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4. What is the basis for the current goals on augmenting the stocks of razorback sucker and bonytail chub in the lower mainstem of the Colorado River and its reservoirs and how do these population augmentation goals relate to the range-wide recovery of these fishes? To what extent should other populations of the listed fishes be re-introduced in the Lower Basin? What kind of habitat restoration should precede such population augmentation or re- introduction? 5. How should the ecosystem for the Lower Colorado River Program be defined? How will this program restore and protect the biotic and abiotic functions of the ecosystem that is defined? 6 How will the Lower Colorado River Program account for the full range of the habitats needed for the recovery or to avoid the listing of all of the species that it will cover besides the listed fishes? To what extent can the program assure that any included species will not be listed? 7. What regulatory certainty is appropriate under the ESA before the Lower Basin habitats needed for recovery of the listed big river fishes are more definitely prescribed? CONCLUSIONS Range-wide Recovery Planning. The recovery of the Colorado River's listed, big river fishes is being compartmentalized into implementation and compliance programs for the Upper Basin, San Juan, Grand Canyon, and Lower Basin, which may make sense politically and to accommodate the major differences between these subbasins. It does not make sense, however, as a substitute for recovery planning across the geographic ranges of these fishes. Nor does it make sense for Regions 2 and 6 of the FWS to be asserting divergent definitions of what constitutes recovery for these fishes and not be seeking to reconcile these definitions across these basins. Range-wide recovery goals and plans would seem to be the foundation for coordinating these more customized programs and for getting them to complement each other. The range-wide recovery plans for these fishes urgently need to be updated, or completed in the first instance for the razorback, and related to each of the programs for recovery implementation and regulatory compliance. Leaving such range-wide planning unattended invites overlap or at worse counter-productive competition between these programs. Habitat Prescriptions. Updated recovery planning for these fishes should more clearly address how the habitats needed for recovery throughout their geographic ranges will be specified. For the most part, the official designation of critical habitat failed to provide workable habitat prescriptions. It did not add any specificity to the quantity, timing, and location of the flows or reservoir levels needed for recovery, or identify those areas within the 100 year floodplain that needed to be protected or how they should be protected. This generalization obscures rather than clarifies the regulatory questions of what constitutes an adverse modification of critical habitat and whether federal permitting or project operations will appreciably reduce the likelihood of recovery. Nor does this habitat designation. provide much insight into the relative importance and function of the habitat that should be protected across the ranges of these fishes. Is all of the designated critical habitat really essential to recovery? To what extent does naturally functioning habitat have to be protected or restored? How should "naturally functioning" habitat be defined? Can it be defined quite differently for different basins? The broad brush nature of the critical habitat designation also confuses the rationale for re-stocking the listed fishes and augmenting existing populations. If the habitat needs of these fishes cannot be prescribed and 23