Endangered and Threatened Species of the Platte River

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Introduction Cooperative Agreement in July 1997 to provide Endangered Species Act (ESA) compliance for all four species simultaneously. The signatories created the Platte River Endangered Species Partnership —which includes water users, environmental groups, and others--4o implement the cooperative agreement. The agreement seeks to develop a recovery implementation program to improve and conserve habitat for the four listed species and seeks to enable existing and new water uses in the basin to proceed without additional regulatory actions related to the species. In 2003, DOI, with input from the Governance Committee of the state - federal partnership, asked the National Research Council to evaluate the scientific validity of the instream flow recommendations, habitat requirements for the species, and connections among the physical systems of the river related to the habitat as specified by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). The present volume is the final report of the committee. This chapter provides a brief overview of the Platte River Basin, the primary management issues that are related to the river and the endangered species, and the governing policies that define potential approaches to these issues. It also explains the specific charge given to the Research Council's Committee on Endangered and Threatened Species in the Platte River Basin. Issues of Endangered and Threatened Species Among the consequences of extensive economic development of the river resources and the associated changes in hydrology, geomorphology, and riparian vegetation were the changes brought about in wildlife populations. The physical changes in the river are reflected in habitat changes. In the central Platte River, more than 40 mil (104 km2) of river channel has been altered. Declines in the populations of piping plovers and interior least terns have been particularly notable. The whooping crane declined to a low of 15 birds in the late 1800s and early 1900s and is now rebounding. Nationally, the pallid sturgeon also has become very rare. All three bird species prefer open, sandy areas near shallow water. Such areas are precisely the type of habitat that has shrunk in response to the hydrological, geomorphic, and vegetation changes. Continent -wide impacts caused the four species to become listed. Whooping crane populations were substantially decreased by overhunting and habitat degradation. Piping plovers and interior least tern populations were greatly reduced by dam and reservoir construction and human interference during nesting. Pallid sturgeon populations were adversely affected by large dams and channel works built on the mainstem Missouri River. Ecological changes in the central Platte River also have had habitat implications for other species, such as neotropical migrant birds that have been favored by expansion of riparian woodlands. Whooping cranes, federally listed in 1967 under the Endangered Species Preservation Act, are the rarest species of crane in the world (Figure 1 -3). Although exact numbers are not known, historical accounts indicate that the central Platte River was a stopping area for whooping cranes, which prefer its long vistas, shallow waters, and food sources in adjacent meadows and grasslands; sightings have been documented since 1820. Piping plovers, federally listed as threatened in 1986 under the ESA, are small migratory shorebirds that breed in three regions of North America: the Atlantic Coast, the Great Lakes, and the northern Great Plains (Figure 1 -4). About 1% of the northern Great Plains breeding population uses the central Platte River as an area for nesting sites — almost exclusively the bare sandy areas associated with the • active channel and in some cases alternative sites with open sandy areas, such as sand and gravel 17