So we're interviewing Larry stevens, one of the members of the glen
canyon dam adaptive management program. And there will be a series of
questions starting with during what years Larry were you involved in the
Glen canyon dam adaptive management program? And in what capacity As a
graduate student? In 1980 I began researching riparian vegetation in Grand
Canyon. And In 1982, the predecessor of the Glen Canyon Dam adaptive
management program began, it was called the Glen canyon Environmental
studies program in two phases. One phase started in 1982 that run, it ran
until the end of 1987. And in 1987 to 1990 was GCS too. And as a grad
student, I was studying the effects of Glen canyon dam on riparian
vegetation in Grand Canyon. And that put me in a kind of an interesting
place because as this large environmental program was initiated by the
Department of Interior, I was the, I was a student of riparian ecology and
shoreline ecology and the river. And um I was able to run quite a few
projects and and get quite a bit of support from my graduate studies
through the program. And I I worked then for the National Park Service
after my PhD, I became a volunteer and then an employee of the Department
of Interior. In the later phases of the GCS program took a hiatus of about
three years or four years and then began as a representative for
environmental purposes. Environmental voices on the present day glen
Canyon dam adaptive management program, we call it the A. M. P. So uh so
since 2004 to the president had been on the AMP as both a technical
representative as and as a as a full representative of the program. Great.
And while you've been involved in the program all of these decades, what
research or projects did you work on and what do you think you were able
to come to understand insights or results from your research?
It's a long list of projects. Um
I started out working on riparian vegetation, pursued that for almost 20
years in in terms of the research, looking at the effects of the dam on
vegetation right there and vegetation is valuable to wildlife and
recreation, ists and and many other, many other interests. So there's a
lot of interest in how the river affects the shoreline habitat.
Those projects and papers ranged from the natural history of individual
species, some native, some non native plant species along the river, to to
river ecology as a as a kind of grand grand scheme, understanding how flow
regulation affects the the distribution of shoreline habitats and what
that means in terms of germination propagation of vegetation.
In the middle of that became part service employee and became interested
in the endangered species on the river and what their impacts, what what
the impacts of the dam were on those endangered species. And that
precipitated the whole series of studies on endangered bald eagles,
peregrine falcons, humpback chub, southwestern willow flycatcher, funny
little snail we call the kanab amber snail. Uh And those studies also,
each of those were multi year efforts with many individuals as a park
service psychologist for Grand Canyon. What he did was coordinate teams of
researchers. At one point I had a $3 million Geo
morphology of the river and the effects of the dam on on those topics.
Through a very detailed studies on the, on the life history of a snail.
Pretty much everything in between. So very coarse scale to find scale
analyses and and played a role then in in how the decisions about those
resources in relation to dam operations got made with the, with the whole
team of really wonderful researchers to work with. They're both academics
and policy people.
Let's see. Those studies gave way to uh larger scale studies of of how
rivers function. So that that precipitated more more interdisciplinary
research and that's why I've been pursuing that for the last 20 years. But
also began to understand that these river systems are really fed by small
patches of the, of the environment and those um small patches of
environment are quite interesting because they might do a lot of the uh,
might support a lot of the species in at various times of of the their
lives. For example, tributary mouths. Very important for fish movement in
and out fish spawning and whatnot springs along the river. Also very
important for as hotspots of biological activity. And that precipitated a
whole wave of studies. And now I run an organization called the Spring
stewardship Institute out of the Museum of Northern Arizona and Flagstaff.
And uh, that has blossomed into a global inquiry into the ecology and and
improving stewardship of springs.
I bring some of that expertise to the table when I, when I as a
representative of the adaptive management work group, can you tell me a
little bit about what you think the larger purposes of some of those
studies was what was the reason for doing all of that research on the
impacts of the dam on vegetation or springs or beaches? Yeah. So behind
all this, I'm also a commercial river runner in a long time Grand Canyon
devotee. So it's the landscape that inspires me most. So it's the love of
the land that that really captures that attention and from that larger
perspective on on landscape. Um, the, the impact of the dam on this, you
know, largely wilderness landscape is just really very intriguing because
it's such a social circus, so many voices, so many perspectives and, and
it's, it's over the over the decades has become the most heavily studied,
most intensively studied river on earth and getting to interact with all
those people, each with their own kind of very particular worldview about
how things work. It's, it's a, it's a marvelous social environment to be
able to um engage in try to improve understanding of and and work for the
protection of it. Did any of the research that you do lead to any
management decision making that made a difference in those ecological
conditions that you care about? Absolutely. As scientists were not
advocates, we are we are except for advocates for good science. Um,
however, the topics we choose to to pursue do eventually uh have an impact
in some cases, so emphasis on the, on the riparian zone, emphasis on the
role of um, many, many different meetings where um participated in where
some theme would be taken up. And and so I would have the opportunity as a
scientist to say, okay, what do we really know about that? How can we get
it? How can we improve enough of what we want to know about it to be able
to model and predict what say damn impacts are on that given resource,
whether it's sand distribution or the shape of of sandbars over time or um
or the arrival of of unexpected species in the in the landscape and how
the dam will will affect their their populations over time. Uh, so it's
weaving all those things together. Many of the things that I've studied
have have been published and and and are cited. So it's uh, the decisions
that get made about those topics often are falling back on some of the
research I did, then so much of the funding for the program goes to
funding research so that we have a more solid knowledge foundation for
making adaptive management decisions about dam operations. How well do you
think the program over time has integrated that scientific research with
adaptive management? There are two different things and they could be
integrated well or not so well. What's your opinion about that
relationship? So uh, interesting story there interesting kind of evolution
there is that when we began, it was a shotgun approach to understanding
the system. The Secretary of the Interior said, I don't want this issue on
our, on my table, Here's the money get it out of my administration. And of
course that worked out quite well. Uh it was, it took eight years for that
to become an environmental impact statement. Uh, the second largest in the
nation's history. And it took that um, that that it took it completely out
of the context of the, of the Reagan administration and put it into the
Clinton administration. Uh, so that, that secretary solved his problem by
throwing money at it. Um, but initially, you know, there had been
literally no inventory of, of most of the, of the, of the, of the canyon
environment is a huge environment. So we really knew almost uh Very little
about. We had some very good early studies on some of the flow and and how
flooding happened in 1945 Andy Mckee did a really wonderful paper on how a
flood works well. So, if you're trying to measure flow, the floor of the
river drops as you're measuring as the flood comes through, because the
materials are being scoured out and therefore your flow measurements have
to have to keep in, keep in contact changing river as they're going
through. Great information. Okay, how do you implement that? Almost 300
mile long river to understand how flows are moving through and what, what
can you and can't you actually get to understand given the standing of the
mathematics and the and the modeling capacity for understanding flow and
sediment transport, All that had to be discovered in the system in a very
physical way, how beaches are changing through time. Well, what do you use
for? How do you measure that? Uh And and some of the earliest measurements
were simple survey transect at from a point on the beach. Okay, maybe had
three transits from one point on the beach. That's not really very much
information in terms of how the whole system is changing and so expanding
that network of places that are being monitored. Um developing
technologies that can actually allow you to to map the entire surface of
the beach and the floor of the river because everything is changing after
a flood, move sediment through all that had to be discovered here. And I
got to play a pretty seminal role in figuring some of that stuff out so
that it was quite exciting in terms of the management decision making
associated with that. Um various you know analyses exist but one of the
most popular one is to log transformed the flow and uh and sediment
transport relationship which is a power function When you do that, of
course you get these beautiful straight lines for. But if you kind of
break those data about 3D transform those data, you get this incredible
scatter of points. But in doing that, what we discovered is there's a
point at about 20,000 to 25,000 cfs which is the upper level of dam
operations that really starts to bump settlement out. Okay, there's a
starting point for making decisions and about about flow regulation and
how fast you, how fast the flow fluctuates. Also plays a role in how much
sediment is brought into the water column and shunted out. So discovering
those elements and working with people that had the the mathematics skills
to be able to put those stories together, gave us a way to begin to manage
the dam and literally this is the best managed river now in the world. In
terms of understanding how flow and sediment interact.
