WEBVTT 00:00:00.170 --> 00:00:05.176 Recording. This is Paul, her and Jennifer Sweeney of Arizona State 00:00:05.209 --> 00:00:11.066 University interviewing Richard Valdez at the SWC A offices in Salt Lake 00:00:11.099 --> 00:00:16.026 City on March 4th 2020. Rich. Thanks for uh interviewing with us today. 00:00:16.059 --> 00:00:20.657 Thank you for asking me. Would you just start out by telling us um, the 00:00:20.690 --> 00:00:23.837 positions that you've held in the Adaptive Management Program over the 00:00:23.870 --> 00:00:29.616 years and the years that you were participating? Yeah. Thank you. I um I 00:00:29.649 --> 00:00:35.176 started working um in the Grand Canyon with Glen Canyon Dam operations and 00:00:35.209 --> 00:00:41.987 in 1989 that was when it was the Glen Canyon environmental studies. G ce S 00:00:42.020 --> 00:00:47.436 under Dave Wagner and the Bureau of Reclamation. And uh at that time, I 00:00:47.469 --> 00:00:52.146 was contracted to do a life history and ecology of the Humpback job 00:00:52.179 --> 00:00:57.375 through the Grand Canyon. So that was my first time there. And as a result 00:00:57.408 --> 00:01:02.487 of that involvement, I also did some other things. I worked some with the 00:01:02.520 --> 00:01:07.105 wallaby tribe. So we extended a lot of our investigations below Diamond 00:01:07.138 --> 00:01:12.656 Creek all the way to Pearce ferry. So we were doing about 275 280 miles of 00:01:12.689 --> 00:01:18.147 the river that we were surveying for fish populations. And with that, uh I 00:01:18.180 --> 00:01:26.180 , I then was asked to convene several panels of scientists, one in 1999 to 00:01:26.290 --> 00:01:30.495 look at the possibility of a second population of Humpback chub in the 00:01:30.528 --> 00:01:37.516 Grand Canyon. And I met with geneticists and biologists to look at ideas 00:01:37.549 --> 00:01:42.587 of how to start Humpback job in the Grand Canyon. That was about 1999. 00:01:42.620 --> 00:01:48.117 In 2000, I was involved in the low steady summer flow experiment. I did 00:01:48.150 --> 00:01:56.150 the fisheries evaluation of that experiment. And then in um in 2003, I was 00:01:56.260 --> 00:02:01.105 part of a team of scientists that were looking at the possibility of a 00:02:01.138 --> 00:02:04.947 temperature control device for Glen Canyon Dam. And that was being co 00:02:04.980 --> 00:02:09.045 ordinated by the Bureau of Reclamation. 00:02:09.078 --> 00:02:16.106 And in 2004, I co ordinated a survey of some of the tributaries in the 00:02:16.139 --> 00:02:20.225 Grand Canyon with Steve Carruthers. So we looked not only at the main stem 00:02:20.258 --> 00:02:24.886 but also fisheries populations in places like Shinan or Bright Angel Creek 00:02:24.919 --> 00:02:29.927 or Havasu Creek and some of the others in the system. And then in, in 2010 00:02:29.960 --> 00:02:34.446 , I was asked by the, 00:02:34.479 --> 00:02:39.036 the Bureau of reclamation to convene a science panel on reintroducing 00:02:39.069 --> 00:02:47.069 razorback sucker into the Grand Canyon. And uh and then in, in 2012, I was 00:02:48.399 --> 00:02:54.495 asked to convene another science panel by the seven Colorado River Basin 00:02:54.528 --> 00:03:00.547 States to evaluate possible alternatives that would become part of the 00:03:00.580 --> 00:03:06.876 2016 temp eis temp was of course the long term experimental management 00:03:06.909 --> 00:03:13.856 program for the Glen Canyon Dam. And then, and then most recently, uh, I 00:03:13.889 --> 00:03:19.677 was, uh, asked to be a member of the Brown Trout management team, looking 00:03:19.710 --> 00:03:24.555 at options of how to manage brown trout, worked with, uh, Mike runs and 00:03:24.588 --> 00:03:29.436 Charles Yule to look at the options of how to manage brown trout and 00:03:29.469 --> 00:03:34.436 reduce predation by brown trout on, uh, on Humpback chub and on other 00:03:34.469 --> 00:03:38.225 trout species in the system, especially in the tail water. So it's pretty 00:03:38.258 --> 00:03:44.805 much banned from about 1989 to here. Most recently, 2019. It's a nice long 00:03:44.838 --> 00:03:52.547 tenure. Um, how much of the work that you did was, uh, say contract 00:03:52.580 --> 00:04:00.580 research work with SWC A versus work, um, directly as a participant in the 00:04:00.949 --> 00:04:04.275 Glen Canny Dam Adaptive Management Program, like with AM Wig or Twig, can 00:04:04.308 --> 00:04:09.686 you? Yeah, most of it was contract work. Most of it was contract work 00:04:09.719 --> 00:04:16.176 either either through Biow West or through SWC A. And the Biow West work 00:04:16.209 --> 00:04:20.825 was that initial study of fisheries, the life history ecology of Humpback 00:04:20.858 --> 00:04:26.637 job through the, through the canyon. And then the subsequent to that, it's 00:04:26.670 --> 00:04:31.226 been through Biow West and I was involved in a number of Am Wig and Twig 00:04:31.259 --> 00:04:36.947 meetings, but pretty much always as a, as a linkage to one of these two 00:04:36.980 --> 00:04:44.980 companies, correct? So let's drill down a bit on, um, the role of the 00:04:45.858 --> 00:04:51.736 Humpback Chub in the Adaptive Management program, you're probably gonna be 00:04:51.769 --> 00:04:56.325 the most knowledgeable expert we interview on the life history and the 00:04:56.358 --> 00:05:01.346 status and the recovery efforts of the Humpback Chub. So, talk a little 00:05:01.379 --> 00:05:07.317 bit about how that all got started and developed over time. Yeah, it, it, 00:05:07.350 --> 00:05:12.467 it's an important part of, uh, of the Glen Canyon Dam operations because 00:05:12.500 --> 00:05:16.637 the Humpback Chub is perhaps one of the keystone species, if not the 00:05:16.670 --> 00:05:22.776 keystone species for, for that particular project in that operation. Um 00:05:22.809 --> 00:05:27.406 I've been uh the, the recovery team leader for the Humpback Chub recovery 00:05:27.439 --> 00:05:33.507 team since 2015. So it's put me close to some of the populations, not only 00:05:33.540 --> 00:05:38.086 in the Grand Canyon but in the upper basin as well. But the interesting 00:05:38.119 --> 00:05:43.796 part about it is the, the genesis of how the Humpback chub came into the 00:05:43.829 --> 00:05:48.106 important and significance that it holds in the Grand Canyon. I started 00:05:48.139 --> 00:05:53.776 working in the upper Colorado River basin in 1968 with a fellow graduate 00:05:53.809 --> 00:05:58.015 student, he was doing work on the Colorado and Green Rivers and I was 00:05:58.048 --> 00:06:03.476 doing work in Alaska. So we would trade trade off helping each other. And 00:06:03.509 --> 00:06:09.836 uh after that, then I was um uh I got involved in some of the work earlier 00:06:09.869 --> 00:06:13.197 research. Now, this is before the endangered Species Act was passed in 00:06:13.230 --> 00:06:20.447 1973. And at that time, um the Humpback chub and the, what was at that 00:06:20.480 --> 00:06:24.526 time known as the Colorado squaw fish. It is now called the Colorado pike 00:06:24.559 --> 00:06:29.757 minnow. At that time, those species were included under the Endangered 00:06:29.790 --> 00:06:35.606 Species Conservation Act, the Preservation Act of 66 and then the 00:06:35.639 --> 00:06:43.639 Conservation Act of 69 prior to the passage of ES A. So, uh in 1973 when 00:06:43.829 --> 00:06:47.757 uh the endangered species act was, was enacted and signed by President 00:06:47.790 --> 00:06:54.637 Nixon, those species then became part of this suite of, of species in this 00:06:54.670 --> 00:06:59.046 country that people had to protect somehow but no one, no one knew exactly 00:06:59.079 --> 00:07:03.366 how to do it. And so I was in on some of the original uh environmental 00:07:03.399 --> 00:07:09.317 impact statements, the eas that affected some of these species uh that, 00:07:09.350 --> 00:07:12.967 that, that took place in the uh especially in the upper Colorado River 00:07:13.000 --> 00:07:19.226 basin. But it's interesting to note that that in um and I was with fish 00:07:19.259 --> 00:07:23.495 and wildlife service starting in 1979 00:07:23.528 --> 00:07:26.955 I was hired by the service to start a field station in Grand Junction, 00:07:26.988 --> 00:07:31.745 Colorado to do that specifically to evaluate the distribution and 00:07:31.778 --> 00:07:35.906 abundance of these fish in the upper Colorado river basin. So above Lake 00:07:35.939 --> 00:07:43.437 Powell, basically and in and in and until 1980 from the time that the act 00:07:43.470 --> 00:07:49.757 was, was passed in 73 we had these biological opinions that all declared 00:07:49.790 --> 00:07:55.325 jeopardy. In other words, that the action would, would likely continue to 00:07:55.358 --> 00:08:01.217 jeopardy or continue to jeopardize the existence of the species. Um in 00:08:01.250 --> 00:08:05.726 1980 with the, with the amendments to the endangered species Act, that a 00:08:05.759 --> 00:08:10.955 concept of reasonable and prudent alternatives was then put into the act 00:08:10.988 --> 00:08:15.687 which really opened the door and allowed agencies now to start doing good 00:08:15.720 --> 00:08:21.455 things for the species to offset or mitigate those potential bad things. 00:08:21.488 --> 00:08:26.717 And that, that became the heart of what became then the Glen Canyon Dam 00:08:26.750 --> 00:08:31.467 eis is basically those reasonable and prudent alternatives that were put 00:08:31.500 --> 00:08:38.557 forward. Now, the first E I was done, of course, in 1995 when the Humpback 00:08:38.590 --> 00:08:44.866 job was, was listed and the biological opinion was under a jeopardy 00:08:44.899 --> 00:08:49.946 determination. In other words, it was declared that the operation of Glen 00:08:49.979 --> 00:08:55.096 Canyon Dam was likely to jeopardize the continued existence of the species 00:08:55.129 --> 00:08:59.057 that changed in 2008 00:08:59.090 --> 00:09:04.875 when the service came up with a non jeopardy determination and decided 00:09:04.908 --> 00:09:09.356 that instead they would go with conservation measures which were finalized 00:09:09.389 --> 00:09:15.726 in 2010. So now we have an agency or agencies, the Bureau of Reclamation 00:09:15.759 --> 00:09:20.746 and the Park Service in that case that we're looking at ways to do things 00:09:20.779 --> 00:09:26.057 better as a way to benefit, not just to mitigate the potential jeopardy 00:09:26.090 --> 00:09:31.066 effects, but also to benefit the species. So, so the Humpback chub 00:09:31.099 --> 00:09:37.366 underwent uh a whole, I think evolution of understanding of how that 00:09:37.399 --> 00:09:41.186 species worked out with the endangered species Act, how they act was going 00:09:41.219 --> 00:09:46.307 to apply to that species specifically. And the Grand Canyon became kind of 00:09:46.340 --> 00:09:53.967 the the stage for that to all take place where the Grand Canyon supported 00:09:54.000 --> 00:09:59.927 the largest population of Humpback chub known in the basin. There were six 00:09:59.960 --> 00:10:04.596 other populations in the upper basin, but they were all smaller. But the 00:10:04.629 --> 00:10:08.726 Humpback job was the main driver. I think of a lot of the actions that 00:10:08.759 --> 00:10:15.116 took place in that system and actions in terms of modifying dam operations 00:10:15.149 --> 00:10:21.255 or actions, in terms of improving habitat or reducing predation, all of 00:10:21.288 --> 00:10:25.145 those things, it was all of those things. And initially, as a, as a fish 00:10:25.178 --> 00:10:30.635 biologist, my first reaction to seeing a uh a large dam put in the middle 00:10:30.668 --> 00:10:34.686 of a river that used to be occupied by these, these fish was that of 00:10:34.719 --> 00:10:40.566 course, that dam, first of all backed up Lake Powell for about 200 miles 00:10:40.599 --> 00:10:44.456 and that meant there was 200 miles of river that were under a lake. So it 00:10:44.489 --> 00:10:49.086 eliminated that habitat to the species. And these are not lake dwellers 00:10:49.119 --> 00:10:53.606 except for the Razorback sucker. Uh the Humpback chub and the pike minnow 00:10:53.639 --> 00:10:58.525 don't do well in lakes or reservoirs. So that eliminated that habitat. But 00:10:58.558 --> 00:11:03.816 also what the dam did is it was now drawing water from the, from the 00:11:03.849 --> 00:11:07.407 depths of the reservoir. What is known as the Hypo Limn and that's the 00:11:07.440 --> 00:11:14.446 coal region. So you had coal releases going downstream that we all knew 00:11:14.479 --> 00:11:20.366 was not good for the warm water native fish like Humpback chop. So our 00:11:20.399 --> 00:11:25.566 first reaction was to and then I I talk II I say that collectively for 00:11:25.599 --> 00:11:29.775 most fish biologists was to say we're going to somehow need to offset that 00:11:29.808 --> 00:11:34.385 cold water coming out of the dam by some kind of temperature control 00:11:34.418 --> 00:11:40.797 devices. So the T CD became a pretty important and controversial. I might 00:11:40.830 --> 00:11:48.456 say uh proposal starting in about 2002 or 2003 where some of us were 00:11:48.489 --> 00:11:55.116 advocating to have the dam modified to allow warmer water, warmer, more 00:11:55.149 --> 00:11:59.736 surface water to be released and warm the water downstream. For the 00:11:59.769 --> 00:12:02.436 Humpback chub. 00:12:02.469 --> 00:12:10.246 In retrospect, as it turns out, that probably was 00:12:10.279 --> 00:12:17.476 a lack or a not a good enough understanding by the biologist to really 00:12:17.509 --> 00:12:23.616 know what was going on. As it turns out, it could be, it could very well 00:12:23.649 --> 00:12:27.196 be that the coal releases have been part of the savings grace for the 00:12:27.229 --> 00:12:34.576 Humpback job in Grand Canyon. So in that those coal releases now prevent 00:12:34.609 --> 00:12:40.686 or at least inhibit other non native warm water fish that are predators or 00:12:40.719 --> 00:12:46.907 competitors to the Humpback job from entering and coming into the system. 00:12:46.940 --> 00:12:51.736 And in addition to that, the Humpback chub in the Grand Canyon has been 00:12:51.769 --> 00:12:57.326 using the little Colorado River which is a seasonally warm system for 00:12:57.359 --> 00:13:02.635 spawning. So it made and and still does. It makes for an ideal situation 00:13:02.668 --> 00:13:08.005 for that fish to be able to live as adults in the main stem and then 00:13:08.038 --> 00:13:14.657 migrate annually into the little Colorado River and spawn in warmer water. 00:13:14.690 --> 00:13:18.446 And then they're young, then descend down into the main stem. So that's 00:13:18.479 --> 00:13:23.407 the way, that's the way the situation is today. And, and we didn't know 00:13:23.440 --> 00:13:26.307 that. Of course, at that time, many of us were advocating to have a 00:13:26.340 --> 00:13:31.167 temperature control device. And in fact, uh we had a series of meetings 00:13:31.200 --> 00:13:35.116 with the bureau of reclamation and many scientists and in fact, 00:13:35.149 --> 00:13:41.395 reclamation even did a, a rough estimate of what it would cost to put in a 00:13:41.428 --> 00:13:46.755 a uh uh a select what's known as a selective withdrawal temperature 00:13:46.788 --> 00:13:52.446 control device, which would mean that that the uh the gates at the pen 00:13:52.479 --> 00:13:56.755 stocks where the water leaves the reservoir and goes through the dam, the 00:13:56.788 --> 00:14:00.875 gates would be modified with elevators so that they would, you'd have the 00:14:00.908 --> 00:14:06.356 op the option of basically withdrawing water from any level that you want 00:14:06.389 --> 00:14:11.255 within a given range. So you could mix it warm with cold and get target 00:14:11.288 --> 00:14:17.885 temperatures. The only problem was that the estimated price tag was about 00:14:17.918 --> 00:14:20.586 $100 million 00:14:20.619 --> 00:14:27.275 and that of course, raised many eyebrows and caused much concern as to how 00:14:27.308 --> 00:14:34.456 serious we really wanted to get about that proposal. Mhm. 00:14:34.489 --> 00:14:37.807 So um 00:14:37.840 --> 00:14:43.145 so one of the lessons we learned, I think as scientists in, in going 00:14:43.178 --> 00:14:48.167 through Glen Canyon Dam and evaluating the effects and sitting to sitting 00:14:48.200 --> 00:14:52.326 down together and coming up with different alternatives was that in the 00:14:52.359 --> 00:14:59.755 end, uh it's Mother Nature that really drives everything. And as we were 00:14:59.788 --> 00:15:04.336 considering a temperature control device, of course, the elevations of 00:15:04.369 --> 00:15:09.456 both Lake Powell and Lake Mead were dropping and with a decline in 00:15:09.489 --> 00:15:17.196 elevation of uh of Lake Powell, we now started to see warm water being 00:15:17.229 --> 00:15:23.895 released from the reservoir by warm. I mean, what had been 10 °C 8 to 10 00:15:23.928 --> 00:15:31.885 °C releases were now 1213, 14, maybe even up to 15 or 16 °C. But that, 00:15:31.918 --> 00:15:36.936 that warm water was coming out in October and November in the fall. And 00:15:36.969 --> 00:15:43.436 the reason for that is that um in the fall, the reservoir overturns there 00:15:43.469 --> 00:15:47.677 is what is known as a fall overturn and as that warmer surface water is 00:15:47.710 --> 00:15:54.917 mixing with a lower water, it comes in contact with the those pen stocks 00:15:54.950 --> 00:15:59.047 where water is being withdrawn through the dam. And so that's why we see 00:15:59.080 --> 00:16:04.375 that warmer water at that time. Well, it just so happens though that that 00:16:04.408 --> 00:16:08.297 was not what the Humpback chub necessarily needed because the Humpback 00:16:08.330 --> 00:16:12.956 chub is a spring spawner. So we were not seeing warmer water in the spring 00:16:12.989 --> 00:16:17.177 , we were seeing warmer water in the fall, but we were seeing warmer water 00:16:17.210 --> 00:16:20.297 nevertheless. 00:16:20.330 --> 00:16:24.927 So that was one thing that we didn't fully understand and expect or 00:16:24.960 --> 00:16:28.907 appreciate when we started talking about a temperature controlled device. 00:16:28.940 --> 00:16:35.366 Now, ironically, if you look at the system in the Grand Canyon. Uh If you 00:16:35.399 --> 00:16:39.856 , if one were to consider the continued trend or pattern of the lowering 00:16:39.889 --> 00:16:45.125 reservoir elevations and more warm releases, one might even go as far as 00:16:45.158 --> 00:16:49.606 to say that maybe we do need a temperature control device, but in fact, to 00:16:49.639 --> 00:16:53.145 cool it, 00:16:53.178 --> 00:16:58.326 um, can I ask you a question rich about the, um Humpback chub spawning in 00:16:58.359 --> 00:17:03.976 the, uh LCR? Is that something that's always occurred or is that uh 00:17:04.009 --> 00:17:09.024 something that developed after the, after the dam was built as far as we 00:17:09.057 --> 00:17:14.966 know, it's, it's always occurred or at least uh in recent history. The 00:17:14.999 --> 00:17:19.794 there were two brothers, the Cole Brothers who are famous for their 00:17:19.827 --> 00:17:24.016 explorations in the Grand Canyon and their photography in the Grand Canyon. 