Water Management Symposium 1994 Report

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0 WELCOMING REMARKS — WSWC ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT CONFERENCE by JO CLARK WESTERN GOVERNORS' ASSOCIATION October 5, 1994 My name is Jo Clark and I manage the Land and Water programs for WGA, which include Endangered Species Act related activities. I also coordinate a program called the.Great Plains Initiative which is large scale ecosystem management effort, reaching from Canada to Mexico. The focus of GPI is to reverse declining trends in species before they reach the endangered point. Our emphasis is on enhancing their ecosystems while protecting the well being of Plains' residents. GPI is based on the adage "An ounce of protection is worth a pound of cure." I want to commend both the Water Council and the Western Association for agreeing to hold this joint workshop. It is the first time Pm aware of that two professional associations have agreed to meet together to resolve problems surrounding joint jurisdiction. Yet this kind of meeting is needed with almost any issue. I have attended Western States Water Council meetings off and on for twelve years. Topics such as river morphology, riparian habitat, and healthy aquatic ecosystems have just not been part of the discussion until a species gets listed or a law suit filed. By then it is too late to do much to avoid the problem, options are limited, and positions have hardened, making cooperation much more difficult. I also attended a recent symposium on Large Floodplain River Management in LaCrosse Wisconsin. The symposium was a follow-up to the floods on the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. While there, I met one federal water manager, a Corps of Engineers employee. Holly Stoerker, Director of ICWP and the Upper Mississippi River Basin Commission, and I were as close to state water managers as I found. How can a group of biologists talk about restoring floodplains and natural hydrographs without having the people who manage the rivers there? Unfortunately, water managers and biologists are not unique with this problem. Two weeks ago the Society of American Archaeologists held a conference, one track of which addressed archaeology and eeosystemmanagement. While most of the attendees were either agency archaeologists or academics, they invited six or so non - archaeologists to give them advice on how they might fit into ecosystem management. I hadn't realized until then that archaeology is unique and distinct from anthropology, ethnography, culturml history, architectural history, and landscape history, not to mention all the cross -over fields like ethno- biology. I suggested that as someone trying to make ecosystem management work, it wasn't important to me what a person's field was. I just wanted someone