Can I ask you to step back uh and give us concisely a broader perspective
on what the larger goal of the adaptive management program is. What's the
whole point of having created, this is a mp. You want the uh the the
politically appropriate soundbite or the real reason. Alright, well, the
real reason is to prevent river management from falling into a lot of
litigation.
The real purpose of the program is to bring stakeholders together and have
them communicate with each other to prevent lawsuits from happening. Um So
that helps
facilitate the delivery of power and um maybe to some extent helps with
the continuity of the environmental uh management issues. In what way does
the existence of the adaptive management program eliminate the likelihood
of litigation?
When we began in the early 80s, this was a closed door process decisions
will get made, they get thrown out to the public. The public could sue the
government about some of those decisions, the big brouhaha happened when
the Bureau of Reclamation in 1982 1918 1982 decided to rewind the
generators and up the amount of flow fluctuation that was going through
the river. This is a system that had uh daily tides of more than 15 ft
moving through the river. So it was incredibly unnatural, bizarre
environmental transition to subject this, this river in the middle of the
wilderness to Uh and the by that time, I'll see by the early 80s, probably
200,000 pretty wealthy Americans had gone through the river on river trips
and when their guides wrote them and said We need to slow down on this
slowdown. This flow fluctuation story and limit that to to protect the
beaches of Grand Canyon, a lot of people responded and that's the original
decision of the Secretary of the Interior and James Watt was responding to
in 1982. Well, let's put some money on this and get it out of our, get it
over here. Um So By having that culminated in an environmental impact
statement in 1990,
and created the context for public involvement. And now any member of the
public can go to the meetings. Any of the stakeholders can sit in the
meetings. They're fully apprised of all the information available. They
play they play a role in terms of voting on different uh different issues
that may come up in terms of dam management. And if you're involved in
that process, it's pretty hard to sue it to sue the process to sue the
government for it. Because you've been a part of the rule making part of
the the advisement of the secretary, the purpose of that adaptive
management program is to advise the Secretary Secretary of Interior, how
best to manage the dam. So, in a sense, you're saying the project is as
much about generating knowledge to inform decision making as it is about
democracy, public engagement and conflict resolution. Yes, you're so the
public policy. Uh Part of it has two sides though, because every everyone
of the stakeholders has an agenda that they don't fully share. And the
Federal government of course has an agenda that it doesn't fully share,
but because this is such a controversial river, there are more politics
than water in the Colorado River, as you know, uh, there are um, on all
sides, there are agendas that are being pushed, many of which conflict
directly with each other. And there's lots and lots of conflict here. So
to, to limit that contact that, to limit that conflict, it becomes an open
process has become an open process and with many stakeholders that no
longer have to bang their shoe, we actually had one of the stakeholders
banging his shoe on the table. Um, but these folks don't have to do that
anymore. They actually have gotten to know each other, communicate with
each other, it's just some extent and uh, and they have a context for
being able to air their concerns. So it's your feeling that it has been
overall a successful effort at engaging stakeholders and generating
information from scientific research to help improve the management of the
river system. Yes, I would say that the science is stellar. Not, not
complete by any means and not fully farsighted enough yet, but, but quite
quite extraordinary scientific achievements in beginning to understand
this incredibly complex big river system. That part of it's been quite
successful. The social side of it um, is it's been fabulous to get to know
all the different stakeholders. Um, the tribes, the, the, the federal
agency folks, different departments. The Department of Energy plays a role
here. Um So it's been it's been quite great to be able to engage socially
with with those folks and and really just better understand their points
of view.
The real test of of the program however, comes when it comes when major
decisions are made on the on a whole suite of policy. So we just completed
the second dies after the 20 years of the adaptive management program.
We've just completed the second D. I. S. Was that a smooth process? I
don't think any of the stakeholders were were completely pleased with the
outcome. It maintains the status quo, which is not too surprising, but the
ability for any any of the scientists or the policy folks to actually
really push a shift in policy was pretty limited. So that was informative
for the resistance that the um uh federal bureaucracy has to changing the
way operations are done was informative. That hasn't changed all that much.
I don't think so. You said the science has been stellar. So that leads to
my next question. Has there, in your mind been any important science that
should have been done that you wanted to do or you wanted other people to
do? That has not been accomplished yet much much. When, when the quality
of the science that has been done has been um quite applied and a lot of
it quite applied. How do we manage the damn force that flow and sediment.
Those uh that information is is world class. There's no other river with
this level of understanding and of monitoring to support that. Does that
mean we understand how this ecosystem works? No not even not not there yet.
Uh These are these are questions that will take decades if not centuries
to really to really answer things like the nutrient dynamics. Who created
a lake Powell. This second nation's second largest reservoir in the 48
states anyway. Second largest reservoir, huge body of water 180 miles long.
And the nutrient dynamics that are going on in the reservoir affected the
downstream river. And we're just beginning to uh to to to piece some of
that story together. So it's a it's a big question. Um We have monitoring
data, the scientists that are hired through the U. S. Geological Survey or
have not been ecosystem scientists for the most part. Therefore we don't
get these kind of big big big issue questions like okay we have got an
ecosystem that's responding over long periods of time to modify nutrient
inputs and we don't know about that yet. So there's a big arena there
still to be to be opened up To my disappointment because I left the
riparian world riparian vegetation world after working on it for 20 years.
We don't have a model of how the dam uh affects a predictive model where
that we can understand how the dam affects the development of riparian
vegetation. That's too bad. That's something that's been quite um uh,
important because as vegetation grows up in a very profuse way on the
beaches begins to crowd out campers, the vegetation takes over the camping
camping areas. And so what's the right way to manage that vegetation with
flows of the dam? And it's also been um, a situation in which the
there's there's there's a lot of resistance in the part of the water and
power components to releasing flows for for experimental purposes and
through Brute Forest. We've we've, over the last 25 years or so, managed
to
uh, institute planned flooding in the river. But these are small planned
floods. They can only they only run up to 45,000 CFS, which is the total
output of the dam, not the spillways. And there are big questions that lie
just beyond that envelope will flow that we can't, we can't address, uh,
haven't been able to address experimentally yet.
Okay. I think we need to break Here since it's two o'clock and the next,
we're just coming in in two minutes. Okay, Actually coming in. Yes. So if
you want to continue, if you want to have,
so you decide I'm I'm whatever. Yeah,
10 more minutes. Let's see. There, we have more to go with with what
hasn't been done yet.
I represent an environmental voice on the adaptive management workgroup
and uh, and a scientific it environmental voice for me, it's really
important to understand what species we have in the, in that land, in that
river landscape, not just the fish, some of which are endangered. That
attracts all the policy attention. Not just a couple of bird species that
are again endangered and therefore used for management,
management policy purposes. But what's the total picture of, of life in
that river? We don't know, we don't know what that is. There are, you know
, on the order of probably 10,000 insect species, some of which are rare,
some of which have probably gone extinct in the last 25 years, 30 years.
And, and so one of the emphasis that I placed on the system outside of the
program is to try to compile information on the biodiversity of the river
because it's simply not known yet. That's a big task and there's no
funding for it. So it's a slow go. But, but kind of group by group were
beginning to pull together what actually exists in the river corridor. And
there are many new species we've described, uh, just in the last a few
years, half a dozen new species of insects and molluscs in the river in
the river corridor. So lots lots still to learn there. And that's another
big arena of, of, of knowledge to be improved upon which the program
doesn't pay much attention to.