00:17:24.049 --> 00:17:28.456 And we have historic photographs of the Cole Brothers going down to the 00:17:28.489 --> 00:17:31.986 little Colorado River at about the time that the fish would be spawning 00:17:32.019 --> 00:17:36.436 and talking about that there were a lot of fish in that system and they 00:17:36.469 --> 00:17:41.006 took their uh their, their fishing poles and caught all they wanted for to 00:17:41.039 --> 00:17:47.217 eat. The earlier studies that were done in about the 19 seventies also 00:17:47.250 --> 00:17:51.545 show that the fish were using that system that way. So it's probably part 00:17:51.578 --> 00:17:56.617 of the historic use of the species that is the little Colorado River. But 00:17:56.650 --> 00:18:00.976 we also suspect there was spawning also occurring in the main stem of 00:18:01.009 --> 00:18:07.016 Colorado as well. That is prior to closure of Glen Canyon Dam and in the 00:18:07.049 --> 00:18:12.867 sixties and then the releases of cold water. So if anything did change, it 00:18:12.900 --> 00:18:16.936 was probably Humpback chub could no longer spawn in the main stem, but 00:18:16.969 --> 00:18:20.825 they were still using the little Colorado and that was providing the young 00:18:20.858 --> 00:18:27.367 to sustain the population. So the the changes in the elevation of Lake 00:18:27.400 --> 00:18:33.706 Powell was one little bit of a surprise for Mother Nature. The other which 00:18:33.739 --> 00:18:38.555 is somewhat related to that was also declining reservoir elevation in Lake 00:18:38.588 --> 00:18:46.545 Mead which now increase the length of the Colorado River into the Lake 00:18:46.578 --> 00:18:52.746 Mead Basin between about separation rapid or separation rapid, which is 00:18:52.779 --> 00:18:57.785 where the uh the Powell historically and the Howell Brothers historically 00:18:57.818 --> 00:19:05.818 left or abandoned the Powell expedition between there for about uh some 65 00:19:06.318 --> 00:19:13.367 or so 70 miles all the way down to Pearce ferry. And so now uh what was 00:19:13.400 --> 00:19:18.166 under uh Lake Powell and, and I surveyed that area in the, in the nineties 00:19:18.199 --> 00:19:21.416 when it was in fact under Lake Powell at the time. And there was a very, 00:19:21.449 --> 00:19:25.387 do you mean Lake Mead, I'm sorry, Lake Mead, excuse me. Thank you. And 00:19:25.420 --> 00:19:29.607 there was a thick layer of sediment in there that was the deposits of uh 00:19:29.640 --> 00:19:36.936 of, of Lake Mead. Now, uh with the receding levels of Lake Mead, the 00:19:36.969 --> 00:19:42.486 Colorado River has carved out its original channel and much of that 00:19:42.519 --> 00:19:50.226 historical habitat has been restored. And in fact, the most um productive 00:19:50.259 --> 00:19:55.325 population that we have a Hump of Humpback chub is probably in that what 00:19:55.358 --> 00:19:59.535 we referred to as the western Grand Canyon, which is downstream of Diamond 00:19:59.568 --> 00:20:06.535 Creek and all the way down to about Pierce ferry. So that area is, uh, if 00:20:06.568 --> 00:20:11.367 you go down to that area now and sample some of the backwaters in that 00:20:11.400 --> 00:20:15.785 area, you, you'll catch primarily native fish, not just Humpback chub, but 00:20:15.818 --> 00:20:18.776 flannel mouse suckers and blue head suckers and speckled dace, The other 00:20:18.809 --> 00:20:23.506 species that are also there. And so that has been another unexpected uh 00:20:23.539 --> 00:20:30.045 twist from mother nature, like I said, uh where one can sit and plan all 00:20:30.078 --> 00:20:32.835 the things that you anticipate are going to happen. But there's some 00:20:32.868 --> 00:20:38.526 things you just don't expect that that will occur and take place. 00:20:38.559 --> 00:20:43.156 Um The other thing that you brought up that I found fascinating is not 00:20:43.189 --> 00:20:50.647 only does nature surprise us, but um when we make 00:20:50.680 --> 00:20:56.637 science is a practice of developing a hypothesis, doing some research, 00:20:56.670 --> 00:21:02.236 developing a kind of a limited knowledge base. And then in adaptive 00:21:02.269 --> 00:21:06.736 management, we go do a management action, try to monitor it and find out 00:21:06.769 --> 00:21:11.217 if the response is what we expected. So it's constant learning and what 00:21:11.250 --> 00:21:15.555 you with the, the stories that you were telling us is about how fisheries 00:21:15.588 --> 00:21:21.035 biologists come up with a hypothesis and then do some experiments and then 00:21:21.068 --> 00:21:25.736 learn that that's part of the story. But it's more complicated and we're 00:21:25.769 --> 00:21:31.575 constantly developing a knowledge base over time. That's, and, and it 00:21:31.608 --> 00:21:37.617 takes that opportunity to be able to get involved at the, at the, at the 00:21:37.650 --> 00:21:44.045 beginning of planning something like uh Glen Canyon Dam Eis and trying to 00:21:44.078 --> 00:21:48.936 structure those alternatives and doing intense analysis of all the 00:21:48.969 --> 00:21:55.496 available data and testing of hypotheses to try to anticipate or predict 00:21:55.529 --> 00:22:00.986 the response by resources, the different management actions or scenarios. 00:22:01.019 --> 00:22:07.706 But it takes that opportunity and then to go back years later and, and 00:22:07.739 --> 00:22:15.486 looking to see how right or wrong we were. And, and it emphasizes that 00:22:15.519 --> 00:22:21.526 concept of Carl Walter's adaptive management, whereby it's all a learning 00:22:21.559 --> 00:22:26.897 process. If one were to believe that you could structure something in a 00:22:26.930 --> 00:22:31.446 way that's definitive with predictable results and responses, that of 00:22:31.479 --> 00:22:37.217 course is not true at all. You learn as you do, you learn as you go. And 00:22:37.250 --> 00:22:41.776 so that was that to me, that was the biggest lesson from this, not only 00:22:41.809 --> 00:22:47.406 the way that resources responded to the things that we predicted were 00:22:47.439 --> 00:22:52.377 going to happen, but also this, this these tricks from Mother Nature also 00:22:52.410 --> 00:22:56.377 Mother Nature throwing little things at us like climate change and 00:22:56.410 --> 00:23:00.847 lowering reservoir elevations or different volumes of water coming down at 00:23:00.880 --> 00:23:06.315 different years or perhaps uh bigger floods or smaller floods out of the 00:23:06.348 --> 00:23:10.147 Peria River or the little Colorado River that delivered different amounts 00:23:10.180 --> 00:23:15.217 of sediment into the system. There was always something going on that one 00:23:15.250 --> 00:23:19.906 somehow cannot always anticipate or or make sure you cover as you're 00:23:19.939 --> 00:23:25.276 working on this. And so it really does, especially as you get involved in 00:23:25.309 --> 00:23:29.347 a, as one gets involved in a project from the beginning and you think 00:23:29.380 --> 00:23:33.016 you've really got this right? And then you start looking at the responses 00:23:33.049 --> 00:23:36.887 down along the road a few years later and then look back at it 20 or 30 00:23:36.920 --> 00:23:41.835 years later and you realize, wow, we learned a lot, we got some things, 00:23:41.868 --> 00:23:45.795 right? We got some things not so right. And there were some absolute 00:23:45.828 --> 00:23:49.127 surprises. 00:23:49.160 --> 00:23:55.347 So in addition to the surprises related to the role of temperature, river 00:23:55.380 --> 00:24:02.176 , temperature on the viability and health of the chubb uh population. 00:24:02.209 --> 00:24:08.226 There's also been some interesting surprises in the role of predation. 00:24:08.259 --> 00:24:13.246 Some of our other interviewees talked about how early hypotheses about 00:24:13.279 --> 00:24:18.026 predation evolved over time as we learn more. Can you talk a little bit 00:24:18.059 --> 00:24:21.535 about that? Yeah, 00:24:21.568 --> 00:24:29.568 the the the Colorado river um is an historic, an historical river in that 00:24:31.209 --> 00:24:37.226 it was it has been isolated from other river, other surrounding or nearby 00:24:37.259 --> 00:24:43.906 river basins for probably the last uh 3 to 4 million years or more. The 00:24:43.939 --> 00:24:48.196 historical river in the upper basin is very much like it has been for 00:24:48.229 --> 00:24:52.496 about that period of time through the Grand through the Grand Canyon. Of 00:24:52.529 --> 00:24:57.976 course, we know that more recently as the plateau rose and the river 00:24:58.009 --> 00:25:01.696 carved its way through the canyon and captured some of the streams in the 00:25:01.729 --> 00:25:09.426 lower basin, we know that's AAA little bit younger uh geologically. 00:25:09.459 --> 00:25:15.285 But because the Colorado River has been isolated for so many years, the 00:25:15.318 --> 00:25:21.186 diversity of fish species in the system has always remained quite low. And 00:25:21.219 --> 00:25:26.467 in fact, if you look at the main Colorado river, not, not including the 00:25:26.500 --> 00:25:30.607 species that would be marine species or that would use the estuary, not 00:25:30.640 --> 00:25:34.726 including those, there's only about 14 species that are native to the 00:25:34.759 --> 00:25:38.906 entire Colorado River basin. And if you compare that to, for example, the 00:25:38.939 --> 00:25:43.676 Mississippi or the Missouri, where you have hundreds of species, you can 00:25:43.709 --> 00:25:47.647 now begin to understand that you have a very, very different, very unique 00:25:47.680 --> 00:25:54.065 evolutionary scheme that has taken place in these systems, a situation 00:25:54.098 --> 00:25:59.785 where you have few predators and therefore have few adaptive traits to be 00:25:59.818 --> 00:26:04.647 able to cope with predators. If they get introduced into the system, alien 00:26:04.680 --> 00:26:10.496 predators from other systems, the the species in the Colorado River are 00:26:10.529 --> 00:26:14.416 and, and all you have to do is look at them and you can tell these are 00:26:14.449 --> 00:26:19.967 special, very, very special fish. They are very uniquely adapted. You look 00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:24.887 at something like the Humpback chub. It is a species that is very torpedo 00:26:24.920 --> 00:26:31.176 shaped to deal with high velocity current. It is a species that has large 00:26:31.209 --> 00:26:37.956 falcate fins to be able to soar in that current, not to necessarily swim 00:26:37.989 --> 00:26:41.637 into it at high velocity. In fact, the Humpback chub is a very poor 00:26:41.670 --> 00:26:46.097 swimmer in laboratory experiments. They're not even as good a swimmer as 00:26:46.130 --> 00:26:50.516 any salmon species or striped bass or any river and species. But they're 00:26:50.549 --> 00:26:55.045 smart, they know how to deal with these high currents by finding small 00:26:55.078 --> 00:27:00.906 eddies or small pockets of low velocity. And, and III, I am fortunate 00:27:00.939 --> 00:27:05.916 enough to have been in the, I worked with the species in the upper basin 00:27:05.949 --> 00:27:10.387 and to work with the species in the lower basin in Grand Canyon where the 00:27:10.420 --> 00:27:16.877 water was clear and I could now see the fish and it's fascinating to watch 00:27:16.910 --> 00:27:23.276 Humpback chub. Uh and how that fish is able to maneuver through currents 00:27:23.309 --> 00:27:27.906 in the Grand Canyon. And I, and I'd like to, to equate that somewhat to a 00:27:27.939 --> 00:27:35.416 raptor that is soaring on the edge of a cliff or a rim and is using those 00:27:35.449 --> 00:27:40.035 thermals to maintain its position. And all you see is it tweaks one wing a 00:27:40.068 --> 00:27:44.137 little bit or a feather and it's able to stay there with relatively little 00:27:44.170 --> 00:27:48.736 energy expenditure. Well, Humpback chub do the same thing except that 00:27:48.769 --> 00:27:53.976 they're in a water environment. And in addition, the river also delivers 00:27:54.009 --> 00:27:59.285 food to them as they are sitting there with little energy expenditure. So 00:27:59.318 --> 00:28:02.597 it's a fascinating species. They have very uh they have deeply embedded 00:28:02.630 --> 00:28:09.967 scales. They have thick leathery skins to resist the, the um the scouring 00:28:10.000 --> 00:28:18.000 of a sand laden system. They have a flattened rostrum or, or the top of 00:28:18.529 --> 00:28:24.226 their head is flattened so that it allows water to pass by. And also they 00:28:24.259 --> 00:28:28.575 have that hump, which is, which is the origin of their name. What is the 00:28:28.608 --> 00:28:34.156 purpose of that? Hump? Robert Rush Miller that who identified the fish or 00:28:34.189 --> 00:28:39.156 described the fish initially taxonomical in 1946 00:28:39.189 --> 00:28:42.887 thought. And I, and I think there's a lot to it that they, it's part of 00:28:42.920 --> 00:28:45.196 AAA hydrodynamic 00:28:45.229 --> 00:28:50.217 uh feature that enables or allows the fish to maintain that position in 00:28:50.250 --> 00:28:54.387 the inner river current. There's no bony structure in it at all. It's 00:28:54.420 --> 00:28:58.877 simply a fleshy structure. Unlike the Razorback sucker. Razorback sucker 00:28:58.910 --> 00:29:03.805 has a in fact, it was also called the Humpback sucker for many years. The 00:29:03.838 --> 00:29:08.377 razor back now it's called the Razorback sucker. The Razorback sucker does 00:29:08.410 --> 00:29:13.906 in fact have a modified bony structure that forms the razor or the hump, 00:29:13.939 --> 00:29:18.785 not so with Humpback chub, the Humpback chub is a fleshy protrusion behind 00:29:18.818 --> 00:29:23.686 the head that takes place. So it helps to stabilize. So if you look again 00:29:23.719 --> 00:29:28.676 at the different species, you can see these adaptations, you see Razorback 00:29:28.709 --> 00:29:34.535 sucker with AAA hump on their back, that if you look at it from the front 00:29:34.568 --> 00:29:41.256 appears to be this very nicely designed hydrodynamic uh feature that would 00:29:41.289 --> 00:29:45.825 allow that fish to stabilize itself and to maneuver around. It also has a 00:29:45.858 --> 00:29:51.627 very thick skin and also has fairly large fins. And so these fish were 00:29:51.660 --> 00:29:56.656 very, very specifically and very highly adapted to the environment. That 00:29:56.689 --> 00:30:04.689 is the Colorado River. Now along comes uh well in the um 00:30:05.920 --> 00:30:08.736 in the 19 00:30:08.769 --> 00:30:13.246 starting in the 19 thirties, of course, with Lake Mead and then through 00:30:13.279 --> 00:30:19.335 the Colorado river storage projects uh with Glen Canyon Dam in 63 and then 00:30:19.368 --> 00:30:25.726 uh Flaming Gorge, 6263. And then Navajo also, the states looked at at the 00:30:25.759 --> 00:30:29.785 formation of these reservoirs as a great opportunity for recreational 00:30:29.818 --> 00:30:36.196 fisheries. And, and so with that, they started introducing things like 00:30:36.229 --> 00:30:40.835 largemouth bass and Croppy and bluegill and green sunfish and bullheads 00:30:40.868 --> 00:30:45.706 and fat minnows and red shiners, all kinds of fish. And in fact, 00:30:45.739 --> 00:30:50.285 altogether, today, you've got 14 fish that are native to the system and 00:30:50.318 --> 00:30:56.117 you've got upwards of about 30 to 35 that are alien or from other river 00:30:56.150 --> 00:31:01.627 basins and you have fish that are not, are ill adapted. That is the 00:31:01.660 --> 00:31:06.847 Humpback Chub ill adapted to coping with those with those alien predators 00:31:06.880 --> 00:31:11.815 or competitors. And there are also vectors for disease and parasites as 00:31:11.848 --> 00:31:18.446 well. So, so now we go back to this idea of a temperature control device 00:31:18.479 --> 00:31:23.496 and what protections the uh coal water releases out of Glen Canyon Dam 00:31:23.529 --> 00:31:28.597 have provided to the Humpback chub. Now we begin to better understand how 00:31:28.630 --> 00:31:34.295 that cold water has in fact been a barrier or at least uh uh uh uh 00:31:34.328 --> 00:31:39.147 discouraged the invasion of many of these alien fish that could have come 00:31:39.180 --> 00:31:43.276 up from Lake Mead or could have come down from Lake Powell. Yes, they are 00:31:43.309 --> 00:31:48.545 in the system, but they are not thriving as you might otherwise expect if 00:31:48.578 --> 00:31:55.107 it was a warm water system. So, predation is a, is a key issue and it is 00:31:55.140 --> 00:32:00.065 in the Grand Canyon. Interestingly enough, though, in the Grand Canyon 00:32:00.098 --> 00:32:06.996 predation is not necessarily from warm water. Fish. Predation is 00:32:07.029 --> 00:32:12.377 principally from the cold water fish that is rainbow trout and brown trout. 00:32:12.410 --> 00:32:17.887 And they were introduced for, uh, fisheries based, uh, rec recreation, 00:32:17.920 --> 00:32:21.766 fisheries, recreation. Right? Yeah, the, the, uh, those are not native to 00:32:21.799 --> 00:32:25.246 the rainbow trout. 00:32:25.279 --> 00:32:29.526 Both the rainbow trout and the brown trout were introduced by the National 00:32:29.559 --> 00:32:36.436 Park Service in the 19 twenties into initially into Bright Angel Creek. 00:32:36.469 --> 00:32:41.006 And of course, at that time, 00:32:41.039 --> 00:32:47.887 excuse me, the, the Colorado River was a warm muddy Turbid River and yet 00:32:47.920 --> 00:32:52.815 there was Grand Canyon National Park that had just been established. And 00:32:52.848 --> 00:32:56.535 so there was a need to have people have some kind of recreational 00:32:56.568 --> 00:33:01.897 opportunity. You wouldn't imagine fishing this dirty warm main stem 00:33:01.930 --> 00:33:06.156 Colorado River, but you would gain enjoyment and in fact, the unique 00:33:06.189 --> 00:33:11.976 opportunity to fish for trout, literally in the middle of the desert. And 00:33:12.009 --> 00:33:16.607 so the side streams in the side streams exactly in places like Bright 00:33:16.640 --> 00:33:20.016 Angel Creek and Bright Angel Creek was one of the places. In fact, it was 00:33:20.049 --> 00:33:25.357 the main place where trout were brought in by the Park service. They 00:33:25.390 --> 00:33:30.916 brought them in and Clear Creek to the, upstream from Bright they did, 00:33:30.949 --> 00:33:35.065 they did and in fact, did well, there they did quite well. And in fact, 00:33:35.098 --> 00:33:39.565 there was a hatchery facility that was set up at Bright Angel Creek to 00:33:39.598 --> 00:33:44.565 culture rainbow trout and brown trout. And I'm curious, we have native 00:33:44.598 --> 00:33:49.766 trout in Arizona, like the Apache trout. Um, I wonder, I, I've never heard 00:33:49.799 --> 00:33:54.335 anybody say that. Um, there were any Apache trout native in these sides 00:33:54.368 --> 00:33:57.397 streams? Were there any trout in the side streams or were they all 00:33:57.430 --> 00:34:05.430 imported the, um, the Apache trout and the Gila trout are, are, um, are, 00:34:07.009 --> 00:34:11.845 were derived from a, uh, 00:34:11.878 --> 00:34:18.456 a fish that was more closely akin to the salmon species as opposed to the 00:34:18.489 --> 00:34:25.666 mountain cutthroat trout. The patchy trout and the Gila trout are not in 00:34:25.699 --> 00:34:30.276 tributaries of the Grand Canyon. They are, they're native of the 00:34:30.309 --> 00:34:35.706 tributaries of the Gila river that eventually does go into the Colorado 00:34:35.739 --> 00:34:41.945 river, but further downstream. And so, uh, historically, and even today, 00:34:41.978 --> 00:34:46.845 we, we don't have Apache trout or Gila trout in either headwaters of the 00:34:46.878 --> 00:34:52.345 Little Colorado River or in Havasu Creek or any of the other, uh 00:34:52.378 --> 00:34:56.175 tributaries that come in on that site or for that matter, on the other, on 00:34:56.208 --> 00:35:00.655 the north rim, either out of Bright Angel or Shene or any of the other 00:35:00.688 --> 00:35:04.537 tributaries there as well. So, those were outside of the system. So the 00:35:04.570 --> 00:35:11.175 fish that were introduced were, in fact, uh, rainbow trout from, uh, from 00:35:11.208 --> 00:35:17.477 hat trees in California and then brown trout from hatcheries in Michigan 00:35:17.510 --> 00:35:21.287 that eventually came from Europe because the brown trout is a European 00:35:21.320 --> 00:35:24.756 species. 00:35:24.789 --> 00:35:29.986 And, um, you were talking about, um, their role in, in predation on the 00:35:30.019 --> 00:35:36.967 humpback chub. Where does that come in? Yeah. And so, um, 00:35:37.000 --> 00:35:41.856 the, uh, the, the rainbow trout of, of course, has been concentrated 00:35:41.889 --> 00:35:46.827 principally in the tail water, uh, of, of, of Glen Canyon Dam, The 15 00:35:46.860 --> 00:35:52.026 miles from the dam down to uh down to Lee's ferry and that of course has 00:35:52.059 --> 00:35:57.706 become a world renowned blue ribbon trout fishery. People come from all 00:35:57.739 --> 00:36:02.945 over the world to fish there. Uh There have not been many brown trout in 00:36:02.978 --> 00:36:08.385 that system perhaps because the water was too cold brown trout 00:36:08.418 --> 00:36:13.606 historically or that, that is after the dam was completed in, in uh 1963 00:36:13.639 --> 00:36:18.345 brown trout were, were principally concentrated around Bright Angel Creek. 