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the programs for recovery implementation and regula- tory compliance. Leaving such range-wide planning unattended invites overlap or at worse counter-produc- tive competition between these programs. HABITAT PRESCRIPTION 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 pre- scriptions. 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 designa- tion also confuses the rationale for re-stocking the list- ed fishes and augmenting existing populations. If the habitat needs of these fishes cannot be prescribed and met, then such re-stocking and augmentation will not lead to self-sustaining populations. Without the requi- site habitat, some form of intervention will be needed to sustain fish populations and may only serve to bank the fishes genetically. 68 ,. REFORM OF THE ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT (ESA) The compartmentalization of the recovery of the Colorado River's listed fishes is rooted to some extent in the ESA which does not clearly integrate recovery planning with critical habitat designation, with consul- tation by federal agencies, or with habitat conservation planning by private and state entities, and which does not give recovery planning enough force. While sound range-wide recovery planning, customized recovery implementation, and tailored regulatory compliance for the Colorado's listed fishes could be instituted under the current ESA, this law could be amended to provide a more forceful and timely path for recovery planning that is directly tied to specific designations of critical habitat, that guides cost effective recovery implementation across the geographic range of any listed species, and that is the basis for consistent and reasonably certain regulatory compliance. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This paper benefited greatly from comments on earlier drafts by Marty Meisler, Barry Saunders, John Shields, W.L. Minckley, Harold Tyus, James Deacon, Lori Potter, and John Hamill. At the Colorado River Workshop itself, we appreciated the comments from the panelists - Dan Luecke, Chris Harris, and George Arthur, from those who spoke at the break-out sessions, and from all the others at the workshop who offered their thoughts about the paper to us. We also thank the Grand Canyon Trust and U.S. Bureau of Reclamation for sponsoring an outstanding workshop and giving us the opportunity to present this paper, but remain solely responsible for contents.