So you've mentioned that you've been involved since 1980. So you've seen a
lot of changes come to the program. How would you, um, sort of if you're
gonna period eyes the adaptive management program, what would be the key
periods and moments of transition?
So I actually started in 1974, but studies before that, That's 1974 - 76.
Period was the first ecological inventory of the river. The dam was
having effects. We're beginning to see them non native species like
Burroughs, tamarisk, other things were having an impact on the river
corridor. And this was the first opportunity to, to begin to describe that
those impacts. So that early study, what I think was was, was a first step
in this whole process that was done by the Museum of Northern Arizona with
steve steven crullers was, was the lead on that
in the,
they're one step before that was of course in the uh, Early 60s, 60 60.
The dates right here, 69, 70, 71, the uh, a really dramatic increase in
the number of people coming to visit the Grand Canyon through the river.
So there's uh, we went from just a few 100 people Coming through the river
corridor in the, in the mid-60s to 20,000 in 1970 by 1970-71. That was
probably the first big, big step in this process because uh, suddenly
there was public interest in the, in the river. So then the ecological
inventory was done highly informative, set the stage for a lot of future
studies and identified fish species that were rare historic photos that
could be re matched and looked at the change through time. Really dramatic
stuff that way. And a lot of basic information on what was living in the
river corridor In the early 80s. Um, the filling of Glen Canyon of Lake
Powell was was kind of a big deal because for the first time we had a full
lake. Okay, so this is the future of water management in the southwest are
the second largest reservoir is now full.
Early eighties. Not too much going on a test of the spillway in 82 but the
, the political political element was rewinding the generators and
inflaming this now large public that was exposed to the cannon knew it and
didn't want it degraded.
What was that? They rewind. The rewind decision was 1918,
In 1983. Then 19, late 1980 to 1982 the secretary of the Interior threw
some money at this program called Glen keane Environmental Studies. Uh,
that coincided with that winter, the 80 winter of 82 83 was the largest
snowpack that we've had in 100 years. Ah, that filled the reservoir was
full. They didn't have a way to manage for more than full. I didn't know
what to do with all the water that came through. Uh, the biggest flood in
post damn time came through. Just nearly took out the damn uh $25 million
of damage to the damn it glen canyon. The potential for loss of all the
dams downstream of glen canyon dam. It had failed really big deal. Every
it was an El Nino but coupled with a big volcanic eruption. So that
combination is what gives us our biggest snowpacks. that was probably the
biggest snowpack since 1880 for the Krakatoa eruption.
So 80, so that that kicked off this GCS Phase one from 83 through 87. And
lots of documentation and reports on that. Not so much peer reviewed
publication, but if you, but some but mostly these are government
publications From 80s and 88 through 90. Uh 1991. Really uh really 95
maybe for the the uh the clinic and Environmental Studies, Phase two,
That study was input of glinting in environmental studies. Phase one
pointed to the dam is having a big impact on the system. The Department of
Interior came back and asked, Okay, so if it's having an effect, What are
the effects and can we modify them modify dam operations? So the Phase two
was about pursuing those questions.
The that E. I. S culminated. Also, Grand Canyon Protection Act of 1992
set the stage for having this be a requirement that the operations of the
dam not degrade Grand the Grand Canyon River corridor. That was kind of a
big step there 1995, the IS was was finalized, 1996. The record of
decision was signed. That set the stage for the adaptive management
program to begin
much learning much policy uh ah process going on during all those phases
of course. Um Then adaptive management program gets established in 1997
and runs for 20 years accumulating lots and lots of really high quality
scientific information, especially on applied applied issues such as how
to manage the river for sediment and and how to um and how to manage
endangered humpback chub. Those two questions have been the dominant
questions.
And uh so this recent uh E. I. S. That was kind of recapitulating uh
revisiting all that information and trying to set a new stage for for
management For the next 20 years. Was was just signed a couple of months
ago.
Well two months ago.
So those are kind of the big steps in the in the in the political process
, I would say December 2016 is when the i it was either december Janet
might have been january.
I can't quite remember when the announcement was in. It was signed in las
Vegas. It might have been december. Yeah, the temp.
Yeah. Now interestingly going on with all that you say are the time.
Another minute. Sorry. Uh interestingly going along with that whole
political process. Were the ecological surprises every year. A new
surprise. Um I mean just right from the, every year that we've had this
program going, some new surprise happened oftentimes it's the arrival of
some new species. Initially they were, we had bald eagles moving into the
system in 1983. The first bald eagle was seen in Grand Canyon actually
living in the river of occupying the river corridor feeding on fish and,
and being bald eagles were endangered at that at that point and therefore
having a new endangered species move into the system was a really big idea
that precipitate a big issue that, that precipitated a whole wave of
studies about bald eagle. Um, uh, just before that peregrine falcon
population in grand candidate erupted. They were also endangered at the
time. Therefore a whole suite of studies on peregrine falcons came about.
When was that? Well, it was recognized. I think 1976 I did a trip. We
found only four peregrine falcon nests in the whole, uh, the whole canon
4-6 x 19
80
five or so, we had more than 100 pairs as in part related to a recovery
program in the rockies. The americans all came into Grand Canyon to feed.
Um, it's just been 11 species after another. Now, the, these initial
surprises were, were endangered species or important things like Ducks. We
had no duck breeding in the, in the, along the river until 1982. Uh,
mallard ducks began to breathe in the river and now every Eddie and
there's thousands of eddies in the, in the, in the river system, pretty
much every Eddie in the upper upper canyon has a pair of mallard ducks
breeding in it. So um you know that change happened um
more recently it's been in danger. It's been, it's been non native species
that begin to begin to arrive. New Zealand mud snail is a big deal
initially uh and it is quite dominant in the upper upper sections. Uh
about 2009, the first quagga mussel was detected. Quagga mussel stand to
change the entire structure of the ecosystem. So these are surprises that
are uh they could have been anticipated I suppose. But but we didn't
really,
I don't have that kind of for our vision of the future vision and so these
things happen. And then, you know, the ecosystem tracks off in some other
direction.
Early on. The policy was well because we understand the river is colder
now because of the damn than it was in pre damn time. The emphasis was on
warming the river with it with a temperature control device put on the
damn to draw to draw surface water off and warm up the downstream river.
Great $200 million. Now, $500 million. Very expensive undertaking. That
whole discussion though recently has shifted to keeping the river colder
to keep things like quagga mussel and uh and some of the non native fish
at bay. So the whole mindset about temperature control. Oh we have to
change that when warm up a huge amount of effort going into warming up the
river. Now it's well we need to keep the river colder. So uh as these
different surprises have happened, there's been different kind of impacts
on on basic thoughts about policy. Has there been a change in how um
participants in the adaptive management program have thought about the
effort to reshape the colorado river ecosystems,
I would say behind the program are a whole suite of biases, uh individual
stakeholders or stakeholder groups have a have a have a particular focus
on their resource of interest and and those have really not changed very
much. It's been more how to manipulate the other side to get them to uh to
uh to to to uh to focus on the topics that keep the keep those individual
biases viable. And as as an example, you know, largely the the folk the
President program with this L temp is focused on sand and humpback chub to
resources. Those are two of, You know, 10,000 20,000 different possible
resources we could look at in the river. Um but uh the program has has has
kind of migrated to those two points and and trying to solve those
problems. And actually pretty much has uh now at least at least
understands how to manage those two resources, but it but it doesn't pay
attention to the many, many many other other issues that are that, uh, in
that system and that are important drivers.