00:36:18.378 --> 00:36:21.276 And that's of course where they were introduced originally and there were 00:36:21.309 --> 00:36:25.327 some in the main stem as well. We would catch brown trout at the mouth of 00:36:25.360 --> 00:36:30.787 the Little Colorado River which is upstream of Bright Angel Creek and they 00:36:30.820 --> 00:36:34.796 were moving up there and then evidently moving back and then spawning in 00:36:34.829 --> 00:36:40.537 Bright Angel Creek with the increasing temperature 00:36:40.570 --> 00:36:45.566 as a result of lowered elevations in Lake Powell and warmer water coming 00:36:45.599 --> 00:36:50.856 out of the dam, it has apparently enabled or allowed brown trout to move 00:36:50.889 --> 00:36:57.006 around more in the main stem. So they perhaps are not as closely tied to 00:36:57.039 --> 00:37:01.787 Bright Angel Creek. For example, as they were historically, they can now 00:37:01.820 --> 00:37:06.577 start using the main stem more because they're a warmer water fish species 00:37:06.610 --> 00:37:13.077 than say rainbow trout. Recently, we have found brown trout up in Lee's 00:37:13.110 --> 00:37:19.247 ferry and in fact, in, in, in sizable numbers and a concern is that brown 00:37:19.280 --> 00:37:24.217 trout may in fact be competitors and predators for the rainbow trout at 00:37:24.250 --> 00:37:31.796 least very really. And then in 2017, 00:37:31.829 --> 00:37:37.787 the GC damp asked to convene a science panel that was headed up by Mike 00:37:37.820 --> 00:37:43.885 Runge of the US, GS and Charles E Kulick from GCMRC myself and other 00:37:43.918 --> 00:37:49.086 biologists in that program to look at what alternatives might be available 00:37:49.119 --> 00:37:53.546 for controlling brown trout, removing them and reducing that predation and 00:37:53.579 --> 00:37:58.186 competition threat, not just for rainbow trout in the tail water, but the 00:37:58.219 --> 00:38:04.227 potential is that if brown trout were to expand, then they could end up in 00:38:04.260 --> 00:38:10.046 prime Humpback chub habitat, which is, uh, which is at the LCR river mile 00:38:10.079 --> 00:38:15.267 61. So about 75 miles or 76 miles downstream from the dam. So that's a 00:38:15.300 --> 00:38:19.586 concern that we have now is the potential for brown trout being a major 00:38:19.619 --> 00:38:23.307 predator in, in that system. 00:38:23.340 --> 00:38:29.146 I can remember, um, one of our interviews, uh, somebody mentioned that, uh 00:38:29.179 --> 00:38:35.537 , early on the thinking was that both species of trout were probably 00:38:35.570 --> 00:38:40.416 eating Humpback chub and depressing the population. And after further 00:38:40.449 --> 00:38:45.017 research, it was determined that the rainbow basically weren't and the 00:38:45.050 --> 00:38:49.376 brown trout were, is that correct in your mind? There was, did we learn 00:38:49.409 --> 00:38:53.586 that? Yeah, there was, there was some excellent work that was done by Mike 00:38:53.619 --> 00:39:00.017 Yard on looking at the effects of predation by both species. And it 00:39:00.050 --> 00:39:02.936 followed up on some of the work that we had done there earlier when we 00:39:02.969 --> 00:39:06.336 were doing the life history and ecology studies on the Humpback chub. And 00:39:06.369 --> 00:39:12.626 what Mike found is that, uh, brown trout, both species eat Humpback chub. 00:39:12.659 --> 00:39:17.026 They both will prey on them, but brown trout eat them. As I recall, 00:39:17.059 --> 00:39:22.787 something like 3 to 4 times more, they'll eat 3 to 4 times more. Humpback 00:39:22.820 --> 00:39:28.595 chub than rainbow trout dune. So the pre so for one brown trout, you're 00:39:28.628 --> 00:39:32.037 gonna have a fish that would equal maybe three or four rainbow trout in 00:39:32.070 --> 00:39:36.106 terms of the numbers of, of Humpback chub that, that fish might eat. So 00:39:36.139 --> 00:39:40.905 predation was a, is a, is a real problem, especially with brown trout. Um 00:39:40.938 --> 00:39:44.876 , the other species that we're seeing in the system is, is the small mouth 00:39:44.909 --> 00:39:49.077 bass and we're especially concerned about smallmouth bass because they in 00:39:49.110 --> 00:39:54.227 fact, are a cool water species. They do tolerate cooler water than say 00:39:54.260 --> 00:39:59.717 large mouth bass or Cropper blue gills or some of the warm water fish that 00:39:59.750 --> 00:40:05.296 fish has now recently gotten into the Grand Canyon. To my knowledge, there 00:40:05.329 --> 00:40:08.106 is, there's no evidence of reproduction in that system yet. But it's 00:40:08.139 --> 00:40:12.356 certainly a, a river that would be suitable for reproduction by the by 00:40:12.389 --> 00:40:16.046 that species. So that's another one, we're kind of keep an eye on our eye 00:40:16.079 --> 00:40:21.635 on and you expect them to be predators on humpback. They are, they are 00:40:21.668 --> 00:40:27.296 intensive predators. In fact, um, the upper Colorado river recovery 00:40:27.329 --> 00:40:33.037 program that manages these, these endangered fish in the upper basin above 00:40:33.070 --> 00:40:38.736 Lake Powell currently spends about 40% of its budget, controlling 00:40:38.769 --> 00:40:43.537 mechanically removing smallmouth bass and northern pike in the upper 00:40:43.570 --> 00:40:50.256 Colorado river, specifically in the northern pike in the Colorado river, 00:40:50.289 --> 00:40:55.396 they were introduced by the state of Colorado into Elk Reservoir some 00:40:55.429 --> 00:40:59.796 years back and they escaped both northern pike and Small Mount Bass. And 00:40:59.829 --> 00:41:05.626 in fact, today, there are guided tours for fishing for northern pike and 00:41:05.659 --> 00:41:09.986 the Yampa River. You can hire a guide out of Colorado to take you down the 00:41:10.019 --> 00:41:15.577 Yampa river and catch these £20 northern pike out of the Yampa river. Now 00:41:15.610 --> 00:41:21.287 , those fish are more aligned with cold conditions, cold water conditions. 00:41:21.320 --> 00:41:24.006 You don't see them leaving the Yampa much although we catch them in the 00:41:24.039 --> 00:41:29.126 Green River as well, but not as much. But the, the the swam up bass is a 00:41:29.159 --> 00:41:33.486 much more uh plastic species in terms of temperature. It can tolerate a 00:41:33.519 --> 00:41:38.686 big range of temperatures. And that's one that I that I believe could be a 00:41:38.719 --> 00:41:43.135 real problem in the Grand Canyon in years to come because it fills that 00:41:43.168 --> 00:41:47.046 intermediate niche between the cold water species and the warm water 00:41:47.079 --> 00:41:53.079 species and could probably do quite well in a place like the Grand Canyon. 00:41:53.728 --> 00:41:55.728 So, where are we at today? With the recovery of the Humpback chug? I heard 00:42:01.159 --> 00:42:06.816 recently that there was talk about down listing it from endangered to 00:42:06.849 --> 00:42:11.456 threatened. Um, what's the status now? And where do you think we're going 00:42:11.489 --> 00:42:15.956 in the near future? Yeah. The Humpback chub is currently listed, of course 00:42:15.989 --> 00:42:20.606 as endangered. Um, 00:42:20.639 --> 00:42:26.405 it was brought into, it was grandfathered into the endangered species Act 00:42:26.438 --> 00:42:31.836 in 1973. It was included in the original list of endangered species in 00:42:31.869 --> 00:42:35.296 1966. 00:42:35.329 --> 00:42:41.776 Um And so it has been listed as endangered for, you know, since 00:42:41.809 --> 00:42:48.267 fundamental. Yeah. Yeah, since that. Yeah. Right. Half a century. Um 00:42:48.300 --> 00:42:52.717 because of the uh expanding numbers of Humpback job that we see, 00:42:52.750 --> 00:42:57.856 especially in the Grand Canyon. The, the increased abundance of Humpback 00:42:57.889 --> 00:43:02.106 chub in the Western Grand Canyon. And how well the species is doing in the 00:43:02.139 --> 00:43:06.425 main ga in the main Grand Canyon. In addition to the fish that are in the 00:43:06.458 --> 00:43:11.546 Little Colorado River, there are about oh, about six or seven other, what 00:43:11.579 --> 00:43:15.307 we refer to as aggregations. They're small groups of fish that are located 00:43:15.340 --> 00:43:19.997 usually in, in springs, warm water, spring areas like fence vault at 30 00:43:20.030 --> 00:43:25.486 mile near Vys Paradise or around the Little Colorado River, which is a 00:43:25.519 --> 00:43:33.206 seasonally warm system or around, uh, perhaps, um, uh, Havasu Creek. I saw 00:43:33.239 --> 00:43:37.615 a bunch of Havasu creek mouth of Havasu Creek and it was clear water. So I 00:43:37.648 --> 00:43:41.115 got to take pictures of them while I'm standing kind of over them. And 00:43:41.148 --> 00:43:46.566 they're swimming around in that sandy bottom. And in fact, many people who 00:43:46.599 --> 00:43:51.916 travel down the Grand Canyon now raft down the Grand Canyon, uh, observe 00:43:51.949 --> 00:43:55.747 that one of the most common fish they see is in fact, the Humpback chub, 00:43:55.780 --> 00:43:59.845 if there's scraps of food or whatever fall in the river, they're the first 00:43:59.878 --> 00:44:03.986 ones there and they often almost are begging like a bunch of little puppy 00:44:04.019 --> 00:44:10.066 dogs waiting to be fed. Uh They're very social species, they usually uh 00:44:10.099 --> 00:44:15.195 move around in schools as groups of individuals. And so, um that 00:44:15.228 --> 00:44:19.945 population of Humpback job is doing quite well. In addition to that, there 00:44:19.978 --> 00:44:25.537 are also uh five other populations in the upper Colorado River basin in 00:44:25.570 --> 00:44:29.807 Black Rocks, Westwater cataract Canyon, desolation, Gray Canyon and Yampa 00:44:29.840 --> 00:44:35.166 Canyon. The Yampa Canyon population has recently been declared as 00:44:35.199 --> 00:44:41.195 functionally extirpated. Uh We did a species status assessment for the 00:44:41.228 --> 00:44:45.517 Humpback job about two years ago and determined that the numbers of fish 00:44:45.550 --> 00:44:50.865 in that population were pretty much gone. We recently convened a uh part 00:44:50.898 --> 00:44:54.916 of the Humpback Chub recovery team to look at the prospect of trans 00:44:54.949 --> 00:44:58.896 locating Humpback chub back into the Yampa River and establishing a 00:44:58.929 --> 00:45:03.615 population there, connected with Echo Park and Whirlpool in the Green 00:45:03.648 --> 00:45:07.925 River which is below Flaming Gorge to try to re-establish that population 00:45:07.958 --> 00:45:13.506 , the other populations are either stable or perhaps in slight decline. So 00:45:13.539 --> 00:45:17.396 they're not doing quite as well, perhaps as the Grand Canyon population, 00:45:17.429 --> 00:45:22.095 but they're, they're self sustained. They produce young every year. Uh We 00:45:22.128 --> 00:45:27.106 see, you know, good numbers of them in these populations. And so the 00:45:27.139 --> 00:45:32.706 service has decided that uh if we examine the, the terms of the Endangered 00:45:32.739 --> 00:45:36.425 Species Act and what's defined as an endangered species, one likely to go 00:45:36.458 --> 00:45:40.666 extinct within the foreseeable future, that the impact job is, in fact, 00:45:40.699 --> 00:45:47.747 probably not that it is an AAA species that faces threats. And so, uh 00:45:47.780 --> 00:45:53.626 perhaps the classification of threatened is more appropriate. So the uh US 00:45:53.659 --> 00:45:58.365 fish and wildlife service here uh about a month ago, which would be back 00:45:58.398 --> 00:46:06.398 in about February sometime 2020 2020. Yeah, of this year, correct, uh 00:46:07.599 --> 00:46:15.599 initiated the process of a down list proposal for the species. The 00:46:16.239 --> 00:46:20.967 proposal was published in the Federal register about a, about a month ago 00:46:21.000 --> 00:46:26.956 , which would be about February 2020 and is open to comment, I think till 00:46:26.989 --> 00:46:34.217 the end of March 2020. If it is determined that uh that it's appropriate 00:46:34.250 --> 00:46:39.526 to down list the species, the Humpback chub could be down listed within, 00:46:39.559 --> 00:46:44.885 within the next year. Uh That would be determined of course, as, as part 00:46:44.918 --> 00:46:49.595 of the ruling in the federal register. So that, that's one that's one 00:46:49.628 --> 00:46:55.626 prospect. The likelihood I think of that is pretty good. Um Given that the 00:46:55.659 --> 00:46:58.385 population is doing so well in the Grand Canyon and given that the 00:46:58.418 --> 00:47:02.146 population in the upper basin are holding their own, perhaps a little 00:47:02.179 --> 00:47:06.586 decline, perhaps in some years, they go back up. And if we can get fish 00:47:06.619 --> 00:47:09.916 into the Yampa River, I think we'll be in pretty good shape, but it 00:47:09.949 --> 00:47:14.615 certainly does not meet the definition of endangered if you, if you look 00:47:14.648 --> 00:47:20.557 at it that way. Um There is, there is another species that's also being 00:47:20.590 --> 00:47:24.807 considered now in the Grand Canyon. And that's the Colorado pike minnow, 00:47:24.840 --> 00:47:30.586 Colorado pike. Minnow is also an endangered species. And there is uh there 00:47:30.619 --> 00:47:37.376 is currently um an evaluation of, of possibly reintroducing the Colorado 00:47:37.409 --> 00:47:42.236 pike metal into the Grand Canyon. It's extirpated from the Grand Canyon 00:47:42.269 --> 00:47:47.345 right now. It has been extirpated from the Grand Canyon since about 1975 00:47:47.378 --> 00:47:51.396 as a result of the changes in the river due to the construction of Glen 00:47:51.429 --> 00:47:57.135 Canyon Dam or something else. Probably all of the above where it was a 00:47:57.168 --> 00:48:01.135 highly, it it's a, it's what's known as a PTA species. In other words, 00:48:01.168 --> 00:48:05.456 it's highly migratory within a given river system. So we believe that that 00:48:05.489 --> 00:48:09.936 Colorado Pikemen at one time probably migrated all the way from, say, Yuma 00:48:09.969 --> 00:48:13.916 Arizona, which is where it was warmer and perhaps even went into the 00:48:13.949 --> 00:48:20.827 estuary to feed. And uh the evidence is is strong that the fish got to 00:48:20.860 --> 00:48:25.497 about 6 ft or so in length and weighed £100. Uh North America's largest 00:48:25.530 --> 00:48:29.416 minnow and we've got bone fragments and remains that support that 00:48:29.449 --> 00:48:34.936 contention. Now, the biggest fish we see are about 25 maybe £30. Uh So 00:48:34.969 --> 00:48:39.416 we're not quite seeing the, the large fish now, perhaps because they're 00:48:39.449 --> 00:48:43.316 restricted to the upper basin and perhaps because they don't have the full 00:48:43.349 --> 00:48:48.155 uh regime of temperature year round to allow that growth. So we don't have 00:48:48.188 --> 00:48:55.135 any below lake uh uh Hoover Dam in Lake. No, there are none below. Um 00:48:55.168 --> 00:49:00.945 There are none below Glen Canyon Dam. Ok. At this time, everything is 00:49:00.978 --> 00:49:06.445 above Glen Canyon Dam except for the small numbers that were introduced. 00:49:06.478 --> 00:49:09.666 They, they're not natural but they were introduced into the Salt and 00:49:09.699 --> 00:49:14.307 Verde rivers, tributaries of the Gila and those are known those are now 00:49:14.340 --> 00:49:19.586 currently called 10 J populations or experimental non essential 00:49:19.619 --> 00:49:23.506 populations in others. They are there just to have them there to maintain 00:49:23.539 --> 00:49:29.425 , but they're not part of recovery targets at this time. So the idea is 00:49:29.458 --> 00:49:33.247 being entertained right now by A US Fish and Wildlife Service and Arizona 00:49:33.280 --> 00:49:37.046 Game and Fish Department and the National Park Service to perhaps look at 00:49:37.079 --> 00:49:43.146 the possibility of bringing Colorado Pike Meadow into the Grand Canyon at 00:49:43.179 --> 00:49:49.037 least to have them there. The I I think it's questionable whether all the 00:49:49.070 --> 00:49:52.977 life history requirements are there for the species to be self sustained. 00:49:53.010 --> 00:50:00.077 I don't think so at this time, uh that fish needs uh uh long rivers to 00:50:00.110 --> 00:50:06.307 migrate to spawn in clean headwater areas, warm temperatures, the young 00:50:06.340 --> 00:50:13.467 drift, uh perhaps many miles up to 5060 miles or more into small sand 00:50:13.500 --> 00:50:17.526 backwaters where they can feed and live for most of the, most of the rest 00:50:17.559 --> 00:50:21.706 of the year. It's a summertime spawner they spawn in usually about late 00:50:21.739 --> 00:50:28.595 June, July. Sometime those, those key life history elements are probably 00:50:28.628 --> 00:50:33.195 not present in the Grand Canyon, but I think that that's still being 00:50:33.228 --> 00:50:37.175 looked at at least to have the species there to say that they are 00:50:37.208 --> 00:50:42.155 someplace in the lower basin. Um 00:50:42.188 --> 00:50:49.405 So, so at this point in time, the um again, the Humpback job is, is, is 00:50:49.438 --> 00:50:55.227 being proposed for down listing. I think there's information that would 00:50:55.260 --> 00:50:58.945 warrant that at this time, we'll see what the public decides and what 00:50:58.978 --> 00:51:06.095 others decide as well. If that, if that down listing takes place, it 00:51:06.128 --> 00:51:13.287 really would not change much in terms of how Glen Canyon Dam is operated. 00:51:13.320 --> 00:51:17.356 The difference between an endangered species and a threatened species is 00:51:17.389 --> 00:51:20.066 , 00:51:20.099 --> 00:51:27.606 is small relative to section seven of the, of the endangered Species Act. 00:51:27.639 --> 00:51:34.006 It can open some opportunities for additional conservation measures. For 00:51:34.039 --> 00:51:38.057 example, there is a section in the endangered Species Act called the four 00:51:38.090 --> 00:51:43.506 D rule. That is a provision that allows the states now to become more 00:51:43.539 --> 00:51:47.986 active and more participant in part of the conservation measures, it gives 00:51:48.019 --> 00:51:52.077 , for example, the states the opportunity to define, take what is known as 00:51:52.110 --> 00:51:57.146 , take. In other words, how you can take or kill or capture or maintain 00:51:57.179 --> 00:52:03.385 these individual individual fish. So it might give some flexibility to 00:52:03.418 --> 00:52:10.037 management, which I think would be good. Um Can can you say to what extent 00:52:10.070 --> 00:52:13.727 the improved 00:52:13.760 --> 00:52:20.695 health of the Humpback chub population in the Grand Canyon is traceable to 00:52:20.728 --> 00:52:26.497 the Adaptive Management Program and you know, changes in dam operations. I 00:52:26.530 --> 00:52:30.727 mean, how much of it is just serendipity and how much of it is the results 00:52:30.760 --> 00:52:34.195 of our efforts to recover the species? 00:52:34.228 --> 00:52:40.077 That, that that is a thing of, of uh scientist nightmare. 