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1006 Consensus-Based Management ing would lend impartiality to decisions and help equal- ize participants' voices. Ideally, the USFWS should contribute the largest por- tion of the program's funding. This would be consistent with the agency's goals of species recovery. It would be preferable to having the Bureau of Reclamation, an agency primarily interested in water development, fi- nance species recovery. This readjustment, however, would involve shifting Bureau of Reclamation funds to the USFWS, a difficult process. This may be easier than it sounds, however, because both the Bureau of Reclama- tion and the USFWS are within the Department of Inte- rior. Alternatively, a larger subsection of program partic- ipants should raise funds, ensuring broader, more diverse lobbying efforts. Conclusion Given the obvious conflicts between those who want to develop the water and those who want to retain in- stream flows, it would have been surprising if consen- sus-based management in the Colorado River had been effective at recovering the fishes while developing wa- ter use. Although the recovery program has not been an unequivocal success, no program could adequately ac- commodate the diverse interests at stake in the Colo- rado River. Gunderson (1999) notes that Resource managet'5 constantly grapple (explicitly and implicitly) with uncertainty. One approach Is to . . . seek spurious certitude, that is, to break the problem or issue into trivial questions spawning answers and policy ac- tions that are unambiguously "correct," but, in the end, are either irrelevant or pathologic. Perhaps the most common solution is to replace the uncertainty of re- source issues with the certainty of a process, whether that process is a legal vehicle. . . or a new institutlon. We have seen this phenomenon in the Colorado River Basin. Similar complexities arise in any wildlife conser- vation arena. By establishing a fixed, measurable goal, expressed in terms of the real resource at issue, partici- pants can more readily focus on this common goal. If long-term goals are not achieved, short-term conse- quences, such as a jeopardy opinion or drastic restric- tions on emissions or consumption, should be retained. In a world of limited time and financial resources, we cannot blindly rely on a failing recovery program based on a successful consensus-based bureaucracy. Acknowledgments The authors thank S. Daggett and R. Wiygul of EarthJus- tice, Colorado, and D. C. Esty of Yale Law School and the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies for their support and encouragement. They further ex- tend their sincere appreciation to the many participants \ ~ Conservation Biology Volume 15. No.4, August 2001 ~ Brower et 11/, in the Colorado River Recovery Implementation Pro. gram for their candor and insight. Literature Cited Behnke, R. J., and D. E. Benson. 1980. Endangered and threatened fishes of the upper Colorado River basin. Cooperative Extension Service, Colorado State University, Fon Collins. Bernard, T., and J. Young. 1997. A restorative economy: Plumas County, CA. Pages 149-165 in T. Bernard and]. Young, editors, The ecology of hope: communities collaborate for sustainability. New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, British Columbia, Canada. Bolin. J. 1993. Of razorbacks and reservoirs: the ESA's protection of en- dangered Colorado River basin fish. Pace Environmental Law Re- view 11:35-87. Colorado River Recovery Implementation Program. 1987. Recovery implementation program for the endangered fish species in the up- per Colorado River basin. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Region 6, Denver, Colorado. Colorado River Recovery Implementation Program. 1996. 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Pages 43-54 in W. L Minckler and]. E. Deacon, editors. Battle against extinction: native fish management in the American West. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. Lochhead, J. 1996. Upper Colorado river fish: a recovery program that is working-myth or reality? in Biodivet'5ity Protection: Implemen- tation and Reform of the Endangered Species Act. University of Colorado Natural Resources Law Center, Boulder, Colorado. Martinez, P., T. Chan, M. Trammell,]. Wullschleger, and E. Bergerson, 1994. Fish species composition before and after construction of a main stem reservoir on the White River, Colorado. Environmental Biology of Fishes 40:227-239.