Okay. Okay. Yes, it's perfect for about three minutes at an administrative
level. What was learned and accomplished during the time you're involved
at an administrative level. Okay. Not a good question. How would we
rephrase that?
Just what was learned and accomplished because I didn't want them to focus
on one study. Yeah. Right, right. Yeah.
I think the question might be more, what did you learn about these, the
three legs of the stool?
That might be more more of a way to get folks to open up? Great. Everybody
learns all the time about mm hmm. In the windows of policy. Uh huh.
And the sciences of course erupting all the time.
Okay.
What do you think has been the value of the program? So now we're getting
big overall, What do you think has been the value of the program? The next
one in your opinion would have been the program's failings and limitations.
And how might they be addressed in the future?
And finally, not finally give us 10-15 keywords that are significant to
the program and its evolution. Okay. And then the last one, who else do
you recommend that we interviewed for their perspective? So we'll try to
get through those good.
Are you ready?
So we were talking about significant changes that occurred in the program
over the time you've been involved and you mentioned that there were
changes in science and changes in management. How about changes in the
social environment of the program over time?
Yeah, the program began as as a uh internally directed closed program.
That was if there was advice going to the Secretary of the Interior about
how to manage the dam that was not available to the public only by
requesting comments on the rewind. Did the public even find out that the
that the dam managers were going to increase the amount of flow
fluctuation and that. But they did find that out and that that uh that uh
precipitated the initial wave of public concern that then led to the led
to the entire program.
They're so engagement of the public is one element that that was was new
to this whole process. Engagement of the tribes was also quite um
challenging for the, for the, for the managing agencies. The tribes are
regarded as sovereign states, sovereign nations and they, and they don't
talk to each other. And so it was only by the invitation of the Department
of Interior which oversees the Bureau of Indian Affairs that you would
actually begin to initiate conversations with the tribes finding out which
tribes um regarded Grand Canyon as a as a, as part of their homeland was
an important step. And there are About seven or 8 tribes that do that that
have have it as a key feature of their, of their of their culture, some of
the several of the tribes have Grand Canyon as their place of emergence
into this dimension. Um and that that whole understanding is is gives them
a very great focus on Grand Canyon and therefore they have been engaged
with stakeholders. There are half a dozen tribes now engaged in the in the
program, but initially there was no way no mechanism to engage the tribes
or you have to have discussions about what the tribal values were that
should be paid attention to in the management program. When were they
brought into the stakeholder process, GCS Phase one, which was led by
David Wagner. Um uh he single pretty much single handedly turned the the
battleship of the Bureau of Reclamation 90 degrees to bring it into open
social process. Um active science, tribal engagement and uh and a dialogue
about how to manage rather than a rather than a uh monolithic uh in uh in
house kind of effort by the federal government. What years was He was the
he was a GCS program manager from 1980, late 82 until 1997.
So, uh I'd say engagement of the tribes has been one of the biggest steps
forward to this program and, you know, for the first time. Um not only the
program, but the public is actually beginning to learn about what tribal
values our and they're they're quite different than than the management
values that are held by any other stakeholder groups Of the 27
stakeholders that are on the adaptive management program.
Um Other major shifts there
on the social side of it. The transition from the GCS program to the AMP
was was quite challenging. David Garrett became the uh the uh Grand Canyon
monitoring research center. Chief USgs became a USgs office by about year
2000 or so. Um but for a while, that was the Department of Interior Office
that that took over the GCS program. Once you start one of these programs
, uh this this GCS program engaged many, many people across the southwest
, all of whom began to began um talking to each other for the first time
began um uh asking questions, some of them doing research, some agencies
following there. Uh their their interests in the program meeting together
trying to figure out how to how to how to better understand what damn
impacts were and and how how if possible to mitigate those on the Grand
Canyon.
That transition was was quite difficult because it was an established
program had been running from 1983 to 1997, 14, 15 years and then became
uh then it was taken over by a much more formal and higher up federal
process. Yeah. Many, many people became disillusioned with that transition
quite a bit of discomfort with transitioning this information system,
information gathering
structure that had been developed into the U. S. Geological survey.
Nonetheless, that's the way that that program went. And the US US as as a
bureaucracy took it over and and rules the roost. Now, Why was the
transition in 1997 disillusioning to some people?
Because it was it was it was a pretty open uh freewheeling program up to
that point. If somebody had a question uh finding the expertise to answer
that question was was was there it became constrained after 97 by the by
the bureaucracies that were involved first Department of Interior and then
by the and then by the US Geological Survey. So now it's returned to a
highly bureaucratized kind of information management system.
What did you learn over the many decades you've been involved? What have
you learned about the program? And it's what I'll call. It's three stools.
The science aspect of the program, the management decision making aspect
of the program and the social aspect that you're also been talking The,
what have you learned about the relationship between the three the
revolution, Which ones have been more influential at what times and change
over time. All right.
Uh If the three legs of this adaptive management stool are um
policy science and social process
when I started, of course I was wrapping up my master's degree. I had no
more idea of how the government worked than any other american does the
Department of Interior houses uh together the National Park Service which
defends the integrity of natural landscapes with the Bureau of Reclamation
, which is, was at the time the um, you know, not only managing the dam,
but also managing marketing and making money off of the off of the process
as well as the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Fish and Wildlife Service and
uh, and other other other agencies within the department. These agencies
have directly conflicting mandates and yet they're all being managed as
one. So, understanding what those conflicts were, how they, how the
Department of Interior has to resolve them as quite a learning process
there. And um, um, having uh policy discussions all the way up the food
chain from our local Grand Canyon effort all the way to the Secretary of
the Interior's office has been quite informative, seeing how decisions
actually get made and conflicts get either resolved or swept under the
carpet. Um,
the science side of it, uh, much more comfortable with. It's been a pretty
continuous uh, the process of putting out ideas, having those kicked
around by various people stolen by some agencies. And uh, that's that's
kind of the way some of this intellectual freedom is, is our intellectual
property is not really respected much in these kind of discussions. So, an
idea that seems like a really great kind of cool thing to study often gets
taken up by some agency who wants to pursue that and has the, has the
power to be able to take over the question. That's the way that works. But
uh, but at least it's it's this uh proposition of ideas and and thinking
about things and asking questions, having those kicked around a bit and
and seeing the way that those become uh programs of study.
That that that that makes pretty good sense in terms of the flow of
science.
There have been surprises in the science world that haven't been pursued
enough necessarily. And some some that we don't have the experimental
capacity right now to to to uh to achieve. For example, anybody who has
ever seen a flooding river sees all the driftwood out in the middle of the
river. It wasn't until we actually ran our first experimental flood in
1996. And we understood that the way that happens is that currents are
being directed up against the shore. That either brings sediment or tear
sediment away from the shore and bring, and then the current re circulates
back out to the middle. So we're looking at a flooding river and see a
line of driftwood running down the middle of the river. It's because
there's a counter current circulation pattern that develops at a certain
threshold in in uh, in its rivers, rivers specific. Certainly. So that was
that, that was, you know, quantified and actually measured in Grand Canyon
for the first time, hasn't been looked at really very much since many of
those kind of surprises uh scientific uh ah ha, moments have come out of
the program. Can you think of any others that we want to like Mark for
posterity or ask other members of the program about scientific surprises?