00:52:40.110 --> 00:52:47.595 Uh where one spends a lifetime trying to be smart enough to come up with 00:52:47.628 --> 00:52:53.717 the right management actions and then implements a program like Glen 00:52:53.750 --> 00:53:00.146 Canyon Dam Ltpis and then looks back upon it 20 years later, whatever. And 00:53:00.179 --> 00:53:06.267 again, we're not that far away from it yet, but we're going to be uh and 00:53:06.300 --> 00:53:10.365 you realize that many of the things that you did either made a difference 00:53:10.398 --> 00:53:13.356 or didn't make a difference, most of them perhaps didn't make much of a 00:53:13.389 --> 00:53:20.195 difference. And then the word serendipity is perhaps the most the best 00:53:20.228 --> 00:53:26.006 word for that. How many things took place naturally or normally part of 00:53:26.039 --> 00:53:32.796 the of the the expanded distribution and abundance of the Humpback Chub is 00:53:32.829 --> 00:53:38.876 in fact, due to reoperation of Glen Canyon Dam and the actions that were 00:53:38.909 --> 00:53:43.336 put in place by the federal Agencies in Cooper operation with the States 00:53:43.369 --> 00:53:48.776 and other stakeholders. Part of that recovery is directly attributed part 00:53:48.809 --> 00:53:53.967 of it. However, is in fact serendipitous relative to the changing 00:53:54.000 --> 00:54:00.577 elevations of Lake Powell and Lake Mead warmer releases from the dam and 00:54:00.610 --> 00:54:06.546 also re excavation of the historic river channel downstream of Diamond 00:54:06.579 --> 00:54:11.956 Creek and all the way down to Pierce ferry. Now, specifically, the things 00:54:11.989 --> 00:54:15.686 that were put in place that have really helped. I think the Humpback chub 00:54:15.719 --> 00:54:20.506 is that um prior to 1995 00:54:20.539 --> 00:54:28.539 the Glen Canyon dam operation was um was a 00:54:28.898 --> 00:54:35.606 a hydro power generation type facility where hydropower is maximized by 00:54:35.639 --> 00:54:40.706 having flows as low as three or 5000 cubic feet per second in the middle 00:54:40.739 --> 00:54:45.327 of the night. And then at about four o'clock in the morning, start ramping 00:54:45.360 --> 00:54:49.787 those releases up to say 30,000 cubic feet per second, which is the 00:54:49.820 --> 00:54:55.756 capacity of the power plant. And you would see then about a 20 ft increase 00:54:55.789 --> 00:55:00.276 in the elevation of the river right there below the dam. And this of 00:55:00.309 --> 00:55:05.037 course would generate this uh kinematic wave all the way downstream. And 00:55:05.070 --> 00:55:09.115 fundamentally, that was almost a daily flushing of the Grand Canyon if you 00:55:09.148 --> 00:55:13.077 may, I mean to be a little extreme perhaps, but that was kind of the 00:55:13.110 --> 00:55:17.086 effect. And so when I first got involved, that was what was happening is 00:55:17.119 --> 00:55:21.296 we had these very, very high fluctuations. And of course, people will tell 00:55:21.329 --> 00:55:25.077 stories about when you were down there with the big rafts that you had to 00:55:25.110 --> 00:55:27.986 make sure you parked those boats in such a place that you wouldn't be 00:55:28.019 --> 00:55:32.416 stranded on the beach for the next day until those flows, you know, came 00:55:32.449 --> 00:55:40.449 back up. Um That operation of these very, very large changes in flow and 00:55:42.369 --> 00:55:50.369 river elevation were probably um were not beneficial to young Humpback job 00:55:50.619 --> 00:55:56.336 that used the shoreline for nursery areas. The fish would come out of the 00:55:56.369 --> 00:56:01.506 little Colorado River as four or five month old fish and then they would 00:56:01.539 --> 00:56:04.845 hang out along the shoreline, which was the better place for them to 00:56:04.878 --> 00:56:11.227 escape predators and to find food with flows going up and down. Even as 00:56:11.260 --> 00:56:16.997 far down as the LCR maybe as much as 4 5 6 ft or more, then you would have 00:56:17.030 --> 00:56:20.436 displacement of these fish and they would either be displaced downstream 00:56:20.469 --> 00:56:25.227 or be displaced away from that cover and be exposed to predation by, by 00:56:25.260 --> 00:56:30.017 another fish. So that was good that the idea of what was known as the 00:56:30.050 --> 00:56:36.405 modified low fluctuating flow MLFF that came about in, in uh in, in 1995 00:56:36.438 --> 00:56:41.526 basically as a result of those, those studies that were done prior to that. 00:56:41.559 --> 00:56:47.336 Um That was good that and so that, that made the, the habitat for the 00:56:47.369 --> 00:56:53.256 Humpback job a little bit more stable. Now, admittedly, I was one of the 00:56:53.289 --> 00:56:57.095 biologists that were saying that was saying at the time, in fact, you have 00:56:57.128 --> 00:57:01.727 to try to get those flows even more stable because if you look at 00:57:01.760 --> 00:57:05.336 summertime in the Colorado River, except for places where there's 00:57:05.369 --> 00:57:09.686 monsoonal storms that would be large enough to increase flow by and large. 00:57:09.719 --> 00:57:12.546 The flow of the Colorado River during the summertime was relatively 00:57:12.579 --> 00:57:16.885 stable. It didn't fluctuate and low, correct low. And that's what brought 00:57:16.918 --> 00:57:22.006 about the low steady summer flow concept, the flow that we had in 2000 to 00:57:22.039 --> 00:57:27.526 test that hypothesis. But what we found out and thanks to some of the work 00:57:27.559 --> 00:57:32.776 done by Bill Pine and and others is that in fact, the Humpback job was 00:57:32.809 --> 00:57:38.586 quite plastic in terms of its ability to be able to move with those flows 00:57:38.619 --> 00:57:43.425 and use those tailless slopes. If you look at the at the slopes in Grand 00:57:43.458 --> 00:57:46.767 Canyon, for example, downstream of the little Colorado River where you 00:57:46.800 --> 00:57:51.807 have young Humpback chub, they are, in fact, slopes of Talus that are 00:57:51.840 --> 00:57:56.807 continuous rock and boulder mixture all the way up the slope. So all the 00:57:56.840 --> 00:58:00.486 humpback job has to do is just move with the water and it's at a new 00:58:00.519 --> 00:58:05.736 interface that is still that boulder tailless habitat where you can still 00:58:05.769 --> 00:58:09.615 use those areas for different kind in the back water. You get behind in 00:58:09.648 --> 00:58:14.425 the little little eddies and backwaters and little cubby holes in and 00:58:14.458 --> 00:58:21.776 between these boulders. So the large fluctuations that we saw prior to 00:58:21.809 --> 00:58:26.936 MLFF were probably not good for the humpback job. The more modified 00:58:26.969 --> 00:58:31.026 fluctuations have probably helped to benefit the species and in fact 00:58:31.059 --> 00:58:34.967 probably do help even stimulate maybe some production along those 00:58:35.000 --> 00:58:39.327 shorelines when you have water moving around the way it does. So that, 00:58:39.360 --> 00:58:43.566 that, that did help out. The other thing where we think there was quite a 00:58:43.599 --> 00:58:48.486 bit of benefit is, is there was, in fact, mechanical predation, mechanical 00:58:48.519 --> 00:58:56.519 predator removal in the Grand Canyon. Um, even before the Ltpis, where we 00:58:57.639 --> 00:59:01.385 were removing brown trout and rainbow trout from the system, as well as 00:59:01.418 --> 00:59:06.546 other species removing channel catfish or carp from the little Colorado 00:59:06.579 --> 00:59:11.615 River as well. Are catfish also predators on Humpback? Absolutely. Very 00:59:11.648 --> 00:59:17.977 much so that not Carp because, well, carp we know are, are voracious 00:59:18.010 --> 00:59:24.896 predators of fish eggs. Oh, ok. And I've watched, uh, uh, red shiners 00:59:24.929 --> 00:59:29.287 spawning in Spencer Creek, which is the lower end of Grand Canyon. And 00:59:29.320 --> 00:59:33.425 then as the red shiners were spawning early one morning, it wasn't but 00:59:33.458 --> 00:59:40.146 five minutes. And here comes a, an entire herd of Humpback, excuse me, of 00:59:40.179 --> 00:59:44.977 carp, common carp that came up and just vacuum that entire area for eggs. 00:59:45.010 --> 00:59:48.706 So they, they're not native either. That's correct. Yeah. And that's 00:59:48.739 --> 00:59:52.787 another species that we may underestimate in terms of their effect to 00:59:52.820 --> 00:59:56.267 these native fish is how, how much effect they may have on eggs and on 00:59:56.300 --> 01:00:02.526 larvae and, and their predation there as well. So, um so that, so that was 01:00:02.559 --> 01:00:08.405 another thing is, is modifying those fluctuating flows, doing some 01:00:08.438 --> 01:00:13.006 predator control to reduce the, the the predation on those fish. The other 01:00:13.039 --> 01:00:18.626 , the other thing that probably did help Humpback chub was um 01:00:18.659 --> 01:00:26.659 was these high flow experiments that provided uh large sandy beaches and 01:00:27.059 --> 01:00:33.936 deposits in the large recirculating eddy complexes of the Grand Canyon. 01:00:33.969 --> 01:00:40.126 And as part of that recirculating complex, of course, what happens is that 01:00:40.159 --> 01:00:44.736 the water is laden with sediment because it, it is a higher volume, higher 01:00:44.769 --> 01:00:52.769 velocity. Uh The the the base flows may be at uh 1512, 1510, 15, 12,000 01:00:53.628 --> 01:00:56.945 cubic feet per second. With a high flow experiment, you're going up to 01:00:56.978 --> 01:01:01.977 45,000, which is the, the 30,000 out of the power plant and then the 01:01:02.010 --> 01:01:07.695 15,000 out of the bypass valves. So when you've got 45,000 CFS going down 01:01:07.728 --> 01:01:14.376 the system, you are lifting, activating, energizing the sediment in the 01:01:14.409 --> 01:01:19.115 system suspending it. And then when it gets to these large recirculating 01:01:19.148 --> 01:01:25.416 eddies, it slows down and drops out in the eddy was part of that large 01:01:25.449 --> 01:01:30.115 sandy beach. There is the recurrent channel which is that little stream of 01:01:30.148 --> 01:01:33.845 high velocity water that goes right against the bank. And behind that 01:01:33.878 --> 01:01:39.236 sandbar, that recurrent channel forms a backwater, which is very nice 01:01:39.269 --> 01:01:44.345 habitat for fish. And while Humpback chub don't necessarily use those that 01:01:44.378 --> 01:01:49.537 often. They are there. Nevertheless. And the high flow experiments do help 01:01:49.570 --> 01:01:53.967 to provide that environment for the fish. But also other native species 01:01:54.000 --> 01:01:57.327 like flannel mouse suckers and blue head suckers and speckled dace do use 01:01:57.360 --> 01:02:01.477 those habitats. So it has helped. So those are some of the things that the 01:02:01.510 --> 01:02:04.967 reoperation has done to benefit the fish. But like I said, many of the 01:02:05.000 --> 01:02:09.066 others are like you said, serendipitous because they are tied to mother 01:02:09.099 --> 01:02:14.115 nature and climate change and availability of water in different years. 01:02:14.148 --> 01:02:20.925 That that's great explanation. Thank you. Um You did some studies of the 01:02:20.958 --> 01:02:27.066 early high flow experiments to determine whether they were being effective 01:02:27.099 --> 01:02:32.026 or not. Can you talk about how the science and our understanding of the 01:02:32.059 --> 01:02:36.526 impacts of those high flow experiments has evolved from the, the first one 01:02:36.559 --> 01:02:40.856 was sometime in the 19 nineties, right? And that's when you were looking 01:02:40.889 --> 01:02:45.925 at that. And you have a couple of publications from 1999 and 2001 on that. 01:02:45.958 --> 01:02:50.686 Yes. So how did our understanding of those high flow experiments evolve 01:02:50.719 --> 01:02:56.436 over time? Well, the, the first experiment of course was the 1996 control 01:02:56.469 --> 01:03:00.416 Flood. We called it The Control Flood through Grand Canyon. And of course 01:03:00.449 --> 01:03:07.776 , uh I was fortunate enough to edit a book with uh Bob Webb Jack Schmidt 01:03:07.809 --> 01:03:15.066 and Dick Marzo called the 1996 Control Flood in the Grand Canyon. And it's 01:03:15.099 --> 01:03:19.595 available through the Geophysical Union. It's available on the internet. 01:03:19.628 --> 01:03:23.747 And that archived many of the studies that were done at that time and what 01:03:23.780 --> 01:03:28.747 we found out about a high flow experiment. Now, prior to that, it was, it 01:03:28.780 --> 01:03:35.017 was called the uh beach habitat building flow BHBF. That was a terminology 01:03:35.050 --> 01:03:37.836 that was supposed to be descriptive of what it was supposed to do. And 01:03:37.869 --> 01:03:42.336 that was to beach, to build habitat, to build beaches, beach habitat, 01:03:42.369 --> 01:03:47.986 building flow. But the history of that is, is, is I think even more 01:03:48.019 --> 01:03:54.856 interesting. The na when, when Dave Wagner was uh head of the Glen Kenyon 01:03:54.889 --> 01:04:00.146 environmental studies, G ce s, this is all the way back into the um the 01:04:00.179 --> 01:04:08.179 mid eighties. He asked the National Academy of Sciences to do a review of 01:04:09.099 --> 01:04:14.577 studies and the program G CS in the Grand Canyon. And of course, that was 01:04:14.610 --> 01:04:22.610 just after the high flow of 1983 and 84 where the capacity of lake Paul 01:04:23.309 --> 01:04:27.526 was practically exceeded. And there were these emergency releases. You, 01:04:27.559 --> 01:04:35.006 you can read about it in uh the book by Kevin Fedarko the Emerald Mild, 01:04:35.039 --> 01:04:38.977 correct, did an excellent job of documenting what was happening at that 01:04:39.010 --> 01:04:45.546 time. But um what the National Academy of Sciences concluded after that, 01:04:45.579 --> 01:04:50.787 after that experience with those high flows was that in fact, high flows 01:04:50.820 --> 01:04:55.945 are bad for the Grand Canyon because in fact, they transport large amounts 01:04:55.978 --> 01:05:02.827 of sediment out, out of the system, correct? And so the initial thought 01:05:02.860 --> 01:05:06.175 was oh my goodness, we can't allow these high flows to take place in the 01:05:06.208 --> 01:05:11.796 Grand Canyon. A second review by the National Academy of Sciences. A few 01:05:11.829 --> 01:05:16.467 years later said, no, there's perhaps more to it than that. Perhaps we can 01:05:16.500 --> 01:05:22.626 use certain releases from Glen Canyon Dam to in fact, suspend that 01:05:22.659 --> 01:05:27.896 sediment and not transport all of it out of the system. But in fact, and 01:05:27.929 --> 01:05:31.497 train some of it in these large recirculating eddies. And it was people 01:05:31.530 --> 01:05:37.506 like Jack Schmidt and other scientists that said this is a way perhaps to 01:05:37.539 --> 01:05:42.787 preserve sediment, sand in the Grand Canyon as beaches for river runners, 01:05:42.820 --> 01:05:48.436 for camping and a substrate for riparian habitat for all the way from 01:05:48.469 --> 01:05:54.436 Southwest Willow flycatchers to reptiles and lizards and all kinds of 01:05:54.469 --> 01:06:02.469 animals that rely on those riparian areas. And so in the um leading up to 01:06:02.750 --> 01:06:09.767 the 1995 EIS, the concept was, was developed uh of beach habitat building 01:06:09.800 --> 01:06:15.606 flows bhbfs. And as a result of that, uh the Secretary of Interior 01:06:15.639 --> 01:06:21.456 approved a high flow release, which was, which was really significant 01:06:21.489 --> 01:06:28.477 because it in fact um was a release that not only involved the full power 01:06:28.510 --> 01:06:33.115 plant capacity of 30,000 cubic feet per second but also involved the 01:06:33.148 --> 01:06:37.856 bypass valves. Now, the bypass valves are what are known as the jet tubes 01:06:37.889 --> 01:06:44.066 do not have hydropower generating facilities. And so there was in fact, 01:06:44.099 --> 01:06:48.247 the cost associated with that and the lost hyder power revenue cost do you 01:06:48.280 --> 01:06:56.280 mean? Exactly. And so the first uh nine, the 1996 experiment went for, uh 01:06:58.070 --> 01:07:01.606 gosh, almost almost two weeks. As I recall, it went for a long period of 01:07:01.639 --> 01:07:05.445 time. But again, we learned a lot from it because what we learned is, is 01:07:05.478 --> 01:07:08.537 in fact the majority of that sediment was moved in about the first two or 01:07:08.570 --> 01:07:12.477 three days. So we learned that you don't need to have these for a very 01:07:12.510 --> 01:07:16.497 long period of time. You can only, you can have them for just 48 to say 96 01:07:16.530 --> 01:07:19.916 hours, something like that. And that's more than enough to, to move that 01:07:19.949 --> 01:07:23.517 sediment. Um 01:07:23.550 --> 01:07:31.550 So, so the uh so what happened is that um as that understanding was 01:07:32.478 --> 01:07:40.155 becoming better known than there was eventually a protocol developed for 01:07:40.188 --> 01:07:47.517 releasing water from Glen Canyon Dam. That was both a fall HFV and a 01:07:47.550 --> 01:07:53.747 spring HFV for the possibility of releasing water depending on when 01:07:53.780 --> 01:07:59.967 sediment was available. Now, it just so happens that the major sources of 01:08:00.000 --> 01:08:03.776 sediment to Grand Canyon now, because all the sediment from the upper 01:08:03.809 --> 01:08:07.807 basin is trapped in Lake Powell. The major sources of sediment are of 01:08:07.840 --> 01:08:13.885 course the Perla River which is 15 miles downstream from the dam and the 01:08:13.918 --> 01:08:18.607 little Colorado River which is about 76 miles downstream from the dam. The 01:08:18.640 --> 01:08:24.527 Perla River is principally a fall monsoonal storm driven system. So that, 01:08:24.560 --> 01:08:29.567 that sediment is usually driven in the late uh is usually transported in 01:08:29.600 --> 01:08:34.616 the late summer time in about July August. During the monsoonal storms, 01:08:34.649 --> 01:08:39.476 the LCR, the little Colorado River further downstream is a spring flood 01:08:39.509 --> 01:08:44.844 system so that sediment is available at a different time of year. 01:08:44.877 --> 01:08:50.424 Initially, the high flow experiments were being done in the springtime 01:08:50.457 --> 01:08:54.924 with the idea that it was more simulating the natural hydra that you know 01:08:54.957 --> 01:09:00.715 , those were spring floods. Eventually, it became better understood that 01:09:00.748 --> 01:09:04.054 the majority of sediment in fact would be available from the PA because it 01:09:04.087 --> 01:09:07.856 was right there just downstream from the dam and you could release it in a 01:09:07.889 --> 01:09:12.316 timely way that you could take advantage of that large amount of sediment. 01:09:12.349 --> 01:09:17.965 Besides the majority, many of those large recirculating complexes that 01:09:17.998 --> 01:09:22.825 entrained that sediment are located upstream of the Little Colorado River. 01:09:22.858 --> 01:09:29.455 So it's that area around from Vys Paradise on down all the way down 01:09:29.488 --> 01:09:32.776 pretty much to the LCR. That's, that's where a lot of the benefit would 01:09:32.809 --> 01:09:40.809 come. Although there are other areas downstream as well now. Um So HFES 01:09:41.489 --> 01:09:47.135 then high flow experiments became initially were spring high flow 01:09:47.168 --> 01:09:55.168 experiments and then became fall high flow experiments. Now, most recently 01:09:55.259 --> 01:09:59.006 and, and here's, here's adaptive management coming into play, right? Where 01:09:59.039 --> 01:10:04.416 most recently the people that are looking at uh production of insects in 01:10:04.449 --> 01:10:09.326 the Grand Canyon and production of algae and everything else are saying, 01:10:09.359 --> 01:10:13.857 we're seeing a real decline in our food base in the Grand Canyon and we 01:10:13.890 --> 01:10:19.916 think part of the reason is it's tied to these fall high flow experiments 01:10:19.949 --> 01:10:23.737 where uh where in the fall when you have a high flow experiment, you have 01:10:23.770 --> 01:10:27.996 got 40,000 or so cubic feet per second coming out of the dam, you've got a 01:10:28.029 --> 01:10:33.027 real scouring effect, especially on that uh where most of that primary 01:10:33.060 --> 01:10:37.706 production takes place. And that's in that 15 mile reach of Lee's ferry. 