UCREFRP Catalog Number: 7281
• Author: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
• Title: Recovery Implementation Program for Endangered Fish Species in the Upper Colorado River Basin, Environmental Assessment, November 1987.
• USFW Year: 1987.
• USFW - Doc Type: Denver, Colorado.
• Copyright Material: NO

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CHAPTER II
ALTERNATIVES, INCLUDING THE PROPOSED ACTION
obtained and secured compensatory instream flow rights. In
addition, it may cost water developers more to offset
depletion impacts under this scenario than under the Proposed
Action because Section 7 consultation would focus on
offsetting project depletion impacts. The Federal government
would acquire Federal water rights to protect and recover the
endangered fishes under Section 5 of the Endangered Species
Act, and the Supremacy Clause. Instream flow rights would be
in the name of the Federal government and administered by
States. If the Federal government asserted its Section 5
authority in this manner, the States could be expected to
legally challenge the Federal government, plus they could
lobby Congress for legislative changes in the Endangered
Species Act. Finally, if the Service finds it to be a
"taking" under Section 9 of the Endangered Species Act, the
Federal government could take strong action to control
problem nonnative species (restrict stocking efforts, control
problem nonnative species in specific reaches) and take by
anglers (preventative and punitive measures), regardless of
State cooperation.
Asserting and implementing Federal authority as described
above would severely strain certain State-Federal
relationships. It would result in major confrontations
between the affected States and the Federal government over
their respective water management and fish and wildlife
management authorities. Finally, this alternative would not
be in accord with Congressional policy, stated in the
Endangered Species Act, for Federal cooperation with State
and local agencies to resolve water resource issues in
concert with conservation of endangered species (Section
2(c)(2)). Therefore, this scenario was rejected.
C. Multi-strategy alternatives: Different strategies can be
combined in various permutations to create multi-strategy
alternatives. However, it would be impossible to evaluate the
relative efficacy of multi-strategy alternatives in recovering
the rare fish without further research in areas such as rare
fishes habitat needs, river ecosystem dynamics, impacts of
nonnative fishes, impacts of sportfishing, and recovery
techniques. The Recovery Implementation Program identifies
reasonable measures based on existing knowledge that can be used
to recover the rare fishes and provides a logical screening
process with which the best combination of recovery actions can
be determined, maximizing recovery success with a minimum of
impacts on other resources.
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