Yes. Um Well, I'll give you a couple examples. Some some scientific
surprises. Our science is really, you know, it's a debate about the nature
of reality. But the other side of it is it's a personal exploration of our
of our biases and our beliefs and when something goes against your belief
and yet the data conclusively show you that you're wrong or or just
misguided. Um Then it's the role of the scientists to actually accept that
information and see what they see what that means and and explore it. One
of the huge dilemmas in this in this system has been uh, how the river
should be managed for humpback chub. And based on information about the
fish in the upper Colorado River basin chubb appeared to be a mainstream
spawning fish up in the upper Colorado River basin where there are five
populations that are of interest all declining in Grand Canyon. It is not
a mainstream spawning fish. It spawns in the tributaries and every place
we find spawning going on is typically associated with some kind of
tribute or either a tributary coming in like the little colorado river or
a spring coming up and the fish congregated these at these, at these water
sources. So, um one of the persistent biases, how can we manage the river
to best support humpback chub. Well, if they're breeding is really going
on in the tributaries, that's not as important a question as how can we
make sure that they're breeding successful in the tributaries gradually?
That's uh that's that's uh been more more clearly recognized in Grand
Canyon, still not in the upper basin yet, we don't really know what the,
how they're breeding in the upper basin. It's hard to believe it's even
the same fish, but um coupled with that is the role of of, of rainbow
trout. Rainbow trout are in the clear water reaching the upper portion of
the river. Rainbow trout are usually insect bores or shrimp salad feeders
, but they can occasionally feed on humpback chub and other larval fish.
One of the big dialogues that's going on scientifically has been. So if
the trout are in the upper upper river and they're moving down into the
lower river, are they posing a threat to humpback child by eating their
larvae? And this, the discussion on that's got back and forth and back and
forth for 30 years? Um uh It wasn't until the resolution of the, of the
law, one of the few lawsuits that was ever kind of launched within this
program where the judge actually his, his brief on the, on the, on the, on
the trial said there's no relationship between humpback chub and rainbow
trout because the populations are not, they're not changing in any kind of
concerted uh consistent way the chub population was rising as the trout
population was rising. So therefore it's not predation of trout on chub
that is affecting the, affecting that endangered fish. The trout are also
non native, so that throws that that element in the trout are also highly
valued by the anglers up in the upper portion of the river above lees
Ferry, whereas the big industry and the failure of that of that industry
affects a lot of people or the changing track conditions up there are
important to them. Would it be accurate to say that one of the reasons
that that question, that scientific question about the potential impact
rainbow trout on humpback chub? That the reason that that went on for so
long was so controversial is that you have one set of stakeholders
interested in the chub and another set of stakeholders interested in the
trout and they weren't integrating their studies. They were seeking
research that would validate their interests. Yeah, I would say certainly
biases on the part of both groups are or what dominated the way the
research was conducted. Uh in fact with a chub, Four different agencies
were researching the chub doing very different things with the chub. And
only through this process in the later stages of GCS was that information
beginning to be brought together and now it's pretty well integrated, but
but still the biases, uh the kind of embedded biases of the program are
everywhere apparent there because the trout are non native and because
they're quite abundant, they must be bad and must have an impact on the
chub. And um and all the data actually pointing the opposite directions
that the chub don't really uh not much influenced by the, by rainbow trout.
Brown trout is another non native fish in the system. Uh They do have a
negative impact on and nobody disagrees about that. But the role of
rainbow trout has been much subject to, I say agency bias and and and that
really shapes the way the research takes place to, which is the further
embeds the the condition rather than resolving it.
So much of this work could be done experimentally. And one of my
disappointments with the program is that we've we've never gotten an
infield
experimental laboratory set up at least very where we can actually test
some of these very basic ideas without having to subject the entire river
to a flow regime to see whether or not whether or not the um, the issue is
something that can be managed with float with flows.
Okay, let me move to the next question.
What can I have one more thing there. We talked about science. We talked
about policy. I didn't talk much about the social leg of this. The the,
the insight that I've had about that was that every person involved in the
program is trying to do their best. Every person there is working hard to
support the themes and the and the constituents that they, that they
service that they serve and trying to do their best to, to um to have
their interests well represented, strongly represented. And so that's been
an insight, you know, as a naive outsider, you might think good, bad, good
, evil, whatever the, whatever the interest might be, environmental
interests against economic interest. Um uh there there must be enemies
here that are that are,
you know, irreconcilable differences going on. That's not the case. Almost
everybody that's been involved in the program that I've met is really
working hard to ensure that the program works that their and their
interests are well represented. Um and that by doing so in an adaptive
management context, that those interests do get vetted fairly,
which documents and reports, Are you aware of that have been produced over
the years that you think are particularly important to keep on the
forefront of our memory that remain relevant provides some historical
precedent that was important. Okay, so, in the, in the pre glen canyon dam
adaptive management program literature
Woodberry 1959 is a ecological survey of Glen Canyon before it was dammed.
Really important. First, um look at the ecology of the, of that of the
river system
Stanton's book in 181,890.
Also important in that he presented photographs of what the river looked
like 100 years before uh, before the this this era of flow management took
place. So uh 1976, the Carruthers at all report on the Ecology of Grand
Canyon of the River Corridor in Grand Canyon.
Many, many papers came out of that, including turner and carpets, checks
photo re matching and looking at the riparian, vegetation changes pre post
, pre versus post damn. Uh
in that era, papers beginning to identify uh papers by bob Dolan, for
example, beginning to identify the effects of the dam on geo morphology of
the river.
And And I would say the the the final reports for the Glynn County
Environmental Studies Phase one and Phase two, both loaded with really
great insights as to from this shotgun science approach. It was was taken
up how these many, many different topics are beginning to play out and by
reading through those one can begin to see patterns that have actually set
the stage for for pretty much all the science we're looking at now.
That brings us up through 1990, about 1990, Grand Canyon Protection Act.
Very important, influential policy uh Document that came out in 1992, uh
requiring that dam operations not negatively influence the
the Grand Canyon.
The I. S. Document, 1996 great compendium of all that information into,
into 11 document for the purposes of setting up the adaptive management
program
stepping forward from then, it's been quite a quite a um, you know, many,
many different research topics. There is a Um state of knowledge of the
Grand Cannon document produced in 2005?
It was, it was a pretty good summary of the more recent research. Up to
that point, each
of the science topics that's, that's studied by, by the US geological
survey undergoes a
Pep stands for uh protocol evaluation panel review. So those are, those
are important documents for each of the themes of science being being
taken up. Those are done about every five years or so.
A paper by Mellis and
and
Covid Lovett Melanson Levitch on the results of adaptive management
effects of adaptive management of Grand Canyon. The success of that of the
program was a 10 year analysis of how of how successful the adaptive
management program was in terms of the key resources that are being
monitored. That's that's an important one.
And then the the L temp document is,
tries to summarize that information as well.
There are, there are uh, this again is the best studied river in the world.
So it's got literally thousands of peer reviewed documents, tens of
thousands of agency policy reports and white papers vast. So that makes it
really difficult for anybody to really um, it would take several years
actually to go through all that literature I think and and really and
really be able to use it in decision making.
Well perhaps you can cut through all the static of those hundreds and
thousands of research reports and tell us big picture what you think the
value of the program has been and is today. Should we continue the program
? And why? Good question. Um this whole theme of adaptive management is
something that Karl Walters and and others began to put forth in the 70s.
Their conceptualization of adaptive management was that was based on the
understanding that ecosystems are too complicated for humans to be able to
manage them and that that really we should use science in the experimental
context to be able to improve our decision making. If experiments didn't
work, then reverse our policy, our our management strategy and follow a
lead. That makes more sense in terms of what the science tells us. So that
form of adaptive management is not what we have. We have an adaptive
management strategy that is based on stakeholder concerns and how to how
to balance stakeholder concerns rather than how the ecosystem itself is
functioning as an ecosystem Ecologist. I always go back to the original
kind of hope that we'll be managing the ecosystem for its for its natural
functioning and and uh and trying to understand how much how many of the
goods and services we can extract from it without harming it. Um and the
timing of that kind of extraction, but that's that's not the way the
program is structured, It's about social, social engagement of many
stakeholders, all of whom have some vested interest in some portion of the
resources and hoping that all that dialogue combined will somehow work
towards an effective management system that supports the ecosystem, but
also supports the, the um subsidy, the subsidies that are being extracted
from it.