01:10:37.739 --> 01:10:43.286 So if you scour that production at that time of year, you are now at the 01:10:43.319 --> 01:10:48.666 point in the, in the year to where you've got a low sun angle and you 01:10:48.699 --> 01:10:52.726 don't have as much potential photosynthetic production taking place as you 01:10:52.759 --> 01:10:57.595 might otherwise. And then you've got the entire winter period where that 01:10:57.628 --> 01:11:02.476 community does not have a chance to recover and have, you know, and be 01:11:02.509 --> 01:11:06.626 back and productive again as you might otherwise think. So that's one of 01:11:06.659 --> 01:11:10.717 the things we're learning the fall hfes may be beneficial for storage of 01:11:10.750 --> 01:11:14.866 sediment because it maximizes that sediment availability. But it also 01:11:14.899 --> 01:11:19.796 might be ne negative or detrimental to, to production in the system which 01:11:19.829 --> 01:11:24.006 drives the whole the whole food basin system. We've been hearing about low 01:11:24.039 --> 01:11:30.826 bug flows lately. Can you explain that? Yeah. Um 01:11:30.859 --> 01:11:37.796 The combination of cold water releases through the Grand Canyon 01:11:37.829 --> 01:11:43.956 in a uniform manner without seasonal warming because the water is always 01:11:43.989 --> 01:11:50.527 coming out or, you know, at one about one temperature before, before Lake 01:11:50.560 --> 01:11:56.765 Paul went down, it was always at about 8 to 10 °C. Now it's between 1012, 01:11:56.798 --> 01:12:01.467 maybe 13, but it's not warming up to say what the river used to be 01:12:01.500 --> 01:12:09.425 historically, which was 25 °C. So you don't see that seasonal warming that 01:12:09.458 --> 01:12:17.458 combined with the fluctuating flows that we see has precluded 01:12:18.399 --> 01:12:23.576 the establishment of certain species of invertebrates, especially may 01:12:23.609 --> 01:12:29.595 flies, stone flies, catus flies, species that fish food, exactly, fish 01:12:29.628 --> 01:12:34.976 food, the the basis of production in the system. Um, 01:12:35.009 --> 01:12:40.336 species of insects that are what we refer to as multi volte species or 01:12:40.369 --> 01:12:46.027 species that require both a warm period and a very cold period to complete 01:12:46.060 --> 01:12:50.226 their life cycle. So those species are not in the system. They are Univ 01:12:50.259 --> 01:12:56.226 species which can, which can survive and exist in places like we have in 01:12:56.259 --> 01:13:02.866 the Grand Canyon now. And so the idea came up, uh, gentleman named Ted 01:13:02.899 --> 01:13:06.647 Kennedy, who's with GCMRC, came up with the idea of what are known as the 01:13:06.680 --> 01:13:11.345 bug flows. So that on weekends, especially when there's not that much 01:13:11.378 --> 01:13:15.996 power demand and we have more flexibility in, in dam operations, then then 01:13:16.029 --> 01:13:20.277 perhaps instead of fluctuating, then you run the flow at a certain level 01:13:20.310 --> 01:13:24.937 and then you allow these bugs to crawl up on the rocks and deposit their 01:13:24.970 --> 01:13:29.765 eggs and keep the eggs wet, so they don't dry out and die. And then you 01:13:29.798 --> 01:13:34.406 have hatching of those and you've got at least some reinstatement of some 01:13:34.439 --> 01:13:39.116 of that historical bug community so to speak is that working it, it 01:13:39.149 --> 01:13:42.687 appears to be working. The experiments are limited, of course, at this 01:13:42.720 --> 01:13:46.916 time because they're being done on a limited time basis. But they do 01:13:46.949 --> 01:13:52.666 appear to be working, they do appear to be, there are more of certain 01:13:52.699 --> 01:13:57.706 species of insects in the system that are potentially food for the fish. 01:13:57.739 --> 01:14:03.055 And so that in and of itself is working. However, the issue of Fall hfes 01:14:03.088 --> 01:14:07.496 and their scouring effect on production is still one that's being 01:14:07.529 --> 01:14:13.675 considered and talked about. And in fact, there is consideration of now 01:14:13.708 --> 01:14:18.366 switching perhaps back to spring HBs or switching back and forth perhaps 01:14:18.399 --> 01:14:24.317 and not having these continuously during the fall. So, um as I understand 01:14:24.350 --> 01:14:28.326 it, they won't even do an HFE if they haven't determined that a certain 01:14:28.359 --> 01:14:32.336 amount of sediment has come down one of those two tributaries and is 01:14:32.369 --> 01:14:37.416 available to push down the Colorado. So some years they won't do, they do 01:14:37.449 --> 01:14:41.506 one every fall or do some falls. They don't do an HFE at all if there 01:14:41.539 --> 01:14:44.796 isn't enough sediment. Yeah. There, there's two factors that determine the 01:14:44.829 --> 01:14:50.416 , the um uh an HFE taking place. One of course is the availability of 01:14:50.449 --> 01:14:56.076 water availability of enough volume to be able to release that volume that 01:14:56.109 --> 01:15:00.296 may not otherwise be part of normal operations. And then the second is the 01:15:00.329 --> 01:15:04.166 availability of the sediment, the amount of sediment in the system. And of 01:15:04.199 --> 01:15:07.916 course, that's monitored on an ongoing basis to make sure that there's 01:15:07.949 --> 01:15:11.595 enough sediment there that if you do an HFV, you're going to have some 01:15:11.628 --> 01:15:17.055 benefit from it. So, yes, there are some times when an HFE is not 01:15:17.088 --> 01:15:23.107 authorized, authorized or suitable because of the lack of sediment. 01:15:23.140 --> 01:15:27.546 How about if we take a short break now and then come back in about five 01:15:27.579 --> 01:15:32.446 minutes? Ok. Pausing, recording, 01:15:32.479 --> 01:15:35.836 resuming, recording. 01:15:35.869 --> 01:15:40.737 Um One of the topics we touched on in the first half of the interview was 01:15:40.770 --> 01:15:46.826 the topic of mechanical removal of predatory fish that, uh, impact the 01:15:46.859 --> 01:15:51.906 chubb population, brown trout in particular, but also rainbow. Um, can you 01:15:51.939 --> 01:15:56.647 talk a little bit about how mechanical remo, what role mechanical removal 01:15:56.680 --> 01:16:02.217 has played in fish management and what happened when it was adopted for 01:16:02.250 --> 01:16:09.527 the Glen Canyon, um Adaptive Management program? Yeah. Uh, the, the, the 01:16:09.560 --> 01:16:14.206 threat of predation especially and to a certain degree competition on 01:16:14.239 --> 01:16:19.046 especially the Humpback chub was a common theme across the Colorado River 01:16:19.079 --> 01:16:26.265 basin in all populations. One of the biggest concerns was the numbers of 01:16:26.298 --> 01:16:31.437 young fish, especially that would be lost to, uh, things like smallmouth 01:16:31.470 --> 01:16:36.675 bass or largemouth bass or channel catfish or other species, literally 01:16:36.708 --> 01:16:43.206 eating those young, removing them from the population. So, um, the idea, 01:16:43.239 --> 01:16:46.987 there were, there were many ideas that were, that were discussed in terms 01:16:47.020 --> 01:16:52.876 of how to manage these non native species and one of the, of course most 01:16:52.909 --> 01:16:56.656 outstanding and most direct was the concept of mechanical removal. That is 01:16:56.689 --> 01:17:01.397 you simply just put people out there in electro fishing boats or nets or 01:17:01.430 --> 01:17:05.425 whatever gears you can use and catch as many of those non native fish as 01:17:05.458 --> 01:17:10.956 you can and remove them from the system with presumably the desired 01:17:10.989 --> 01:17:14.015 outcome that you would have fewer of them. And therefore you would have 01:17:14.048 --> 01:17:18.336 less predation and fewer of the native fish, more than more of the native 01:17:18.369 --> 01:17:25.885 fish surviving and, and helping to sustain the population. So, um, in the 01:17:25.918 --> 01:17:28.326 Grand Canyon, 01:17:28.359 --> 01:17:34.496 going back to pretty much pretty much after the 90 1995 biological opinion 01:17:34.529 --> 01:17:39.107 and the 1996 record of decision on the final environmental impact 01:17:39.140 --> 01:17:43.836 statement. A a at that time, one of the biggest threats to the Humpback 01:17:43.869 --> 01:17:51.305 job was seen as, uh, as predation and because we recognized it was a cold 01:17:51.338 --> 01:17:58.786 water system, we acknowledge the possibility of, of competition and 01:17:58.819 --> 01:18:04.765 predation from warm water fish. Um, but we, we knew that there weren't 01:18:04.798 --> 01:18:08.286 that many. We knew that the cold water was pretty much limiting the 01:18:08.319 --> 01:18:13.126 populations in the Grand Canyon, but we began to recognize that, uh, 01:18:13.159 --> 01:18:17.607 perhaps the biggest threat was predation and competition, especially 01:18:17.640 --> 01:18:21.656 predation from rainbow trout and brown trout. And like I mentioned earlier 01:18:21.689 --> 01:18:26.737 , uh, Mike Yard did I think a very good, uh, piece of work there when he 01:18:26.770 --> 01:18:30.607 looked at those proportions of fish that were being taken by the two 01:18:30.640 --> 01:18:35.135 species and found out that the big predator was, was brown trout. However 01:18:35.168 --> 01:18:42.086 , um, rainbow trout were still far, far more abundant than brown trout in 01:18:42.119 --> 01:18:44.647 the Grand Canyon 01:18:44.680 --> 01:18:48.885 Carl Walters brought up the idea that if you look genetically and 01:18:48.918 --> 01:18:54.876 historically, at the rainbow trout, it really is the, uh, progeny of an 01:18:54.909 --> 01:18:59.175 anatomist species, right? A species that moves or migrates. So we should 01:18:59.208 --> 01:19:03.317 not discount the possibility that fish. And at that time, the rainbow 01:19:03.350 --> 01:19:08.595 trout were in fact being actively introduced every year by Arizona Game 01:19:08.628 --> 01:19:12.015 and Fish department to sustain the fishery because the water was literally 01:19:12.048 --> 01:19:16.836 too cold for rainbow trout to reproduce in the Grand Canyon. And the 01:19:16.869 --> 01:19:22.717 fluctuations were so great that it stranded and isolated their eggs. So 01:19:22.750 --> 01:19:27.217 the population of trout in the Grand Canyon was not self sustainable until 01:19:27.250 --> 01:19:31.296 we went to modified low fluctuating flows. Those high fluctuating flows 01:19:31.329 --> 01:19:36.046 were simply not allowing trout to sustain themselves in the Grand Canyon. 01:19:36.079 --> 01:19:40.836 So once, once that population became more self sustainable in the Lee 01:19:40.869 --> 01:19:46.286 ferry reach, then we started to see some of those younger trough moving 01:19:46.319 --> 01:19:51.717 downstream. And we were concerned that that movement downstream. All they 01:19:51.750 --> 01:19:58.607 have to do is go from the, from Lee's ferry down to the LCR is 61 miles. 01:19:58.640 --> 01:20:03.397 So they don't have to go very far to be in Humpback chub heaven, let's say 01:20:03.430 --> 01:20:11.430 Humpback chub territory. Um And so we, uh, came up with the idea that one 01:20:12.319 --> 01:20:19.006 of the things we could do was set up a uh uh lease ferry to, to Badger the 01:20:19.039 --> 01:20:26.027 Badger Creek removal as, as being intensive removal in that area. At key 01:20:26.060 --> 01:20:29.946 times of the year, when we thought that those rainbow trout would be 01:20:29.979 --> 01:20:35.156 moving downstream to so to speak, to intercept them before they would 01:20:35.189 --> 01:20:40.086 reach the little Colorado River. So it actually was, it was called the 01:20:40.119 --> 01:20:45.527 Pera the Badger uh proposal per he had a badger mechanical removal 01:20:45.560 --> 01:20:49.317 proposal. And there were some experiments that were done. There was some 01:20:49.350 --> 01:20:53.885 removal. There was a, a complete uh in fact, there was a high uh an E A an 01:20:53.918 --> 01:20:58.616 environmental assessment done on that coordinate by Mike Runge to look at 01:20:58.649 --> 01:21:05.217 that prospect of doing that and then linking that to the 1995 EIS 01:21:05.250 --> 01:21:13.027 as a way to authorize that removal. Now, research on that and the proposal 01:21:13.060 --> 01:21:18.226 for that was before the 1995 I was being developed at the time, it was 01:21:18.259 --> 01:21:23.357 being developed and immediately after and it was after correct. Right. And 01:21:23.390 --> 01:21:31.095 then starting in the early two thousands, then the idea was floated that 01:21:31.128 --> 01:21:35.925 it could also be just targeting and removing fish trout that is from 01:21:35.958 --> 01:21:40.277 around the little Colorado river because the trying to intercept them in 01:21:40.310 --> 01:21:46.326 that pie. A badger reach was perhaps more chance than something more 01:21:46.359 --> 01:21:49.876 certain. And and instead go to the source itself, go to the end point and 01:21:49.909 --> 01:21:54.687 remove them there. So that became uh a program that was designed as a 01:21:54.720 --> 01:21:59.567 multiyear experiment to where there were, there were multiple trips. I 01:21:59.600 --> 01:22:03.607 think there was something like six or eight removal trips through that 01:22:03.640 --> 01:22:08.836 area uh, of the little Colorado River, both upstream and below. Uh the 01:22:08.869 --> 01:22:14.265 little Colorado River where electro fishing boats were removing trout in 01:22:14.298 --> 01:22:18.956 mass and just taking them from the system. 01:22:18.989 --> 01:22:24.135 Now, that became complicated to a certain degree because you had two 01:22:24.168 --> 01:22:27.326 issues. One is what do you do with them? Once you pull them from the 01:22:27.359 --> 01:22:32.777 system, you have a mass of, uh, you know, several, yeah, several £100 of 01:22:32.810 --> 01:22:36.206 fish protein. What do you do with it? The park service would not let us 01:22:36.239 --> 01:22:41.067 grind them up and put them back into the system. We thought of burying 01:22:41.100 --> 01:22:45.166 them in some riverside pits or something. But that didn't go over very 01:22:45.199 --> 01:22:49.166 well either. So someone came up with the idea of something called the 01:22:49.199 --> 01:22:53.095 Basam Attic, which was basically a huge grinder and you just put them 01:22:53.128 --> 01:22:58.885 through a grinder and then put all that, pour all that soup into. Um, I 01:22:58.918 --> 01:23:04.265 think there were like 30 gallon barrels that were put on boats and then 01:23:04.298 --> 01:23:08.277 floated out all the way to Diamond Creek and then taken out and made 01:23:08.310 --> 01:23:13.476 available for fertilizer and they were used by the Wallabies. And I think 01:23:13.509 --> 01:23:19.226 others too as fertilizer. Eventually it became, we had a, we eventually 01:23:19.259 --> 01:23:24.506 had a surplus of fish soup that no one had any further use for those. So 01:23:24.539 --> 01:23:29.055 we didn't quite know what to what to do. Meantime, the Native American 01:23:29.088 --> 01:23:35.116 tribes and, and rightfully so um had concerns about taking life in the 01:23:35.149 --> 01:23:39.717 Grand Canyon, what was referred to the sanctity of life which we of course 01:23:39.750 --> 01:23:45.196 wanted to make sure was respected. So, um so those removal that those 01:23:45.229 --> 01:23:49.937 removal experiments went on for, I think about three years and the 01:23:49.970 --> 01:23:54.317 information was written up and what we found is that they were effective 01:23:54.350 --> 01:24:00.226 as long as that removal was ongoing. But as soon as it was relieved for 01:24:00.259 --> 01:24:06.487 about a year or so, you started to see the influx of additional fish to 01:24:06.520 --> 01:24:12.607 repopulate that area. And I'm talking specifically rainbow trout. And so 01:24:12.640 --> 01:24:16.777 it became questionable whether that was in fact a sustainable management 01:24:16.810 --> 01:24:20.576 action, whether you could keep doing that or whether, you know, maybe 01:24:20.609 --> 01:24:25.256 something else would be better or maybe so. So then we started thinking, 01:24:25.289 --> 01:24:31.576 ok, so what would the Humpback chub population need to reach? How many, 01:24:31.609 --> 01:24:38.515 how many adults, 5000, 10,000, 15,000 or more in order to be able to 01:24:38.548 --> 01:24:44.217 sustain a certain amount of predation by rainbow trout? And so that became 01:24:44.250 --> 01:24:50.366 , then we developed triggers around that. We said, ok, we won't implement 01:24:50.399 --> 01:24:55.376 non native fish removal until it's necessary to do so. And the trigger 01:24:55.409 --> 01:25:00.467 will be not just the abundance of rainbow trout in that area, not how many 01:25:00.500 --> 01:25:06.116 fish are there, but also how low that Humpback chub population is and how 01:25:06.149 --> 01:25:10.476 much, how susceptible it might be to effective predation. So those two 01:25:10.509 --> 01:25:14.796 factors came into effect and that was all, eventually, that was all part 01:25:14.829 --> 01:25:21.777 of the consideration of the, of the 2016 LT MP. But by the time we got 01:25:21.810 --> 01:25:27.467 there, people like Mike Yard had done these studies on the relative effect 01:25:27.500 --> 01:25:31.397 of predation by brown trout versus, versus rainbow trout. And it was 01:25:31.430 --> 01:25:34.976 determined that in fact, probably brown trout were perhaps a bigger threat 01:25:35.009 --> 01:25:42.515 than rainbow trout. So instead of implementing the pet a badger strategy 01:25:42.548 --> 01:25:48.265 or removal around the LCR, it was decided instead to go to Bright Angel 01:25:48.298 --> 01:25:53.175 Creek and try to go to the source of brown trout that were primarily 01:25:53.208 --> 01:25:59.036 spawning, uh, in Bright Angel Creek. And you see these £10 brown trout and 01:25:59.069 --> 01:26:02.166 we've caught them off the mouth of Bright Angel Creek that go into Bright 01:26:02.199 --> 01:26:06.515 Angel Creek to spawn. So they're using the, the main river a lot like 01:26:06.548 --> 01:26:11.036 humpback job. They're living and being sustained in the main Colorado 01:26:11.069 --> 01:26:16.726 river. And every year in the fall, they fall spawners, they migrate and go 01:26:16.759 --> 01:26:20.226 into Bright Angel Creek to spawn. And then that's where their younger hats 01:26:20.259 --> 01:26:24.456 and that's where they come out and that's where you intercept them. And so 01:26:24.489 --> 01:26:31.967 in about 2000 and I probably have the year wrong here, but about 2000 and 01:26:32.000 --> 01:26:38.175 12 or so, uh, there was a, the park service together with, uh, other 01:26:38.208 --> 01:26:46.208 biologists put a, um, of a fish wear at the mouth of Bright Angel Creek 01:26:46.239 --> 01:26:51.217 that was literally catching all of the, all the fish going into Bright 01:26:51.250 --> 01:26:57.666 Angel Creek and they removed, uh, excuse me, large numbers of rainbow 01:26:57.699 --> 01:27:02.456 trout and brown trout at that. We so rainbow trout we're spotting also in 01:27:02.489 --> 01:27:06.805 bright rainbow trout. We're also using that and going into it. And then 01:27:06.838 --> 01:27:12.397 most recently in about the last now five years, the park service has 01:27:12.430 --> 01:27:16.046 implemented a program to where they go into Bright Angel Creek and 01:27:16.079 --> 01:27:21.717 literally just remove the trout directly from Bright Angel Creek, both 01:27:21.750 --> 01:27:26.916 both brown trout and rainbow trout. I just reviewed a manuscript submitted 01:27:26.949 --> 01:27:31.416 to one of the Canadian journals that reports that the effect of that or 01:27:31.449 --> 01:27:37.277 result of that and the no, the, the non native fish have declined by like 01:27:37.310 --> 01:27:43.595 75 or 80%. I mean, it's, it's really had an effect. 