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non-native fishes, genetic conservation and restocking of the native.fishes, and coordinated monitoring and research. Another basic concept was that instream flows needed for recovery would be protected and administered under state law. water users and conservation groups were invited to the table, and after another three years of hard debate, the program was formulated in September 1987 as the "Recovery Implementation Program for Endangered Fish Species in the Upper Colorado River Basin" in what later became know as the "Blue Book". The program was officially initiated in January 1988 with the execution of a short agreement committing the federal and state agencies to cooperate in program funding and implementation as set out in the Blue Book. The San Juan River subbasin was excluded from this program because this subbasin implicated another state (New Mexico), several Indian tribes, another region of the FWS, somewhat different fish habitat, and the very controversial Animas-La Plata water project. Another recovery program was subsequently developed for the San Juan River Basin, which will be discussed below. The Blue Book explained that one of the primary goals for the Upper Basin Program was to coordinate the implementation of the range-wide recovery plans for the squawfish and two chubs, as these plans applied to the Upper Basin outside of the San Juan River subbasin, and to manage the razorback sucker to avoid its listing. The Blue Book summarized the range-wide recovery goals from the plans for the three listed fishes at that time as the maintenance and protection of "self-sustaining populations" and their "natural habitat", which may have put more emphasis on the protection of natural habitat as a recovery goal, and suggested the same kind of range-wide recovery goal for the then unlisted razorback sucker. The Blue Book suggests that populations of all four fishes can be delisted just in the Upper Basin (again excluding the San Juan subbasin) independently of the status of other populations of the same fish elsewhere, but does not discuss why any of the Upper Basin populations can be considered "distinct" and therefore eligible to be delisted independently. To date only preliminary, interim management objectives for Upper Basin fish populations have been formulated, while the prescription of the natural habitats needed for recovery has remained controversial. Upper Basin Program Elements Flow quantification and protection Under the new program the FWS was still responsible for quantifying the instream.flows needed for recovery that would be legally protected under state law. After the next-round of flow recommendations issued by the FWS were again challenged, a senior scientist from outside the Recovery Program was asked to review them. That scientist, Dr. Jack Stanford, largely endorsed the FWS flow recommendations in 1993 and offered a broader, ecosystem approach for refining them. Stanford recommended experimenting with higher peak flows and more stable base flows in river reaches regulated by large, federal reservoirs, and called for a protecting the ecosystem functions of relatively unregulated or undepleted reaches. With this general endorsement and instruction, the FWS revised its flow recommendations once more for two priority reaches -- the lower Yampa River and the 15 Mile Reach of the Colorado River (between the major irrigation diversions in the Grand Valley and the confluence with the Gunnison River). These revised recommendations still sought the protection of millions of acre feet per year of flow in these downstream reaches, and were still adamantly questioned. At the same time, the program participants from Colorado recognized that there were substantial uncertainties about when and where water development could occur in accordance with state law and interstate water compacts. At this juncture, a group of specialists met for over a year to consider whether Colorado water law and policies could be applied to address the twin uncertainties about what instream flows were needed for fish recovery and 8