This is probably the, the most successful adaptive management program in
the world. So therefore that alone is
relevant.
The social program gets us some way down the road towards effective
ecosystem management leads many things off to the off to the side, but but
we have been able to engage members of the, of the population that had and
cultures that have not previously have had a voice. So half a dozen tribes
that are involved in this program have a voice and have, have had great
influence on the way the programs developed, for example, the uh, uterus
taken tribes in the, in the, in the process. I feel it's wrong to for
there to be a lot of loss of life in the system. Fish, aquatic, especially
aquatic life, which is really important to zuni and Hopi tribes. Um, and
that therefore
programs that seek to control, say rainbow trout in the, in the a portion
of the canyon where they're not commercially fished it, uh, should, should
simply not kill a trout. The chart should be, um, um, if they're, if
they're being managed, they shouldn't be killed because death there is not
appropriate that these are the birthplaces of their culture. So they don't
want to see fish massacre is going on in their, in their, in their
homeland, at the very heart of their homelands. So that, that's actually
had a huge impact on the way the fisheries program has been, uh,
structured. And so having that indigenous information coming to the
program has been really important. And uh, something we certainly
respected uh, very deeply,
um,
from the standpoint of the, of the program working it works, it stumbles
along pretty well. This is such a process of sitting in the chair. You
know, the only way it works is you have to sit in the chair for two days
every two or three months and listen carefully what's being said and try
to pose questions that are going to actually change the way the rest of
the group sees the, sees the process going and takes kind of a lot of
diligence to do that. Uh, and my hat's off to everybody who's been with
the program and actually going through that process because it just takes
a lot of patience and, and uh, and attention to the, the quality of the
program.
So that, that the success of the program relies on that. I think the um,
other advantages of the program are certainly that has brought to light so
much information about, about the management of a constrained river, um,
geologically constrained river. These are places that are, you know,
they're, these are the places that dams are usually placed. So we've
actually lost enormous volumes of the earth to impoundment without ever
understanding how they work ecologically. So there's been a great, great
advantage to to scientific understanding of these kind of habitats. Large
deep canyons are at risk everywhere in the world because of dams.
So those are scientifically policy wise and socially, I think they're
strong advantages to having having the program go on and with the ultimate
decision that puts in place this This structure for the next 20 years
anyway.
But I will say one more thing there though, that the success of the
program relies on the Secretary of the Interior being an active part of
the program. Secretary Secretary Secretary of the Interior usually
designates somebody from his office to come in one of his undersecretaries
to come in and oversee to be the recipient of the of the advice from the
program. When the Secretary is weak or uninterested that breaks down and
the program suffers. So because this is a federal advisory committee, it
requires that strong active engagement with the Department of Interior.
Can you think of examples in the past when that
when that process has broken down because less
effective participation from the Department of Interior. Many examples,
Yeah. As the administration's come and go the interest on the part of the
of the Secretary of the Interior reflects the uh the interest in the in
the president in these um complicated environmental and economic
interactions. And so um um so when that designate or the or the Secretary
of the Interior themselves are disinterested. We end up with a um well
we'll just let the stakeholders choose what they want to look at. And that
that uh that situation uh prevailed for the first eight years of the of
the program, eight or 10 years of the program uh in which stakeholders
said, well I want to study chub because I'm a fish and wildlife service in
um representative and chub or endangered species. I want to study trout
because I'm an angler, I represent the anglers, I want trout to be there.
If there weren't strong voices for a resource, then they simply didn't get
on the christmas tree. These are kind of research ornaments on a on a tree
, but we never get to understand what the tree was like. So we're putting
these pieces together or building a maybe we're building a house but not
from the foundation up, we're starting on the third floor and trying to
understand what the house is gonna look like by the time we get to the
ground. So um so with weak oversight, we end up with a complicated um kind
of stakeholder led uh selection of research topics.
So a personal question, all of this, you articulated reasons why the
program is valuable. It's accomplishments. Why have you remained involved
in the program for so long? What's what have you got? All right. Um Again
, my deep appreciation and uh an attachment to Grand Canyon is what drives
my interest in the program. Um
I learn every with every person I talked to in this program and uh and
every passenger I take down the river. And and even from the simplest
questions I learned what my uh I learned more about that, my relationship
to Grand Canyon. So that's it's it's just a continually enlightening
exercise to pursue this. Um I have not only uh let's see, our organization
is pretty small. We often don't have funding. So I do a lot of my work pro
bono. Uh huh. And uh and it but but but the effort at trying to do our
best to manage Grand Canyon. This is what drives me. And so whatever it
takes to do that I'll be in the chair
maybe except unless there's a river trip that might conflict with the time
that I should be in the chair. River trip takes priority. Not necessarily.
But I try to try to keep them. Yeah, I try to manage my time carefully.
What do you think have been the program's failings or limitations? And how
would you like to see those resolved or? All right.
We have the tools to be able to answer questions without having to subject
the river to treatments and one of the failures of the program
has to do with our um with with the unwillingness of of of some
stakeholders to use the models. We have to answer questions at least
conceptually answer those questions before we encounter those situations.
one example is that is that the lake Powell is used to sometimes under
under good flow years, used to equalize the level of Lake Mead. And for
those years a lot of water has really started Lake Powell and sent
downstream to Lake Mead. A very straightforward question is uh and we have
very good models of how flow and sediment interact and given different the
starting conditions for for settlement in the river sediments derived from
tributaries as it builds up, then we have the ability to manage it. Um So
we could use these models to answer the question, how can we best manage
the flow? The equalization flows for the reservoir for these two
reservoirs to minimize sediment exports. So we preserve the sediment
supplies that we have in the system using using these models. What's the
right way to do it? We don't have to, this is, you know, we don't have we
don't threaten anybody's water allocation or or any any um issue with
hydropower production necessarily. We're just running a model to see what
the right way to do it is system is resistant to that the water and power
interests are, they don't want to go there because then that might shift
there ability to market hydropower for some reason. So that, to me is a
limitation is that we've we've made some pretty good headway with
understanding really great headway with the modeling and these are
questions we could answer with the tools we've got, but because it
threatens the whatever behaviors of these different organizations that
market power, they don't want to they don't want to test those models in
that fashion. Can you think of possible pathways for resolving that
shortcoming in?
Again, it would take strong uh leadership by the Department of Interior to
help with that. Ah Because water and power is you know, they're pretty
resistant to any kind of potential threat to their to their they're the
way they manage their organizations and they've taken quite a hit with
with the modification of the damn overtime modification of the flow regime
from the dam over time. Ah dampened flow fluctuations with the result of
the 1996 E. I. S. And those have been perpetuated now into the, into the
present so that they can no longer run these huge daily tides through the
through the system.
More more conversation with them continued to push on it. Uh but it would
take strong uh secretarial support to Two X two use the models that we
have to test that test some of those notions.
one thing I've been particularly um one of one idea that I've had has been
particularly strongly rejected was using the models to look at flow
fluctuation on every other day. Again, higher flows produce more
hydroelectric power run one day with high uh you know, running alternate
days of hydropower production or a different uh maybe multi days. And
there's many issues there because if you run daily flow fluctuations from
the damn those translated into a waveform, that is a very fast uprising
wave scours up a lot of sediment. And if you could slow down that cycle,
then you could probably slow down a lot of the erosion rates using the
models. Again, this is not having to subject the system to this kind of
analysis. Use the models we have which are perfectly capable of doing this
to test out these alternative flow regimes that might be much more
conservative of sediment. And and then look at the models are also set up
to look at the economic costs of those. So, um those are those are great
tools to be able to have and and and if we can ask those kind of questions
, we might be able to get at what the right flow regime is to best support
both the economics and the and the ecosystem.