01:27:43.628 --> 01:27:51.628 Excuse me. Mhm. Maybe, let's pause, 01:27:53.579 --> 01:28:01.579 recording resumes. So the, um, the decision was made then to, uh, move the 01:28:03.088 --> 01:28:08.476 mechanical removal to Bright Angel Creek and the park service, uh, was the 01:28:08.509 --> 01:28:14.996 lead in this, in this effort. Um, there was a, uh, a fish weir that was 01:28:15.029 --> 01:28:21.967 set up in about 2010, 2012 that was intercepting these large spawning 01:28:22.000 --> 01:28:25.647 adults that were coming out in from the main stem, both rainbow trout and 01:28:25.680 --> 01:28:31.147 , and, and uh, brown trout. I remember we were handling £10 brown trout in 01:28:31.180 --> 01:28:34.706 the main channel just off of Bright Angel Creek. So these fish were coming 01:28:34.739 --> 01:28:40.586 into Bright Angel Creek and spawning there. Um That was not without 01:28:40.619 --> 01:28:44.406 controversy either because there were fishermen, a select group of 01:28:44.439 --> 01:28:51.476 fishermen that had recognized this for some years and would make annual 01:28:51.509 --> 01:28:58.067 annual treks to hiking down the trail to Phantom Ranch to fish. Those big 01:28:58.100 --> 01:29:01.866 rainbow, those big brown trout, especially in the fall. The weather was 01:29:01.899 --> 01:29:06.345 nice, it was cool, it wasn't so hot, hiking up and down that trail. And so 01:29:06.378 --> 01:29:11.305 the B A trail and so that became a bit of a controversy that those fish 01:29:11.338 --> 01:29:16.296 were being removed from that system. I recently received the manuscript uh 01:29:16.329 --> 01:29:22.765 from one of the Canadian uh journals, uh where uh Brian Healy from the 01:29:22.798 --> 01:29:27.027 National Park Service and Charles Yule from GCMRC have put together a 01:29:27.060 --> 01:29:31.366 paper evaluating the results of those, those removals in there. And it, 01:29:31.399 --> 01:29:37.095 and it was, it's absolutely amazing how well that has worked. Um They've 01:29:37.128 --> 01:29:42.607 removed something about 75 to 80% of the, of the trout in that system, 01:29:42.640 --> 01:29:47.956 mostly rainbow trout, but browns as well. And the, the native fish 01:29:47.989 --> 01:29:51.345 population, the flannel mouse sucker, flannel mouse suckers, blue head 01:29:51.378 --> 01:29:56.135 suckers. There are no humpback chub in Bright Angel, but those other 01:29:56.168 --> 01:30:01.976 native species have just increased, something like 400% of their, of their 01:30:02.009 --> 01:30:08.067 former abundance. So, so it has worked pretty well, but once again, once 01:30:08.100 --> 01:30:12.217 you remove that effort, the question becomes, how long will it be before 01:30:12.250 --> 01:30:17.817 that system becomes re invaded? So, again, there are costs associated with 01:30:17.850 --> 01:30:22.385 management actions that have to be considered whenever one implements 01:30:22.418 --> 01:30:26.897 those actions and looks at the prospect of having to do that, you know, 01:30:26.930 --> 01:30:32.616 for whatever long it takes or perhaps to do them periodically to just 01:30:32.649 --> 01:30:37.796 maintain some balance of what's going on. So, so the the issue of non 01:30:37.829 --> 01:30:42.086 native fish and especially mechanical removal has been a major issue in 01:30:42.119 --> 01:30:47.126 the Grand Canyon and it has been at the center of uh of some of the 01:30:47.159 --> 01:30:52.576 proposed management policies, but also it, it has been controversial um in 01:30:52.609 --> 01:30:57.996 a number of different areas where that's going to go. Now, um I think 01:30:58.029 --> 01:31:02.246 there are some different prospects or possibilities of what may happen 01:31:02.279 --> 01:31:08.496 next. The system because of the way that GCMRC and the Arizona Game and 01:31:08.529 --> 01:31:12.467 Fish Department are currently sampling through the Grand Canyon, the 01:31:12.500 --> 01:31:19.206 system is currently essentially being monitored so that any uh sudden 01:31:19.239 --> 01:31:23.246 explosion, you might say, or expansion of a given species, whether it's 01:31:23.279 --> 01:31:30.107 small mouth bass or something else should be detectable before perhaps it 01:31:30.140 --> 01:31:35.265 gets, it gets too far. And, and I think the strategy now is to try to get 01:31:35.298 --> 01:31:40.055 at something like that if it were to happen to try to get into those areas 01:31:40.088 --> 01:31:45.046 and mechanically remove before that expansion takes place. So I, I think 01:31:45.079 --> 01:31:48.746 that that system is being monitored right now. But I would suspect small 01:31:48.779 --> 01:31:54.595 mouth bass may be the next problematic species in the Grand Canyon. So, as 01:31:54.628 --> 01:32:00.515 far as you know, right now, 2019 2020 there isn't an active mechanical 01:32:00.548 --> 01:32:07.826 removal program, but it's still a possibility and may become necessary for 01:32:07.859 --> 01:32:12.196 smallmouth bass in the future. The the mechanical removal program in 01:32:12.229 --> 01:32:17.336 Bright Angel Creek is is ongoing, it is ongoing. So that's still going on. 01:32:17.369 --> 01:32:25.277 There's also some removal uh in Havasu Creek, which is one of the places 01:32:25.310 --> 01:32:29.116 that Humpback chub have been translocated to hump back job were 01:32:29.149 --> 01:32:35.086 translocated into uh Shino Creek and then Havasu Creek to try to establish 01:32:35.119 --> 01:32:39.626 additional populations. But as far as I know at this point in time, those 01:32:39.659 --> 01:32:43.576 are the only two places where there is mechanical removal. And, and I 01:32:43.609 --> 01:32:46.916 think the approach is, you know, given the native American concerns, the 01:32:46.949 --> 01:32:51.515 approach is to try to improve the Humpback chub population sufficiently so 01:32:51.548 --> 01:32:57.425 that it is able to sustain a certain level of predation and, and you don't 01:32:57.458 --> 01:33:01.857 have to go in and mechanically remove. But so, so now what's going on in 01:33:01.890 --> 01:33:07.006 the Grand Canyon as a result of this uh Brown trop management team that we 01:33:07.039 --> 01:33:13.555 convene in 4017, 01:33:13.588 --> 01:33:20.925 there are just being put in place uh incentivized removal programs at 01:33:20.958 --> 01:33:28.958 least ferry. So, for example, the, um the program will pay uh eee 01:33:29.500 --> 01:33:34.626 essentially a bounty on Brown trout that, that are brought in by, by 01:33:34.659 --> 01:33:39.555 fishermen, by anglers. So that if you bring in x number of brown trout, 01:33:39.588 --> 01:33:43.527 you, you, you can make some money fishing basically, if you're, if you're 01:33:43.560 --> 01:33:48.256 good at it and can catch those fish and have fresh fish for dinner and 01:33:48.289 --> 01:33:51.897 have fresh fish for dinner. Exactly. You, you basically just take them to 01:33:51.930 --> 01:33:55.737 a person who's, who's, uh, examining those fish and verifies that, that's 01:33:55.770 --> 01:33:59.607 what they are. And you, yeah, you keep them and take them home. Now, 01:33:59.640 --> 01:34:03.446 that's just being implemented right now. The, the interesting thing about 01:34:03.479 --> 01:34:07.015 it is that you can actually, and this is part of what the Brown Trout 01:34:07.048 --> 01:34:12.656 Management team did is from an economic perspective, you can actually look 01:34:12.689 --> 01:34:16.937 at the cost of mechanical removal that is putting crews out there with 01:34:16.970 --> 01:34:22.546 electro fishing boats repeatedly removing these fish from the system and 01:34:22.579 --> 01:34:27.746 compare that to the cost of an, an incentivized program. And it's actually 01:34:27.779 --> 01:34:32.187 potentially cheaper to implement an incentivized program. Even though you 01:34:32.220 --> 01:34:37.595 may be paying people, you may pay them, uh, you know, 5 $10 a fish, 01:34:37.628 --> 01:34:42.015 whatever it might be. And then periodically you might offer, uh, for AAA 01:34:42.048 --> 01:34:48.015 tagged fish. Let's say that that that's $100 fish or maybe even $1000 fish. 01:34:48.048 --> 01:34:51.366 So, you incentivize people to continue to try to remove those fish, to 01:34:51.399 --> 01:34:55.317 try to catch them. So those are some, you know, new ideas that we're 01:34:55.350 --> 01:34:59.446 coming up with as a way to deal with this mechanical removal or this non 01:34:59.479 --> 01:35:03.876 native fish issue? Are you aware of any objections by the Havasupai tribe 01:35:03.909 --> 01:35:09.675 of mechanical removal of trout in Havasu Creek? That, that is a sensitive 01:35:09.708 --> 01:35:14.006 issue at this time, I haven't been directly involved with that program. I 01:35:14.039 --> 01:35:18.536 know that there are some concerns about that. I really couldn't answer 01:35:18.569 --> 01:35:24.626 that at this time. I haven't had recent involvement with that. 01:35:24.659 --> 01:35:30.746 Well, thank you for going back over that topic with us again. Um Can you 01:35:30.779 --> 01:35:38.425 uh tell us who you think the most important researchers and the most 01:35:38.458 --> 01:35:43.277 important participants in the adaptive management program have been over 01:35:43.310 --> 01:35:49.277 time should be called out for their long term high quality work. Well, 01:35:49.310 --> 01:35:54.515 from my perspective, of course, I, I look more at the scientists in the 01:35:54.548 --> 01:35:58.345 program, perhaps more so than the managers or administrators, not that 01:35:58.378 --> 01:36:02.546 they not that there aren't people there that have done excellent work in 01:36:02.579 --> 01:36:06.015 terms of facilitating the science and some of the research that's been 01:36:06.048 --> 01:36:11.546 taking place. But, but II, I think that um certainly when I first got 01:36:11.579 --> 01:36:17.336 involved in the program in 1989 Dave Wagner was a an instrumental person 01:36:17.369 --> 01:36:23.425 in terms of being able to bring together scientists under the Glen Canyon 01:36:23.458 --> 01:36:30.406 environmental studies, the G CE S at that time. Um After that, uh the 01:36:30.439 --> 01:36:35.826 program transitioned as a result of the um of the Grand Canyon uh 01:36:35.859 --> 01:36:40.595 Protection Protection Act. Thank you. Uh transitioned into the GCMRC, the 01:36:40.628 --> 01:36:46.777 , the uh Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center. Um 01:36:46.810 --> 01:36:53.555 That program then was what Facilli facilitated people like Carl Walters to 01:36:53.588 --> 01:36:59.635 come into the program. And Carl Carl really, I think shook up the 01:36:59.668 --> 01:37:03.687 scientific community in Grand Canyon because we thought we were pretty 01:37:03.720 --> 01:37:10.305 darn good at what we were doing. Carl made us realize that we could do 01:37:10.338 --> 01:37:14.345 more, much more, especially introducing this concept of adaptive 01:37:14.378 --> 01:37:19.036 management and how that really works into uh being able to work in the 01:37:19.069 --> 01:37:23.277 system. So, so Carl fundamentally came in and said, OK, what are your 01:37:23.310 --> 01:37:27.135 hypothesis about how you think the system works? You think it's 01:37:27.168 --> 01:37:32.086 temperature that affects Humpback chub? All right, then, then look at it, 01:37:32.119 --> 01:37:36.756 investigate it, look at different options, look at opportunistic uh 01:37:36.789 --> 01:37:42.626 warming periods. We had 2005, for example, that uh where the, where the 01:37:42.659 --> 01:37:49.666 release of the dam in 2005 was very similar to a two unit T CD. So we had 01:37:49.699 --> 01:37:53.027 in some ways natural experiments that were taking place right in front of 01:37:53.060 --> 01:37:56.857 our eyes, but we weren't seeing it that way. So he made us better 01:37:56.890 --> 01:38:01.756 understand the opportunities that were available in the system at the time 01:38:01.789 --> 01:38:05.976 and, and, and how to implement those experiments and then how to evaluate 01:38:06.009 --> 01:38:12.246 them over time under the concept of condition dependency. So that if, if 01:38:12.279 --> 01:38:17.376 we wanted to, to implement an an experiment, we had to realize that the 01:38:17.409 --> 01:38:21.116 condition in the Grand Canyon, whether it's water availability or 01:38:21.149 --> 01:38:25.897 temperature or whatever else, climate change was not going to be the same 01:38:25.930 --> 01:38:32.586 every year. So, so it was basically conducting a huge outdoor experiment 01:38:32.619 --> 01:38:38.515 over which you have little control over environmental variables. And so in 01:38:38.548 --> 01:38:44.196 order to deal with that, he, you know, proffered the idea of of condition 01:38:44.229 --> 01:38:49.175 dependent experiments whereby you, you conduct experiments when the 01:38:49.208 --> 01:38:52.845 conditions are suitable for doing that. And in years when you can't do 01:38:52.878 --> 01:38:57.607 that, you don't. So your condition, your your sampling design may be a 01:38:57.640 --> 01:39:02.746 rather expanded matrix that has probability of occurrence associated with 01:39:02.779 --> 01:39:06.467 a certain volume of water or a certain temperature that you may be trying 01:39:06.500 --> 01:39:10.857 to test, but you're not going to be able to do it every year. So Carl was 01:39:10.890 --> 01:39:15.717 significant in terms of introducing some very novel, very, very, I think, 01:39:15.750 --> 01:39:20.666 very good ideas in terms of understanding the science. Better. Carl also 01:39:20.699 --> 01:39:25.586 uh brought with him and enabled us to also have access to people like Bill 01:39:25.619 --> 01:39:30.226 Pine. Uh Carl of course, with was with, with the University of British 01:39:30.259 --> 01:39:34.156 Columbia in Vancouver. Bill Pine was with the University of Florida at 01:39:34.189 --> 01:39:40.586 Gainesville. So Bill brought forward concepts that we of how we better 01:39:40.619 --> 01:39:45.717 understand young Humpback chub survival. He initiated some what are known 01:39:45.750 --> 01:39:49.737 as the near shore ecology studies in the Grand Canyon. They were looking 01:39:49.770 --> 01:39:54.527 at the Humpback chub coming out of the little Colorado River and what they 01:39:54.560 --> 01:39:57.987 were doing to survive in the main stem, how they were using those tailless 01:39:58.020 --> 01:40:03.857 slopes for protection for food availability and so on. And so Bill was 01:40:03.890 --> 01:40:08.546 instrumental in that as well as other things. He, he introduced technology 01:40:08.579 --> 01:40:15.385 like uh like laser ablation technology that is taking a uh an otolith, the 01:40:15.418 --> 01:40:20.496 inner ear bone of a fish of a humpback chub, the inner ear, of course, is 01:40:20.529 --> 01:40:25.116 one of the first calcified parts of a fish when they're born, they have 01:40:25.149 --> 01:40:28.256 inner ears, they have odorless when they're born. So it's a complete 01:40:28.289 --> 01:40:36.289 record of the uh of the life of the fish. And those Odalis establish um 01:40:36.338 --> 01:40:40.576 daily growth rings that you can track and you can look at like the growth 01:40:40.609 --> 01:40:46.036 rings on a tree and they also have broader, wider annual growth rings. And 01:40:46.069 --> 01:40:50.147 so you have a, a record that you can go back and look at. Now if you take 01:40:50.180 --> 01:40:56.086 a laser and take uh samples of the different parts in the life of that 01:40:56.119 --> 01:40:59.857 ring where you know how old the fish is when it experienced certain things 01:40:59.890 --> 01:41:07.166 , you can then trace back what um what environments it occupied by looking 01:41:07.199 --> 01:41:12.217 at isotope ratios, for example. So you can tell when the fish left the 01:41:12.250 --> 01:41:16.437 little Colorado River, you can tell what habitats they were using in the 01:41:16.470 --> 01:41:21.397 main stem, whether they were using warm near shore habitats backwaters or 01:41:21.430 --> 01:41:26.357 the main channel or other experiences or whether they were going into the 01:41:26.390 --> 01:41:30.586 main stem turning around and going back up into the little Colorado River 01:41:30.619 --> 01:41:35.305 as part of a, a uh an archive of the life history of the species in the 01:41:35.338 --> 01:41:41.506 system. So it was, it was these things that we had not thought of before 01:41:41.539 --> 01:41:46.095 and that you need external scientists like this to, to introduce these 01:41:46.128 --> 01:41:53.726 ideas and these concepts. Um One of Carl Walters, uh A and Bill Pine's 01:41:53.759 --> 01:41:58.937 students was a, was a man named Lou Coggins who got his phd under Bill 01:41:58.970 --> 01:42:05.687 Pine and, and Carl and Lou now introduced new analytical techniques for us. 01:42:05.720 --> 01:42:11.175 Now, you had two fundamentally, two scientists, Carl Walters and Bill 01:42:11.208 --> 01:42:18.496 Pine with very strong uh marine fish backgrounds 01:42:18.529 --> 01:42:22.946 and marine fisheries is so much further ahead in terms of analytical 01:42:22.979 --> 01:42:27.126 techniques than freshwater fisheries because they deal with large fish 01:42:27.159 --> 01:42:30.406 populations, they deal with unknowns, they deal with uncertainties, they 01:42:30.439 --> 01:42:36.536 deal with fish that are being reported from large fishing boats, not with 01:42:36.569 --> 01:42:40.046 a lot of Mark recapture opportunities. They're not dealing with small 01:42:40.079 --> 01:42:42.826 streams and lakes, they're dealing with something the size of the Pacific 01:42:42.859 --> 01:42:49.616 Ocean. So they have to have much better developed uh analytical skills. 01:42:49.649 --> 01:42:55.217 And so with their help, we had Lou Coggins come in and redo our Mark 01:42:55.250 --> 01:42:59.286 recapture program of how we were estimating the numbers of Humpback chub 01:42:59.319 --> 01:43:03.476 that were in the Grand Canyon. And he developed a wonderful Mark recapture 01:43:03.509 --> 01:43:06.906 model with the help of both, you know, especially Carl Walters but Bill 01:43:06.939 --> 01:43:14.939 Pine as well. Um, another student of, uh, of Carl's was, um, was, um, uh, 01:43:17.289 --> 01:43:22.946 in addition to Lou Coggins was, uh, uh, I, I'll have to think of his name 01:43:22.979 --> 01:43:28.656 here in a little bit, but he also brought in, um, a, a wealth of knowledge 01:43:28.689 --> 01:43:33.817 with respect to understanding, uh, the trout population. His experience 01:43:33.850 --> 01:43:38.616 was mostly up in Canada and Alaska with rainbow trout and, and other 01:43:38.649 --> 01:43:43.635 species of trout. So, uh, a and his name was Josh Corman. I apologize for 01:43:43.668 --> 01:43:47.357 not remembering that earlier, Josh Corman was also instrumental and, and 01:43:47.390 --> 01:43:51.786 Josh is still working in the canyon now. He works a lot with Mike Yard and 01:43:51.819 --> 01:43:56.147 they've done a absolutely marvelous job of, of better understanding the 01:43:56.180 --> 01:43:59.916 population of rainbow trout, especially rainbow trout, but brown trout as 01:43:59.949 --> 01:44:04.156 well in the Grand Canyon, how those populations function, how they spawn 01:44:04.189 --> 01:44:08.595 the survival of the young, what habitats they use, how they are affected 01:44:08.628 --> 01:44:13.737 by operation of Glen Canyon Dam. One of the things that they found out is 01:44:13.770 --> 01:44:19.515 that, for example, uh, when, uh, the, the, the rainbow trout in the Grand 01:44:19.548 --> 01:44:23.756 Canyon is a, is actually a late winter spawner, they spawn in about 01:44:23.789 --> 01:44:28.906 January, February. And when they, and, and their eggs will incubate for 60 01:44:28.939 --> 01:44:33.446 to maybe, maybe as much as well for 40 or maybe 60 days, something like 01:44:33.479 --> 01:44:38.666 that. When they hatch, when they emerge, they will go to the near 01:44:38.699 --> 01:44:44.717 shoreline areas a as fry. So when they're very, very young, they're 01:44:44.750 --> 01:44:49.796 looking for shallow sheltered areas. So they will go into the shorelines 01:44:49.829 --> 01:44:55.366 in that lease ferry area and go to about the shallow area. If you are 01:44:55.399 --> 01:45:00.305 running a fluctuating flow scenario, you're going to strand those 01:45:00.338 --> 01:45:05.289 individuals, right? Because they're in very, very low, very shallow water. 