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Summary <br />NEED FOR THE PROGRAM <br />Historic Habitat <br />The historic Platte River in Nebraska (before the 1880s) was a broad and braided river subject to high <br />spring floods, great loads of sediment, and occasional summer droughts. These conditions caused <br />continuous movement of the braided river channels and sandbars, resulting in a very broad, shallow, <br />sandy, and generally unvegetated channel. The general conditions of the river in the Central Platte are <br />depicted in a photograph, taken in October 1866, near present -day Cozad, Nebraska (figure E -4). <br />The river - related habitat historically used by the target species is summarized below: <br />)i- Open channel habitat (including bare sandbars) for whooping crane roosting and for nesting <br />and foraging of the piping plover and interior least tern. <br />);- Riverflows conducive to whooping crane roosting in spring and fall. <br />Riverflows conducive to nesting by piping plover and interior least terns. <br />);- Riverflows which support forage fish for the interior least tern. <br />Bottomland grasslands and wetlands for whooping crane foraging. <br />);- Lower Platte River habitat for the pallid sturgeon. <br />However, over the past 150 years, as much as 90 percent of the species' habitat in the Platte River has <br />been lost, primarily from the effect of the many water storage and diversion projects throughout the <br />Basin, and associated land development. <br />Water Development <br />Water resource development in the Platte River began in the mid- 1800s. Prior to water development, the <br />Platte River averaged more than 2.8 million acre -feet (MAF) of flow annually at Grand Island. However, <br />the pattern of flow was uneven —the Platte River ran high in the spring, due to the mountain snowmelt, <br />but diminished dramatically in the summer months when irrigation water was needed the most. Flow also <br />varied substantially from year to year. <br />To meet increasing agricultural water needs, water was diverted through canals to fields and also stored in <br />reservoirs. Before 1900, nearly 4,000 canals had been constructed to divert waters from the North, South, <br />and Central Platte Rivers. This number reached nearly 7,000 by 1930. <br />