You've talked about different phases that the program has evolved through
over time. And you talked about the importance of strongly committed
Secretary of Interior to the effective functioning national program. Can
you reflect back on which administrations and your experience have been
most effective in advancing the adaptive management program in which
administrations have not been as effective in advancing the goals and
accomplishments of the program. Yes, quite easily. It's it's I don't
understand really the relationships between the Secretary of the Interior
and the and the President in any of these situations, but to say that
under Bruce Bruce babbitt's time as Secretary of the Interior and under
ken Salazar as time as Secretary of the Interior. Those are the big
advances in terms of strong secretarial secretarial support, really great
secretary designees and Castle, I hope is somebody that you will be able
to interview. Fabulous at at the high level policy implications and
keeping a keeping a a bunch of renegades, stakeholders on track and, and
uh and helping move the product program forward,
correct?
I just thought of a rather controversial speculative question. There's a
lot of talk these days about what to do with the reservoirs behind Lake
Mead and Lake Powell because both are half empty or more than half empty.
Climate change is not giving us much confidence that those reservoirs
will be full again in our lifetimes. A former commissioner of the Bureau
of Reclamation is actually advocated for the dismantling or at least not
if not the dismantling of glen canyon dam, the emptying of the reservoir.
What do you think of that possibility and how would that affect river
flow regimes in the Grand Canyon and the whole legacy of the program. I
deal with this question every day every day. Um Glen Canyon dam was built
where it was built because it's live because it lies just upstream of the
boundary between the upper Colorado River basin and the lower Colorado
River basin. That boundary is um, at a place called lee Ferry just
downstream from lee's Ferry. And it is probably the most politically
important point in uh, in the southwest Because the river has been divided
into these two basins. And then, and 1922 Colorado River compact requires
that on average, 8.2, 3 million acre feet of water past past Lee ferry
each year from the upper basin into the lower basin. That's on average, on
a 10 year average,
and it's over allocated only about 7.5 million acre feet can be delivered
Reliably 10 Year period.
That's the political context of where the dam is. Lake Powell 180 miles
long will take 640 years to completely fill with sediment. We were 54
years into the story right now. So it's, we've got a long time before they
actually becomes compromised by sedimentation. Uh, Lake Mead because of
Glen Canyon Dam is protected from fans. It's got a lifespan of 1000 years
or more. Um, the yes, the reservoirs are, are, are low. Now, climate
change is not looking very promising in terms of, in terms of being able
to fill lake Mead, but um, the upper basin is actually not in anywhere as
near as bad shape in terms of the climate change projections as the lower
basin is therefore filling of Lake Powell is not, certainly not, not
impossible, will probably happen again. Um, and we're, we're in, we're
probably at the end of concluding of kind of a long term drought here. And
so in the next 5 to 10 years, we may see a change in the way that uh, that
that the, the changing snow pack and melt off and how the lake feels the
reservoir fills. So uh, draining Lake Powell to support Lake mead is
something that's been proposed by some people has entertained in the E. I
. S. Actually film meet first means let lake Powell just simply go dry.
There's an ecological problem here. Like Glen Canyon Dam is blocking the
inflow of uh, non native fish and non native fish diseases that would
almost certainly wipe out the Grand Canyon remaining native fish and Grand
Canyon many non native fish in, in the upper basin host of fish diseases
that are being now blocked by the, by the dam. So, um, simply letting the
river flow through Glen canyon and into Grand Canyon. While that sounds
like a great thing to do from as a conservationist. You know, it's good.
Bring back the river. That's fabulous, good uh, good thought there,
except for, we would probably lose the resources that we were trying so
hard to preserve in Grand Canyon because of that process the biological
resources. Um, the upper basin, the river is, is paved in catfish as far
as I can tell. You can't throw a line out anywhere there and not catch a
catfish within one minute. Um, and not. And the, and the native fish in
the upper basin are dreadfully threatened. So we've got some real catfish
is non native carpet, non native 20 other non native species uh,
in that system and many of them are predators, warm water predators and
much better approach from my standpoint, even though I'm supposed to be a
conservation advocate is to really study carefully the ecology of cataract
cannon. Because cataract cannon, this is upstream from Lake Powell is a
place where we get all the normal functioning of of a wild river, huge
variation and flow over the course of the year. Lots and lots of sediment.
The temperatures warm up very warm in the summer and ice covered in the
winter. All the conditions that took place in Grand Canyon. And if those
are the conditions that we want to uh, recovering Grand Canyon, restoring
Grand Canyon, what are the consequences of those conditions on the native
fauna and fish, fish and, and, and terrestrial fauna? The story is not
actually very good. Uh, the natural river up there has very few native
fish, very little shoreline kind of
um viability and, and uh, and lots of lots of challenges up there that if
we were to restore those conditions in Grand Canyon would be a disaster
for our, for our natural resources and especially the Biota and Grand
Cannon, these are big challenges because again, the biases well, we should
restore Grand Canyon. If we're, if we're good environmentalists, we should
restore the natural physical conditions and therefore everything will be,
will be in good in good shape. But that's not the case. So therefore we're
stuck with the situation of keeping the damn as as an important barrier to
non native species, um, influx,
learning enough about the system about Grand Canyon portion of the river
to be able to preserve those features that we want to have their the
species that we want to have their prevent non natives from taking over
and and uh and decimating the the river ecosystem
and having that be still something socially acceptable in terms of
hydropower production and, and uh, and the uh subsidy delivery that we we
expect from Glen canyon dam big. It's a, it's a huge challenge. Um, and
without going through that whole discussion with people draining, you know
, eliminating the damn sounds like a great idea to the public, but there
are many issues that actually have to be considered before that takes
place. And we have the time. So, so in terms of environmental policy, this
is uh, this is, it's, it's a bit of a challenge to get these, these points
across
some of what you've been saying. Mhm highlights a couple of concepts that
are critical to conservation conservation history, preservation and
restoration. And it sounds like part of the goal of the adaptive
management program is to preserve some of the natural functioning of the
river, which is challenged perhaps inhibited to a certain extent by
operations and to restore some of the lost characteristics ecological
characteristics of the river. But in your discussion with us, um you're
suggesting that in some instances we can't go back and in some instances
in order to preserve some of the things that we want, we can't let nature
take its course because there are serious challenges to it. We've got to
invest time and money and labor to preserve certain ecosystems. Can you
reflect a little bit about what, how we should understand these twin goals
of preservation and restoration, Understand those in a way that makes
sense in a real river rather than just being ideals that are applied in a
real place. Yeah. So a paper that Jack Schmitt and I and several other co
authors wrote in Bioscience in 1998 lays out the terrain of what might be
achievable in terms of management and the role of science in that. Um uh
It's a, you know, these are complicated questions. They require very clear
valuation of resources. So if we want to keep humpback chub as a species
on earth, we need to manage the Grand canyon away that supports it. What's
the right way to do that? That's that's been, you know, 30 years of
research and we're still learning, it's been half a billion dollars spent
on About 10,000 fish so far, a huge amount of money has been spent trying
to understand how to keep humpback chub in the picture because we have
enough humpback chub to work with the
that money, you know, certainly went somewhere for other species we've
lost in that system. Lost southwestern willow flycatcher lost. Um ah Uh
quite a few species that aren't listed um 85 taxes by my count. With one
of the committees, I served on groups of species that have been lost
because of the damn because of damn presence and operations. Um um um
trying to understand what our values are for species, for resources, for
experiences for the public as well as the valuation of hydropower
production and water delivery downstream, balancing those out into into a
, you know, a coherent framework has been that is the challenge of the
program and and that. Mhm. That's I think now with respect to native
american concerns about the, about the landscape as well, because there's
our spiritual concerns as as well as resource concerns. Um
putting it all together and sorting it all out. Uh fast change is what
humans are really good at making policy decision and will take off the
damn okay or build a dam. Uh and those have enormous impacts on the fabric
of of uh of nature as well as the social uh
the context of the of these changes. Humans are good at changing things
too quickly. Not good at at stepping back and saying, well let's let's
study this for a couple of decades actually to really get at the answers
so we know what the consequences of our decisions are. Um One example
within this context was the discussion about the temperature control
device TCD. Okay, we're gonna build it and we actually came pretty close
to just building it.