01:45:05.979 --> 01:45:07.979 Now, as they get older, they go from these low angle shorelines to the 01:45:11.168 --> 01:45:15.857 more high angle shorelines to more rocky steeper shorelines. So 01:45:15.890 --> 01:45:21.095 understanding that of course, enables you to better understand not just 01:45:21.128 --> 01:45:28.046 how the population survived but perhaps potential um management flows for 01:45:28.079 --> 01:45:34.446 regulating those populations. So as a result of that, the concept of 01:45:34.479 --> 01:45:39.546 trough management flows came about that you can regulate the population to 01:45:39.579 --> 01:45:45.336 a certain degree if you want to by basically raising flows to a certain 01:45:45.369 --> 01:45:51.987 level, say 15,000 cubic feet per second in that January. Well, in about, 01:45:52.020 --> 01:45:58.906 in about that March, April period and have those young fish go up on those 01:45:58.939 --> 01:46:04.706 shallow areas in le ferry, then drop the water on them quite suddenly and 01:46:04.739 --> 01:46:09.666 you strand them, you regulate the population that way by not having to do 01:46:09.699 --> 01:46:13.916 any mechanical removal by not having to intercept the fish in the pet a 01:46:13.949 --> 01:46:19.015 badger reach by maybe not having to worry about the fish moving downstream 01:46:19.048 --> 01:46:22.956 to the LCR because there, there is a certain degree of density dependence 01:46:22.989 --> 01:46:26.626 that takes place with these populations. Whereas if you have too many 01:46:26.659 --> 01:46:33.527 trout in the least ferry reach just by common sense, the surplus of those 01:46:33.560 --> 01:46:37.555 fish are going to want to leave that area and would move downstream. So 01:46:37.588 --> 01:46:41.756 that's been another option as an alternative to mechanical removal is 01:46:41.789 --> 01:46:45.857 better understanding the population than managing those populations to 01:46:45.890 --> 01:46:50.226 where they don't exceed their carrying capacity for the system. Has anyone 01:46:50.259 --> 01:46:58.196 tried that option yet? Uh Yes. Um Drought management flows have been 01:46:58.229 --> 01:47:05.119 implemented on an experimental basis. They have worked to a certain degree. 01:47:05.930 --> 01:47:07.930 But again, there are these little twists of fate, so to speak, where um, 01:47:14.689 --> 01:47:20.726 the, the a, a big part of the uh trout population in Grand Canyon least 01:47:20.759 --> 01:47:25.345 ferry reach was in fact, not necessarily spawning in those shallow areas. 01:47:25.378 --> 01:47:28.925 They're spawning to more toward the middle of the channel. You still have 01:47:28.958 --> 01:47:33.967 some of those young fish coming up that combined with the with warmer 01:47:34.000 --> 01:47:40.756 releases of out of the dam have also expanded the, the window of spawning. 01:47:40.789 --> 01:47:46.036 So we have those young of different ages now being more occurring more 01:47:46.069 --> 01:47:51.046 over longer periods of time. So those have been effective at some times 01:47:51.079 --> 01:47:56.206 and perhaps not so much at others because of these nuances having to do 01:47:56.239 --> 01:48:01.076 with spawning. What we think is happening now that Brown Trout Management 01:48:01.109 --> 01:48:06.067 team, what we concluded from that is that one of the possibilities is that 01:48:06.100 --> 01:48:08.946 , um, 01:48:08.979 --> 01:48:14.055 that, that there's competition for uh spawning areas between rainbow trout 01:48:14.088 --> 01:48:19.147 and brown trout to where you could have 11 species spawning on top of the 01:48:19.180 --> 01:48:23.046 other because brown trout are fall spawners. And so there's almost an 01:48:23.079 --> 01:48:26.696 overlap in the spawning now between brown trout that spawned in October, 01:48:26.729 --> 01:48:31.446 November, December, even in January and rainbow trout that are spawning in 01:48:31.479 --> 01:48:36.246 maybe even late December, January, February. So you have a little bit of 01:48:36.279 --> 01:48:40.675 that competition, maybe taking place as well. So these are again, the 01:48:40.708 --> 01:48:44.246 things that are still being looked at to, to better know how to manage 01:48:44.279 --> 01:48:52.076 that system. But I think the the important message here is that um if you 01:48:52.109 --> 01:48:56.616 understand the life history of the species, it may not be a direct 01:48:56.649 --> 01:49:01.916 sledgehammer. That's the solution. You may be able to find out nuances 01:49:01.949 --> 01:49:05.756 about the life history. And that's what people like Carl Walters and Bill 01:49:05.789 --> 01:49:13.527 Pine enable us to understand. Now, um There have been of course, other 01:49:13.560 --> 01:49:18.666 scientists that have been very instrumental, Jack Schmidt I think is one 01:49:18.699 --> 01:49:24.857 whose name is associated. In fact, almost with a Grand Canyon. Jack was at 01:49:24.890 --> 01:49:28.817 the front of better understanding this concept of sediment distribution to 01:49:28.850 --> 01:49:32.746 the system, the concept of beach habitat building flows and high flow 01:49:32.779 --> 01:49:36.237 experiments. He was right in the middle. I remember I was down there in 01:49:36.270 --> 01:49:42.237 1996 during the that control flood and I was uh doing fisheries work down 01:49:42.270 --> 01:49:46.416 uh just downstream of the little Colorado River. He came by and he was 01:49:46.449 --> 01:49:49.196 doing some of the research he was doing, of course, on sediment. They were 01:49:49.229 --> 01:49:54.036 tracing the dye as it was, they, they had introduced dye into the water 01:49:54.069 --> 01:49:57.756 and they wanted to understand the kinematic waves through the system. So 01:49:57.789 --> 01:50:01.187 Jack of course, has been instrumental and he's many, had many graduate 01:50:01.220 --> 01:50:05.746 students down there. Paul Grahams is one of those. Paul is now a member of 01:50:05.779 --> 01:50:09.937 the staff of the Grand Canyon Monitoring Research Center. So he carries 01:50:09.970 --> 01:50:16.206 forth that so called flag of, of sediment, you know, geom morphologies 01:50:16.239 --> 01:50:21.576 that are in the Grand Canyon. Um 01:50:21.609 --> 01:50:27.737 and most recently and probably most significantly, uh a gentleman named 01:50:27.770 --> 01:50:34.996 Charles Yuli, who is a graduate of Columbia University. And Oxford Charles 01:50:35.029 --> 01:50:40.226 joined the Grand Canyon Monitoring Research Center in 2000, about 2010, 01:50:40.259 --> 01:50:45.586 2011. They hadn't been there very long, but he his back, he has a very, 01:50:45.619 --> 01:50:53.166 very strong background in quantitative ecology and he has a an uh an 01:50:53.199 --> 01:51:00.857 incredible background in uh ecosystem uh models and ecosystem design and 01:51:00.890 --> 01:51:06.067 has the ability to be able to bring together complex interactions among 01:51:06.100 --> 01:51:11.527 different species of organisms and has focused some of his focus has been 01:51:11.560 --> 01:51:15.515 on Humpback Chub where he has helped us to really understand that 01:51:15.548 --> 01:51:19.376 relationship between the mains stem Colorado River and the Little Colorado 01:51:19.409 --> 01:51:24.226 River. And how Humpback Chub are using that system. Charles was 01:51:24.259 --> 01:51:31.095 instrumental in doing the evaluation of the alternatives of the 2016 EIS 01:51:31.128 --> 01:51:36.786 he coordinate uh across the different disciplines, all the data that was 01:51:36.819 --> 01:51:41.476 available from hydrology to sediment to humpback job, to trout, to repair 01:51:41.509 --> 01:51:45.626 and habitat, to recreation, everything. He's the one that coordinate all 01:51:45.659 --> 01:51:50.696 that work. He has been a significant, uh I think scientist in the Grand 01:51:50.729 --> 01:51:56.515 Canyon, especially most recently. Um Larry Stevens. Of course, what can 01:51:56.548 --> 01:52:00.616 you say about Larry Stevens? Larry Stevens is just the person who has just 01:52:00.649 --> 01:52:07.515 been there all the time. His, his uh knowledge, his areas of expertise. In 01:52:07.548 --> 01:52:12.925 fact, um, go across virtually every discipline you can think of in the 01:52:12.958 --> 01:52:17.506 Grand Canyon. Larry is always out there. Larry doesn't do trips down the 01:52:17.539 --> 01:52:23.845 river to study one thing, Larry when he's down there is looking at fish, 01:52:23.878 --> 01:52:27.076 he's looking at lizards, he's looking at insects, he's looking at 01:52:27.109 --> 01:52:31.546 virtually everything around him. One of the most incredible ecologists I 01:52:31.579 --> 01:52:35.996 think that, that I can think of anyway. His knowledge is almost 01:52:36.029 --> 01:52:40.737 insurmountable in terms of understanding the, the Grand Canyon. I think 01:52:40.770 --> 01:52:44.946 another one who goes back, in fact, predates me certainly and predates 01:52:44.979 --> 01:52:48.916 many, many biologists in the Grand Canyon. He was one of the first to 01:52:48.949 --> 01:52:52.187 conduct fish surveys through the Grand Canyon and that's Steve Carruthers 01:52:52.220 --> 01:53:00.006 , Steve Carruthers, um, uh, was the manager of the museum in Northern 01:53:00.039 --> 01:53:04.956 Arizona, which is right there in Flagstaff and he, uh, started the company 01:53:04.989 --> 01:53:11.996 SWC A back in the, in the seventies and I, I happened to, to run, well, I 01:53:12.029 --> 01:53:17.476 , my relationship with Steve was that we were both bidding on that 01:53:17.509 --> 01:53:22.036 humpback job. Life, history, ecology work. The reclamation issued back in 01:53:22.069 --> 01:53:28.147 the, in the late 19 eighties and, and I won the contract and he did not. 01:53:28.180 --> 01:53:31.756 And so he finally came up to me one day and he said, you know, I'm tired 01:53:31.789 --> 01:53:35.546 of you and I competing against each other. We should join forces. And 01:53:35.579 --> 01:53:39.885 that's been a wonderful relationship that I've had with Steve since he's a 01:53:39.918 --> 01:53:44.857 , if you want to know about birds in the Grand Canyon or reptiles in the 01:53:44.890 --> 01:53:48.277 Grand Canyon, Steve Carruthers is one of the more knowledgeable. Certainly 01:53:48.310 --> 01:53:54.876 , I'm sure I'm, I'm leaving certain scientists out, but those are the ones 01:53:54.909 --> 01:53:59.987 that come to me at this time. How about key reports or studies that you 01:54:00.020 --> 01:54:04.107 want to highlight is particularly important that have retained their value 01:54:04.140 --> 01:54:12.140 over time? Yeah. Um Well, certainly, um 01:54:12.168 --> 01:54:20.168 the uh the final environmental impact statement of 1996 is, is pivotal. Um 01:54:20.819 --> 01:54:25.967 because of that was the first, there, there was never ne a compliance done 01:54:26.000 --> 01:54:32.476 on Glen Canyon Dam because it was built way before NE A and so that was 01:54:32.509 --> 01:54:39.076 the first effort to try to consolidate all that information. Um 01:54:39.109 --> 01:54:46.467 The uh the 2016, the most recent LT MP I SI think is also a good archival 01:54:46.500 --> 01:54:53.467 document for many of the things that have taken place. There are four 01:54:53.500 --> 01:54:57.746 reviews from the National Academy of Sciences that I think people, people 01:54:57.779 --> 01:55:01.805 sometimes overlook in terms of going back and looking at the history of 01:55:01.838 --> 01:55:05.595 the Grand Canyon. And I think those are significant because it really 01:55:05.628 --> 01:55:11.777 shows this, this transition uh and evolution of thinking by scientists in 01:55:11.810 --> 01:55:16.376 the Grand Canyon, as I mentioned earlier, uh the first review because it 01:55:16.409 --> 01:55:21.527 was right after the 8384 high flows, the natural high flows through. There 01:55:21.560 --> 01:55:27.015 was of course historic snowfall in the upper Colorado River Basin. Uh I 01:55:27.048 --> 01:55:32.256 remember doing cataract at about 75 80,000 CFS. And it was a, it was a 01:55:32.289 --> 01:55:37.416 nightmare and of course, flows through the Grand Canyon reached a peak of 01:55:37.449 --> 01:55:42.595 almost 90,000 CFS when everything was being allowed to go downstream of 01:55:42.628 --> 01:55:47.326 the dam. And as a result of that, when the National Academy of Sciences 01:55:47.359 --> 01:55:51.616 met, they said don't do any kind of high flows in the Grand Canyon, right 01:55:51.649 --> 01:55:56.036 ? Because that'll flush all the sediment downstream into lake mead. Well, 01:55:56.069 --> 01:56:00.206 of course, subsequent reviews from the National Academy of Sciences said, 01:56:00.239 --> 01:56:03.607 no, that's not really true. And again, Jack Schmidt, I think was 01:56:03.640 --> 01:56:09.796 instrumental in bringing that back to some common sense management policy 01:56:09.829 --> 01:56:13.777 that could be put in place. And so now we have it's not policy. It's 01:56:13.810 --> 01:56:17.897 experiments. Now we have the high flow experiments that are in fact 01:56:17.930 --> 01:56:23.656 showing that that is one way to conserve sediment in the Grand Canyon. Um 01:56:23.689 --> 01:56:29.786 There are of course a collection of reports and published manuscripts 01:56:29.819 --> 01:56:34.817 having to do with the Grand Canyon, wonderful pieces of work by many, many 01:56:34.850 --> 01:56:40.976 scientists. Um The one that the one that, that I, that I was associated 01:56:41.009 --> 01:56:49.009 with that I'm most proud of is uh 1999 publication in bioscience. Uh that 01:56:49.699 --> 01:56:55.406 I did with uh Jack Schmidt was the lead author. Uh Bob Webb was involved 01:56:55.439 --> 01:57:00.126 in it, Dick Marzo, Larry Stevens and myself. It was, it was the result of 01:57:00.159 --> 01:57:04.967 a brainchild that took place in San Francisco. We were, we were at the uh 01:57:05.000 --> 01:57:11.246 Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco sitting uh in the, in the 01:57:11.279 --> 01:57:18.187 lounge in between sessions. And Jack had asked the five of us to get 01:57:18.220 --> 01:57:25.416 together. And he said, uh gentlemen, we should, we should document what 01:57:25.449 --> 01:57:28.756 we're learning in the Grand Canyon. This is before the concept of adaptive 01:57:28.789 --> 01:57:32.237 management. This is before any of that had ever come together. This is 01:57:32.270 --> 01:57:38.107 before Carl Walters or anybody. And he said, what do we know and what we, 01:57:38.140 --> 01:57:42.217 what have we learned? And we went through uh I, I wish I had recorded it 01:57:42.250 --> 01:57:47.576 because it was a wonderful conversation with um who I considered the top 01:57:47.609 --> 01:57:51.737 scientists probably that were involved, you know, Dick Marzo was at that 01:57:51.770 --> 01:57:57.626 time with the uh US Geological Survey out of Reston, Virginia. He was one 01:57:57.659 --> 01:58:02.416 of the main science coordinators for us, GS Bob Webb was out of us GS out 01:58:02.449 --> 01:58:07.996 of Tucson, one of the noted authorities on Whitewater Rapids and had done 01:58:08.029 --> 01:58:12.226 a lot of work in the Grand Canyon on lava falls on lava rapid and so on. 01:58:12.259 --> 01:58:15.425 And of course, Larry Stevens was involved in that as well and we sat 01:58:15.458 --> 01:58:21.967 around and talked about what it is that was happening in the Grand Canyon 01:58:22.000 --> 01:58:26.156 and what was possible in terms of science. And so it was called Science 01:58:26.189 --> 01:58:30.726 and Values in the Grand Canyon. That was the, the title we came up with 01:58:30.759 --> 01:58:37.925 the conclusions I thought were remarkable for that time, given our 01:58:37.958 --> 01:58:42.916 fundamentally feeble understanding of the way the system worked, but we 01:58:42.949 --> 01:58:46.135 made observations over what we saw. And one of the things that we 01:58:46.168 --> 01:58:50.937 concluded was was this concept of what we referred to as the intractable 01:58:50.970 --> 01:58:57.476 dilemma where um we realized and recognized that there was no single 01:58:57.509 --> 01:59:03.107 management action that could, 01:59:03.140 --> 01:59:10.345 that could simultaneously benefit all resources. You couldn't have one 01:59:10.378 --> 01:59:15.885 Glen Canyon Dam operations that would be best for sand and best for 01:59:15.918 --> 01:59:19.666 Humpback chub and best for repairing habitat and recreation and everything 01:59:19.699 --> 01:59:24.487 else. It didn't work that way. You of course, had different conditions 01:59:24.520 --> 01:59:28.696 that were available at different times of the year. And so you basically, 01:59:28.729 --> 01:59:33.416 you managed according to that. And, and so what that did is it 01:59:33.449 --> 01:59:38.336 fundamentally opened the door beautifully for adaptive management whereby 01:59:38.369 --> 01:59:42.305 you recognize that you realize that and you say, OK, what we have to do 01:59:42.338 --> 01:59:46.256 then is implement a series of, of experiments over hypotheses. And then 01:59:46.289 --> 01:59:49.817 you evaluate those over time, they work sometimes they don't work. Other 01:59:49.850 --> 01:59:55.717 times you benefit some resources, sometimes not other times. So that, that 01:59:55.750 --> 02:00:00.265 uh val science and values in the Grand Canyon and Bioscience 1999 was I 02:00:00.298 --> 02:00:04.777 think a, a landmark paper. 02:00:04.810 --> 02:00:11.116 Um Thanks again to Jack, I think largely to Jack Schmidt on that one. Um 02:00:11.149 --> 02:00:14.786 There were a number of other papers of course, that were published by Lou 02:00:14.819 --> 02:00:19.536 Coggins, Carl Walters on Humpback chub populations. It was the first 02:00:19.569 --> 02:00:24.256 opportunity we had to really bring together the, the life history and 02:00:24.289 --> 02:00:29.076 ecology. The work that I had done was mostly in a large report. They, I 02:00:29.109 --> 02:00:32.876 think, uh you know, very well brought that information together and 02:00:32.909 --> 02:00:40.206 published it. Um did an excellent job of that. Um Then, and there and 02:00:40.239 --> 02:00:44.456 those papers are in various journals uh that you can find. And then most 02:00:44.489 --> 02:00:50.296 recently Charles Yuli published a paper about now uh about six or seven 02:00:50.329 --> 02:00:55.506 years ago and, and it is uh it, it's entitled Something Like Growth and 02:00:55.539 --> 02:01:00.366 Survival of Humpback Chub in the Grand Canyon. And he, and he has a, this 02:01:00.399 --> 02:01:06.187 is this is, this is how scientists think wonderfully. He has a lot of 02:01:06.220 --> 02:01:14.220 little uh icons of fish as part of his models in that manuscript showing 02:01:14.378 --> 02:01:19.366 how Humpback Chub come from the main stem into the LCR spawn and then 02:01:19.399 --> 02:01:23.536 their little babies come drifting out or move into the main stem and then 02:01:23.569 --> 02:01:26.555 grow up and then turn around and some of them come back and some of them 02:01:26.588 --> 02:01:30.737 don't. And then there's a concept of skipped spawning where they don't 02:01:30.770 --> 02:01:36.147 spawn every year, they may skip a year. And so he very nicely 02:01:36.180 --> 02:01:40.496 characterized that in the paper and, and it's by Charles Yuli. I think 02:01:40.529 --> 02:01:48.529 it's a wonderful piece of work. How do you spell Ky Ac Kul, IC Charles 02:01:48.930 --> 02:01:56.027 Yuli. And that was co-authored by, uh, Mike Yard, Randy Van Habe. And, um 02:01:56.060 --> 02:01:59.906 oh my goodness. I uh I can't remember who the other author is. We'll look 02:01:59.939 --> 02:02:04.067 it up. Yeah, but that was, that's a, that's a very good paper, more, more 02:02:04.100 --> 02:02:12.100 recent type of paper. Um Jack, of course, Schmidt did some uh landmark 02:02:13.298 --> 02:02:19.345 pieces of work that I think can be found under his name relative to Grand 02:02:19.378 --> 02:02:22.976 Canyon. Um 02:02:23.009 --> 02:02:26.885 Those are the ones that come, I think to mind at, at this time, Graham. 02:02:26.918 --> 02:02:34.166 Great, thanks. Well, how about a couple of big picture questions? What do 02:02:34.199 --> 02:02:42.006 you think is the value of adaptive management in trying to manage complex 02:02:42.039 --> 02:02:49.456 resources in an environment that we can't predict or control? 