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of the Act. Such consultations may identify reasonable and. prudent alternatives to destruction or adverse modification of critical habitat that allow projects to proceed without significant economic impacts. The Upper Basin and San Juan Recovery Implementation Programs (RIPs) have allowed some water development in the Upper Basin to proceed concurrently with efforts to recover endangered fishes. Participants in these programs intend for the RIPS also to provide reasonable and prudent alternatives to the destruction or modification of proposed critical habitat. It is impossible, however, to predict the outcome of all future Section 7 Consultations involving endangered fishes in the Colorado River Basin. If the Upper Basin and San Juan RIPs do not show sufficient and timely progress in recovering endangered fishes, some planned water developments may be modified, scaled back, or foregone. This assumption provides an upper bound on the potential magnitude of economic effects associated with the proposed critical habitat designations. If the RIPs are successful in achieving their objective, many of the negative economic impacts described in this report can be avoided. Utilizing projected economic growth data, economic activity levels were projected for the 20 economic sectors. This assumed that no actions were taken to recover the endangered fishes and formed the without fish scenario. Incorporating the changes in economic activity necessary to recover the fishes led to a second set of economic projections - a with fish scenario. The differences in the without fish and with fish formed the net economic impacts of listing and proposed critical habitat designation. A methodology developed by the USFWS for distinguishing between listing and critical habitat actions under the Act was applied to determine the incremental impacts of the proposed critical habitat designation. Regional Lnpacts The incremental regional economic impacts of proposed critical habitat designations are summarized, in part, in Table I-E-1. The data in this table illustrate the first basic conclusion that can be drawn from the study. For the Colorado River Basin as a whole, regional economic impacts are clearly positive. The stream of impacts over the study period v ,