You can't necessarily go back. That's the issue and just as we can't
recover our own youth, we can't go back to how we were when we were
teenagers or whatever. You can't simply um take away something thats been
constructed in an ecosystem and have the ecosystem return to that to its
to its natural condition. There are always consequences. You warm up the
water for a few years and crayfish get, get may colonize, you can't get
rid of crayfish, there's just no way to eliminate them, they eat
everything and you can't you can't control them. So therefore, you know,
if you warmed up the water with a tv with a temperature control device and
allowed crayfish to get started, you have an irreparable change to the
system that would completely take the trajectory of development of the
ecosystem in a different direction.
Ah So that's an important thing to understand. We can't go back, we have
to make decisions based on what we have, what we, what we know we can,
what we can learn about what we can model is particularly useful, then we
don't have to manipulate the system to move further. Um But um you know,
it's just the hard work of accepting that we've got an altered ecosystem
and uh and that fast changes quick policy decisions. We're probably not
going to solve our problems. So if if if we can't always preserve or
restore a particular species and endangered species and we can't always
preserve or restore a particular assemblage of plants along the river.
Seine the beach. What is it that the adaptive management program is
restoring and preserving
it is? Yes. Uh huh. Yeah. So there's very little guidance in this. Um and
as to what the what as to what we can achieve, what we should achieve and
it's right now that's driven by policies of different agencies. Park
service, once its purpose is to preserve the natural condition, has no
capacity to uh to really manage for an altered condition because it's
altered. It should the parts of us should always be driving itself towards
the natural condition and they use that um Sometimes as an excuse for not
for not acting because letting nature take its course is the way that the
Park Service thinks it's getting its job done. One example, there is the
riparian vegetation has grown up dramatically as a surprise in the system.
Profuse development of riparian vegetation along the river, 300 miles of
riparian vegetation, the biggest stand of riparian vegetation left in the
southwest and 90 where 90% of this habitat has been eliminated, incredibly
productive for birds, for wildlife, for insect life. It's not natural.
Therefore, there's always been a reluctance on the part of the National
Park Service to want to manage that uh system would be better to have it
not be there. But the park is now an island of habitat for birds and
wildlife that require that kind of habitat and have lost it elsewhere. So
they, so the park service by if they've lost that habitat would actually
be doing grave and perhaps irreparable harm to to the wildlife and bird
species of the Southwest.
Where do you, how do you know, are we willing to actually accept our role
in this human dominated ecosystem as managers? And uh some many of the
existing policies are kind of in conflict with us being able to step up to
the plate on that.
What do you think should be the goal for the adaptive management program,
for example, should we, instead of trying to recover or preserve specific
ecosystems or species, should we try to recover or preserved resiliency or
biological productivity? Is there are other kinds of concepts like that
that could guide us in this difficult situation where we don't know what's
natural and whether we can go back or not. Previous story. Yeah. In this
paper by Jack Schmitt and at all, uh in 1998 we lay out the train that the
altered river system is um It's not natural, it's got components that are
desired and it's got artifacts of the past that we that are still valued
and the balance of of managing those together along with the with the
goods and services being produced by that by hydrologic hydropower
production and water delivery. Um That is the balance that we're working
with. It's a social process to value those to decide which which we want
to uh uh maintain somehow in this adaptive management process that's
proceeding. Although the valuation process for things other than humpback
chub and and sediment resources is not very clear. Um But the process is
going in that direction without a lot of um uh huh large coarse scale kind
of overview of what the what those directions are. We're getting. We're
getting there whether we want to or not and we don't really understand
where we're getting to. Yeah, but at least we've got some framework there
to be able to understand as changes are happening. What those some of
those changes are. Are you hopeful? Always, always um Because I studied
get to study natural history and evolution. Um uh that that gives me long
term hope and yes, things will be will be quite different in the future.
And uh loss of some of these type of the species is something I try to try
to work against. So for me any human caused extinction is a crime And
therefore that's that's that's one one way I proceed in life is to uh try
to make sure that nothing goes extinct. That um that that I have some kind
of power to to prevent.
That was a nice place to end. I am going to ask you a couple of practical
nuts and bolts kind of questions to, you know, finish this up. One is um
if you could give us some keywords that you think are significant to the
program and its evolution, we're gonna make a keyword list and make sure
that everything in the archive is tagged with these important. Okay, well
certainly it's going to be the humpback chub sandbars. Um
flow
traditional ecological knowledge to IKEa um um
adaptive management,
flow regulation.
The way we have described the ecosystem as the Colorado River ecosystem.
CRE that's a common acronym for for that. But it's the function that
captures the concept in perfectly captures the concept of that. A river is
more than water. It's also where the water has been the terraces, the
landforms as well as the species make up the river. Um
uh
I guess the, you know, the various policies that are in play that matter.
The organic act of National Park Service, the endangered Species act that
granted him protection Act. Um Yeah, the temp temporada
how many is that? That's a dozen. Okay, good. So that's a starting point
but you'll have many more
to tag acronyms you mentioned in the tag the documents and reports, but
also the tag tribes and stakeholders and federal agencies,
jennifer started documenting. Dropbox folder for tagging, you know, here's
my notes actually from the interview and then you can go back and listen
to that last section of the interview and the if you have any questions
they are, write to me as well as Larry, he's in the field.
I'm electronically available electronically available most uh until April
three, April 2. Is there anything else that you'd like us to ask you what
take today?
You've I think hidden most of the topics. Hope is important in this
program
I think. And it's very interesting to know how hopeful some of your next
interviewees are on this. Um
Yeah, that was a spontaneous question that came up from the conversation
and I thought um I like that and I think I should ask every Yeah, yeah,
revealed
there is another question do you recommend? Oh right. Yeah, yeah. We we've
talked about that Dave Wagner for the for the pre uh
am p part of the part of the program. Dave Wagner is critical. He lives in
Tucson I think. Did I give I sent you his information? I don't know if I
have this contact information yet, but you did say that he lives in Tucson.
Yeah. So I'll have to double check out of some notes for the tribal
representation in this program. Uh is it uh usually by white guys who
represent the tribe? Because the tribe? Yes. Uh huh. But very very long
term people. So uh they also may be not be on there. Maybe haven't been a
list but mike Yates,
mike Yates, Y A. T. T. S. He's happy. He's with the Hopi kurt Jankowski
with the zuni tribe
house party last night. Don goes D. O N. G O W. S. K. I. And uh don. No
sorry kurt kurt kurt. And then um terry carrie Christianson with
unqualified tribe VE ry Christensen with Annie
is um zuni zuni. Yeah.
So their perspective would be I think quite interesting here as well.
Yeah, I'll add them to the list and we'll start getting looking for. Yeah.
The other tribes have people that show up occasionally are not quite as
well informed in long term as these three guys are.