02:02:49.489 --> 02:02:56.737 Yeah. And, and that's uh that's probably the, the, you know, $50 million 02:02:56.770 --> 02:03:04.770 question, I think for, for many systems, um The, the Grand Canyon system 02:03:05.000 --> 02:03:10.647 is somewhat similar to other river basin programs across the Western 02:03:10.680 --> 02:03:18.680 United States in that there are most river basin programs have dams or 02:03:19.600 --> 02:03:24.006 water diversions or whatever that have fundamentally altered the basic 02:03:24.039 --> 02:03:29.156 structure. And function of the ecosystem ecosystems that in the case of 02:03:29.189 --> 02:03:33.296 the Colorado River were probably in place although dynamic, maybe over a 02:03:33.329 --> 02:03:39.765 period of 3 to 4 million years. And yes, in the Grand Canyon probably 02:03:39.798 --> 02:03:44.777 about a million years ago or so, there were uh it, it was a very 02:03:44.810 --> 02:03:50.717 seismically active area at the time that the plateau was rising. There is 02:03:50.750 --> 02:03:55.126 very strong evidence that there were lava flows that dammed the Colorado 02:03:55.159 --> 02:04:00.717 River in the Grand Canyon and those dams probably lasted quite some time. 02:04:00.750 --> 02:04:04.595 Although the releases were not Hypolite coal releases, like we see today 02:04:04.628 --> 02:04:10.336 , they probably were overflow or topping over the top of those lava dams 02:04:10.369 --> 02:04:13.777 until they eventually eroded over a period of time. Some of those 02:04:13.810 --> 02:04:17.126 presumably could have lasted about 1000 years, perhaps, perhaps a little 02:04:17.159 --> 02:04:25.159 less. Um so, but, but fundamentally, I you can, despite the dynamics that 02:04:26.329 --> 02:04:31.237 you see over say a million years or a 3 to 4 million year period, you 02:04:31.270 --> 02:04:36.095 still recognize that there was a dynamic system that was there before 02:04:36.128 --> 02:04:40.956 there were any uh any um 02:04:40.989 --> 02:04:47.187 any of man's influences such as dams such as water diversions, such as 02:04:47.220 --> 02:04:52.976 depletion of sediment and so on 02:04:53.009 --> 02:04:58.626 when one considers those kinds of effects. 02:04:58.659 --> 02:05:04.616 The first, the first thing to understand is that it is unlikely that that 02:05:04.649 --> 02:05:09.187 so-called historical system, whatever that used to look like. Pre Preman 02:05:09.220 --> 02:05:16.256 say, it's unlikely that that would ever be restored to what it was. And so 02:05:16.289 --> 02:05:21.546 you have to, you have to work with an altered system. It is also unlikely 02:05:21.579 --> 02:05:25.885 that one can restore the the function, the structure and function of the 02:05:25.918 --> 02:05:30.217 components of that system. The way the river used to work, the big floods 02:05:30.250 --> 02:05:35.175 in the spring time, the high temperatures, et cetera, the absence of of 02:05:35.208 --> 02:05:43.208 alien fish. And so um so the the problems are so, so the problem becomes 02:05:43.588 --> 02:05:48.076 first understanding the way the system works in its current state, the 02:05:48.109 --> 02:05:52.506 dynamics of that contemporary river system. 02:05:52.539 --> 02:05:57.555 And part of that, of course is trying to better explain how some 02:05:57.588 --> 02:06:01.496 components of that system might work that are in scientific terms, 02:06:01.529 --> 02:06:09.529 expressed as hypotheses. And so it is, it is in fact the almost the ideal 02:06:09.649 --> 02:06:15.616 setting for adaptive management whereby you try to explain a particular 02:06:15.649 --> 02:06:19.027 problem or a particular issue having to do with the Grand Canyon or 02:06:19.060 --> 02:06:23.175 operation of Grand Canyon Dam, you establish a hypothesis and then you 02:06:23.208 --> 02:06:27.647 test that hypothesis in different ways. You realize that when you do test 02:06:27.680 --> 02:06:30.817 it like high flow experiments, for example, you don't quite get it right. 02:06:30.850 --> 02:06:35.437 The first time the first high flow experiment was 1996 we went for 10 or 02:06:35.470 --> 02:06:39.336 12 days. I can't remember how long it was and most of the sediment moved 02:06:39.369 --> 02:06:43.555 in about the first two or three days. So we learn from that, we learn that 02:06:43.588 --> 02:06:46.897 those don't need to be as long. So that was part of the cycle of adaptive 02:06:46.930 --> 02:06:52.116 management. Uh It's true of virtually every resource in the Grand Canyon 02:06:52.149 --> 02:06:57.107 that you have to understand that. So adaptive management in, in, in, in 02:06:57.140 --> 02:07:02.996 and of itself as a concept is probably well suited to something like like 02:07:03.029 --> 02:07:09.397 Grand Canyon to, to be implemented in that, in that system. Now, what Carl 02:07:09.430 --> 02:07:13.726 Walters also taught us though was what we talked about earlier. Those 02:07:13.759 --> 02:07:17.906 unexpected surprises that nature may throw on you. The condition 02:07:17.939 --> 02:07:24.126 dependency where you have times when you cannot implement an experiment 02:07:24.159 --> 02:07:28.836 because there's not enough water available to do it or the experiment goes 02:07:28.869 --> 02:07:32.956 awry because the temperatures weren't what you expected from the river. 02:07:32.989 --> 02:07:38.175 Again, you're basically doing experimentation in a large open laboratory 02:07:38.208 --> 02:07:43.246 with no control whatsoever except for perhaps a large spigot call Glen 02:07:43.279 --> 02:07:51.279 Canyon Dam. And so um the the to me, the most informative part of it 02:07:53.029 --> 02:07:58.906 though is to be able to implement adaptive management and then perhaps 02:07:58.939 --> 02:08:03.425 even remove yourself from the program as, as I have and not that I've 02:08:03.458 --> 02:08:07.576 removed myself, but I, I'm not as involved as I was. And then look at it 02:08:07.609 --> 02:08:13.397 from the outside in, in a really objective way and look at what it has 02:08:13.430 --> 02:08:19.946 worked and what hasn't worked. And I think by and large um aspects of what 02:08:19.979 --> 02:08:25.756 has have been put in place, have worked and aspects of it have not worked 02:08:25.789 --> 02:08:33.616 in some cases. Um Well, for example, the, the, the concept of um when we 02:08:33.649 --> 02:08:39.226 first started looking at mechanical non fish control, we thought, OK, we 02:08:39.259 --> 02:08:42.296 can, we can go in there and put electro fishing boats in the river and 02:08:42.329 --> 02:08:46.836 take out a lot of trout and that'll solve the problem. Well, not quite 02:08:46.869 --> 02:08:51.826 because you had this invasion, this re invasion of those areas. Uh Another 02:08:51.859 --> 02:08:55.487 example is perhaps uh high flow experiments where you're trying to 02:08:55.520 --> 02:08:59.305 preserve sand and sediment. You take advantage of when that sediment is 02:08:59.338 --> 02:09:04.626 most available in the fall. But now perhaps you're scouring the food base. 02:09:04.659 --> 02:09:08.536 And so you have to understand that every one of those actions that you're 02:09:08.569 --> 02:09:13.595 implementing as, as an experiment has some kind of reaction perhaps to 02:09:13.628 --> 02:09:18.647 other resources. So again, that's something that Carl Walters cautioned us 02:09:18.680 --> 02:09:22.765 about that management, that experimentation, you have to go through 02:09:22.798 --> 02:09:27.467 experimentation first before you implement policy. Before you put that as 02:09:27.500 --> 02:09:32.876 part of your normal operation, you have to evaluate it first. What many of 02:09:32.909 --> 02:09:36.546 us did not understand and certainly many managers and administrators and 02:09:36.579 --> 02:09:42.996 even today don't understand is how long that takes to do that. I mean, 02:09:43.029 --> 02:09:48.336 we've had a science program in the Grand Canyon since about 1985 with G Ce 02:09:48.369 --> 02:09:53.796 s with Dave Wagner. That's a long time that you know, that's 30 some odd 02:09:53.829 --> 02:09:58.187 years of experimentation in the Grand Canyon. And of course, managers 02:09:58.220 --> 02:10:01.305 always say, how long is this gonna take you? When are you going to give us 02:10:01.338 --> 02:10:08.067 the answer. Well, there is no particular answer. It really, it really 02:10:08.100 --> 02:10:14.496 speaks to the need for ongoing involvement, an ongoing understanding of 02:10:14.529 --> 02:10:19.967 what's happening in the system and the ongoing dynamics. So that to me is 02:10:20.000 --> 02:10:25.826 the most valuable part is this retrospective opportunity to look back on 02:10:25.859 --> 02:10:31.706 it and see what worked, what didn't work and what surprises we had. And 02:10:31.739 --> 02:10:38.647 it's that last one that's often the largest effect of any of those. 02:10:38.680 --> 02:10:41.376 Well, that's a, 02:10:41.409 --> 02:10:48.095 an articulate defense of the value of the program over time. Um Yeah, it's 02:10:48.128 --> 02:10:53.777 been 30 I think, 38 years since the launching of G ce S one that came up, 02:10:53.810 --> 02:11:01.810 started in 1982 almost four decades and 25 years since um the launching of 02:11:01.869 --> 02:11:08.015 the Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Program proper. 02:11:08.048 --> 02:11:13.616 It's pretty expensive program. We have learned a lot. Do you anticipate 02:11:13.649 --> 02:11:19.107 that there will be some point in the future in which the program is, we've 02:11:19.140 --> 02:11:22.906 learned enough that we don't really need the program anymore? Or is the 02:11:22.939 --> 02:11:27.726 constant evolution and accretion of knowledge so valuable that it should 02:11:27.759 --> 02:11:32.015 be continued, at least for the foreseeable future in your opinion. Well, 02:11:32.048 --> 02:11:36.476 unfortunately, the continuance of that program is not under our control, 02:11:36.509 --> 02:11:42.006 of course, but I would certainly hope that that program continue. And the 02:11:42.039 --> 02:11:47.687 reason is because, um it's not for science, it's not for the sake of 02:11:47.720 --> 02:11:52.425 science alone. It is for the sake of better understanding how to manage 02:11:52.458 --> 02:11:57.006 one of the most valuable resources we have in North America and society 02:11:57.039 --> 02:12:03.506 has made that decision that it's important to maintain the Grand Canyon as 02:12:03.539 --> 02:12:08.095 well as we can and maintain all the resources within the Grand Canyon when 02:12:08.128 --> 02:12:14.487 it is a societal decision and it is a s a societal value. I think it does 02:12:14.520 --> 02:12:20.576 rise to the level of justifying an ongoing funding of the program in its 02:12:20.609 --> 02:12:28.609 current state. It is a um it is a federal advisory committee so it's under 02:12:29.859 --> 02:12:35.036 the direct authority of the Secretary of the Interior. I hope it stays 02:12:35.069 --> 02:12:40.967 that way because it, it certainly, I think has um eliminated a lot of the 02:12:41.000 --> 02:12:46.656 complexity, especially for funding the program. Now, whether that can be 02:12:46.689 --> 02:12:52.635 part back, some, I think only managers can make that decision. Uh Again, 02:12:52.668 --> 02:12:58.345 the the the role of science in the process is gathering information in an 02:12:58.378 --> 02:13:04.217 in an objective manner in order to give that information for managers to 02:13:04.250 --> 02:13:08.357 make informed decisions and for administrators to facilitate those 02:13:08.390 --> 02:13:12.756 decisions and provide the logistics for those being done. I think that's 02:13:12.789 --> 02:13:16.265 important. I think those roles are necessary in a system like the Grand 02:13:16.298 --> 02:13:21.226 Canyon. And again, not for the sake of science, but really for the sake of 02:13:21.259 --> 02:13:24.996 the resources in the Grand Canyon, not just in the Grand Canyon, but 02:13:25.029 --> 02:13:28.217 downstream as well. Because that water that's delivered through the system 02:13:28.250 --> 02:13:33.446 is also important to the downstream states, Nevada, California, and 02:13:33.479 --> 02:13:40.496 Arizona as well. As it, as it goes downstream. So I, I see. And I'm hoping 02:13:40.529 --> 02:13:47.987 that the program continues in some form because I think it's necessary um 02:13:48.020 --> 02:13:55.256 to do so if one were to um speculate a little bit on what might happen, if 02:13:55.289 --> 02:14:02.015 the program would go away. For one thing we've learned from programs like 02:14:02.048 --> 02:14:06.996 the Grand Canyon program, like the upper Colorado River recovery program, 02:14:07.029 --> 02:14:12.515 like the San Juan River recovery implementation program, like the lower 02:14:12.548 --> 02:14:18.076 Colorado river MS CP. We've learned that those programs have certainly 02:14:18.109 --> 02:14:24.666 brought together all of the interest in the system. Many millions of 02:14:24.699 --> 02:14:29.286 people rely on these rivers for delivery of water for recreation, for many 02:14:29.319 --> 02:14:35.237 other values. Those are those programs are important to maintain because I 02:14:35.270 --> 02:14:40.616 , I do remember before, for example, the Upper Colorado River Basin 02:14:40.649 --> 02:14:48.277 program, I do remember uh what were then almost termed water wars where 02:14:48.310 --> 02:14:52.206 there was some uncertainty about how to best manage the water, who owned 02:14:52.239 --> 02:14:57.616 the water, how it was to be transferred and passed through the system. Um 02:14:57.649 --> 02:15:02.506 People like Tom Pitts who was a water coordinator in the upper Colorado 02:15:02.539 --> 02:15:06.765 River basin came up with many concepts as to how to do this. And one of 02:15:06.798 --> 02:15:10.726 the ideas he came up with was to establish a recovery implementation 02:15:10.759 --> 02:15:16.967 program which was to enable water users to get together and talk about how 02:15:17.000 --> 02:15:19.737 to best manage 02:15:19.770 --> 02:15:26.156 water resources in concert with natural resources. And so I am hoping that 02:15:26.189 --> 02:15:29.826 this program does continue 02:15:29.859 --> 02:15:37.217 last question. What advice would you have for people coming newly into the 02:15:37.250 --> 02:15:43.937 program? Some young post doc who gets his, his or her first research grant 02:15:43.970 --> 02:15:49.067 or somebody a stakeholder that gets uh placed on the adaptive management 02:15:49.100 --> 02:15:52.126 work group or technical work group. What advice would you have for them 02:15:52.159 --> 02:16:00.095 about how to be uh successful in advancing the program, 02:16:00.128 --> 02:16:07.116 patience and humility, not necessarily in that order. 02:16:07.149 --> 02:16:09.946 Um 02:16:09.979 --> 02:16:16.015 The uh the there are the recognition that there have been many people 02:16:16.048 --> 02:16:22.366 before them working to the best of their ability to try to put a program 02:16:22.399 --> 02:16:27.675 in place. The best man, the best balances, water management and protection 02:16:27.708 --> 02:16:35.708 of resources. That's important, the understanding of roles, especially 02:16:36.308 --> 02:16:42.105 those with scientific backgrounds to understand that that the role of a 02:16:42.138 --> 02:16:46.626 scientist is in fact to provide information by which others can make 02:16:46.659 --> 02:16:50.667 informed decisions. And that was one of the big things that we talked 02:16:50.700 --> 02:16:54.546 about in that bioscience paper. I mentioned earlier the role of science. 02:16:54.579 --> 02:17:00.456 That that's an important concept I think because we make decisions on the 02:17:00.489 --> 02:17:05.785 basis of societal needs and societal demands, not on the basis of what 02:17:05.818 --> 02:17:10.564 scientists think. However, the better informed those decisions are the 02:17:10.597 --> 02:17:14.866 better off we're going to be. So I think that that's important. The other 02:17:14.899 --> 02:17:18.385 part of it is humility and I certainly learned that one the hard way 02:17:18.418 --> 02:17:23.855 because all of us uh as young phd s think we pretty much know about all 02:17:23.888 --> 02:17:27.016 there is to know and just turn us loose on the planet and we'll solve all 02:17:27.049 --> 02:17:33.194 the problems. Um You know, that that is where people like Carl Walters and 02:17:33.227 --> 02:17:40.906 Bill Pine were so um so enigmatic about being able to tell us how to 02:17:40.939 --> 02:17:45.906 better manage a system while being patient with us and while being, you 02:17:45.939 --> 02:17:50.554 know, tutorial, more or less helping us understand better how to, how to 02:17:50.587 --> 02:17:55.217 see things, how to view things. So I I think, I think patients and 02:17:55.250 --> 02:17:59.946 humility are probably the best guidance I could give to someone coming 02:17:59.979 --> 02:18:04.706 into the system. Uh be patient with other stakeholders, especially those 02:18:04.739 --> 02:18:08.025 that have been in the program for some time. They may be knowing things 02:18:08.058 --> 02:18:13.766 that may be a surprise. And yet at the same time as a scientist, 1 may 02:18:13.799 --> 02:18:18.507 observe a new scientist may observe that gosh, you guys recommended such 02:18:18.540 --> 02:18:22.587 and such back when and it didn't work, did it? Well, again, that's part of 02:18:22.620 --> 02:18:26.257 patience. That's part of adaptive management. No, it may have not worked. 02:18:26.290 --> 02:18:30.105 But let's look at it further, let's let's do it better, let's figure out 02:18:30.138 --> 02:18:35.685 a way to do it better. Um And I see a lot of new scientists coming into 02:18:35.718 --> 02:18:39.077 the program that I think are aware of some of those fundamentals. I I 02:18:39.110 --> 02:18:44.626 certainly see people like Charles J Kulick who has been very, very helpful 02:18:44.659 --> 02:18:48.327 and and understands that having worked around the world, I think he's 02:18:48.360 --> 02:18:56.360 encountered these situations before. But um the, the uh the GC Damp does a 02:18:56.500 --> 02:19:03.736 wonderful job of coordinating the science. The twig technical work group 02:19:03.769 --> 02:19:08.226 of the GC Damp has done a wonderful science of uh a wonderful job of 02:19:08.259 --> 02:19:12.657 helping to coordinate and, and assimilate that information in a meaningful 02:19:12.690 --> 02:19:17.116 way. And they've been very good, I think at issuing reports and reporting 02:19:17.149 --> 02:19:22.525 and, and giving scientists the opportunity. Uh a good thing was to bring 02:19:22.558 --> 02:19:28.596 the US or the GCMRC under the US Geological Survey because now if you go 02:19:28.629 --> 02:19:32.885 to the website, you will find all of the reports. They're up to date. 02:19:32.918 --> 02:19:37.275 Everything is being archived in a very good fashion. You don't have any 02:19:37.308 --> 02:19:40.577 trouble finding what people are doing. You can see it right there. That's 02:19:40.610 --> 02:19:44.805 not true of all river basin programs. This one is, is a wonderful example 02:19:44.838 --> 02:19:49.685 , is everything perfect. Of course not. No, there are many things that 02:19:49.718 --> 02:19:54.946 need improvement within the, the GC damp, but those are the kinds of 02:19:54.979 --> 02:19:58.467 things that you learn as you go and you try to improve as, as best as 02:19:58.500 --> 02:20:06.366 possible. So, um yeah, like I said, patience and humility. 02:20:06.399 --> 02:20:12.917 Well, thanks rich for um your meeting with us today, for your wisdom and 02:20:12.950 --> 02:20:17.507 your openness and, and your lifetime of research trying to advance these 02:20:17.540 --> 02:20:22.366 really important goals of balancing, as you said, balancing societal needs 02:20:22.399 --> 02:20:28.217 with um with the health and resilience of the ecosystems we depend on. 02:20:28.250 --> 02:20:31.866 Well, thank you. I appreciated uh you asking me to do this interview and 02:20:31.899 --> 02:20:35.950 thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you. Ok.